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Not so much a traditional webcomic as a funny and very well written Doctor Who Fanfic in comic form. The references come thick and fast, so if you don't know the difference between a Renegade Dalek and an Imperial Dalek be forewarned — but not discouraged.
To briefly summarise — the Tenth Doctor, in a bad mood following "The Runaway Bride", has gone to a luxurious world called the Eye of Orion to cheer himself up... only to gradually find eight of his previous selves having all arrived at the same time along with their companions. While they begin to investigate what's going on and why they've been brought together, the Eighth Doctor (the odd one out) is on Gallifrey, investigating mysterious goings-on which seem to involve the recently-disappeared Daleks. And then things get complicated...
The story is 247 pages long (plus a few extras along the way) and was posted from March 10, 2007 until May 27, 2009... so in a sense, it could be considered the "official" unofficial Doctor Who 45th-Anniversary Special.
Can be downloaded in PDF format here.
For other works by this author, see Rich's Comix Blog.
- Actor Allusion: The first thing Five says to Four is "So you've decided to join us this time, have you?" Tom Baker, of course, has consistently refused to reprise his role as the Fourth Doctor in any of the multi-Doctor episodes (unless you count "Dimensions in Time").
- At one point, Seven mentions he thinks it would be better if they all worked on solving the mystery alone, as "too many bakers spoil a crust". Four looks vaguely alarmed, and Six demands to know what he's talking about.
- Peri asks Six if he and Maxil are related, and Six scoffs at this notion. Of course, both characters were played by the same actor. Six later asks "Could you picture me as a stranger, Miss Brown?" in reference to BBV's video series The Stranger, in which Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant played the Stranger and Miss Brown.
- Six tells Four "It's a wonder I got more than seven years out of you."
- Most of the Doctors bicker, but Two and Three are definitely the worst. (Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee enjoyed pretending to hate each other at fan conventions.)
- Ten calls Four an "arrogant overbearing smartass" during their goodbyes, probably referring to the end of Tom Baker's tenure when he became incredibly difficult to work with on-set.
- Ten is especially glad to see Five, referencing how David Tennant became an actor entirely in the hopes that he might get to play the Doctor, after his adoration of Five's episodes in his childhood. Keep in mind that The Ten Doctors was written well before Time Crash.
- However, the end was uploaded after Time Crash, and in said end Ten says he hopes to see Five again, and Five responds with this gem...
Five: Be Careful What You Wish For. |
- And the Adventure Continues...: The last page of the comic segues immediately into the beginning of "Smith and Jones".
- And That's Terrible: When Seven introduces the two, Two is genial to Davros until Seven reveals that Davros is the creator of the Daleks. For shame indeed.
- Arc Words: In Page 54, there's a throwback to the "Bad Wolf" storyline in the second panel, which focuses on 9.
- Ascended Meme: From one fan work to another! During a scene where Two needs assistance performing a TARDIS function that requires two Time Lords, he uses willpower to create a "temporary manifestation" of a future incarnation. As he doesn't want it to be "that unhelpful, smug buffoon" (Three), he modifies the projection to be "different enough from me, but not yet him." The result, who stays for the remainder of the story, is the Second-and-a-Halfth Doctor (Tony Garner) from the Who fan film Devious.
- Bait and Switch: At the end, it looks like Ten is building up a rant at Four for a tactless comment only to break into a wide smile at how much he loved being Four.
- Balance Between Order And Chaos: When the Guardians reveal that, while Davros is the Champion of Order and the Master is the Champion of Chaos, the Doctor effectively sets himself up as the Champion of Happy Medium.
- Battle in the Center of the Mind: All of the Doctors perform a Split Personality Merge to fight the Dalek conditioning that turned Ten into Dalek Tor.
- Battle Royale With Cheese: A ridiculously huge one over the skies of Earth including Ice Warriors, Draconians, Sontarans, Movellans, Rutans, Renegade Daleks, Imperial Daleks, (several incarnations of) the Doctor, the Master, etc.
- Beard of Evil: The Master, unsurprisingly.
- Big Bad: At some point during the story this may seem like the Master, the Cybermen, the Renegade Daleks, the Imperial Daleks, Omega, the Toymaker, the Rani, the Valeyard, the War Chief, Dalek Ahn, Dalek Tor, or the Sontarans. But nope, it's actually the Black and White Guardians.
- Or it could be the Meddling Monk, who appears at the end to try and stop the Time War but unalterably changes the Doctor. Of course, this status could be unjustified.
- Big Damn Heroes: Nine's entire job for most of the story, but Four performs a great one.
- Call Forward:
- While dangling from a ship by his trademark scarf, Four reflects that one of these days, that plan is going to fail him. And it did, in Logopolis.
- The Dalek / Cybermen "negotiations" play out almost exactly as they do in "Doomsday", and Romana mentions "jiggery-pokery class" at the Academy.
- Cartoony Eyes: The characters switch between these and relatively realistic ones, depending on whether or not they're in the background or foreground. Most notable with Five, whose Cartoony Eyes are dots.
- The Chessmaster: Quite a lot of them, all in conflict.
- Combat Pragmatist: Leela. She stabs the Valeyard with a knife, and attempted to stab him again while he was regenerating, only to be held back by the Doctor.
- Continuity Nod / Mythology Gag: In spades.
- Contrived Coincidence: Drax being on the same Dalek ship as the Ninth Doctor.
- Creator Cameo: Rich, his wife, and their daughter appear briefly as Muggles watching Five's fighter buzz a city.
- Crisis Crossover
- Curse Cut Short:
Glitz: Personally, I think it tastes like Nimon sh-- |
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Case in point for both the cyberized Silurians and the Time Daleks.
- Development Gag: Maxil takes a TARDIS over to the Renegade Dalek ship to apprehend Six, reflecting Colin Baker's idea to have Maxil arrest Six during "Trial of a Time Lord". (And if you recall, Baker played both characters at different times on the show.)
- Did Not Do the Bloody Research: Averted. On one page, an enraged Nine calls his other selves "tossers." Rich is actually Canadian, but he also knew full well how rude the word is in the UK.
Rich: I knew how rude the word was, having English parents and relatives. The scene is one of ultimate despair for the 9th Doctor and all his previous incarnations are playing into the hands of the enemy. It seemed that he was the Doctor who would snap and get rude at such a time. |
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Nine and Ten end the comic by feeding the Black and White Guardians to the Clock Roaches.
- Did You Just Scam Cthulhu?: Having been trapped in the Toymaker's pocket universe, Two tricks the Toymaker into a game of Crazy Eights, then wins freedom by cheating using the Toymaker's own rules. Omega is not pleased.
- Dragon with an Agenda: The Celestial Toymaker to Omega; the Rani to the Daleks.
- Early-Bird Cameo: In-universe? Anyway, a pre-"Smith & Jones" Martha shows up briefly as Grace Holloway's assistant.
- Fan Service: During his time as Dalek Tor, Ten is entirely shirtless.
- Leela goes one better when we get a shot of her from behind, completely naked. Of course, at this point, Leela is an old woman. Then again...
- Fire-Forged Friends: Rose and Ace. They start off Volleying Insults, but are soon blowing up Daleks and Cybermen together.
- Flat What / Big "What?": Ten gets in the usual "What? What?! What?!?"
- Foregone Conclusion: Given what we know about when the Doctors and companions came from and when this story is set, a reader can safely assume that Susan, Jo, Sarah Jane, K9 Mks. II and IV, Romana, Tegan, Turlough, Peri, Rose, Jack [1], the Brigadier, and the Doctors will all survive. It's more unclear with Jamie, Zoe, Leela, K9 Mk. I, Nyssa, Glitz, Mel, Ace, and Grace, but they survive anyway.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: The Guardians say that their appearances change with the needs of their desired champions. In the story proper, both Guardians manifest as attractive humanoid women in order to toy with Ten's need for meaningful companionship, and in a flashback, the White Guardian manifests to Davros as a military officer.
- It's also mentioned that their appearances as doddery old men in "The Ribos Operation" and "The Armageddon Factor" played off of Four's need for an authority figure.
- Future Me Scares Me:
- At one point, after hearing what other Time Lords think of his career, One (during his exile but before An Unearthly Child) wonders what kind of lunatic he's going to turn into.
- Four wants to know what kind of toxin he had to ingest to become Six.
- Doctors One through Eight also feel this way about Nine, wondering just what could have happened to make him into such a hard edged, bitter, cynical person. Of course what none of them know is that he carries the guilt of having to live with the War Doctor's actions during the Last Great Time War. Three is also not too pleased by how close Nine is to Rose and being Hell-Bent for Leather.
- Gag Boobs: Peri, just like usual. She's even referred to as "the one with the boobs".
- Gambit Pileup: At first it looks like the story is a plot by the Sontarans to get the various alien races of the galaxy to attack the Daleks and begin the Time War, only to find out it's really a plan by the Master and his cloned Sontaran army. Which is then revealed to be a plot by the Valeyard to cause all-out war and let him take over Gallifrey. Which is then revealed to be a plot by Omega to cause the universe to be destroyed and then reshaped in his image. Which is in turn a plot by the Guardians of Time to force the Tenth Doctor to choose between eternal entropy or eternal order. Which the Ninth Doctor stops via a plan of his own involving nine duplicates of himself meeting up and causing the Clock Roaches to eat the Big Bads. Whew. And that's not counting the roles the Rani, Davros, Dalek Ahn, the Toymaker, the War Chief, and Mortimus (the Meddling Monk) play in all this.
- Groin Attack: The Rani deals with Glitz the same way she did the Master.
- Have We Met Yet?: Happens quite a bit, and it's inevitable with all the time traveling and multiple incarnations of the same fellow gallivanting about, but it's especially notable with this gem:
Mel: (via radio) Doctor! How are you? It's me, Mel! |
- Heel Face Turn: The Rani, the War Chief, and Maxil.
- Hero Worshipper: A few Time Lord youths have tried their hand at stealing a TARDIS and becoming galactic heroes. The Time Lord authorities are now much better at catching and towing back these renegades.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: The Valeyard, believing only Daleks or Time Lords have the potential to be the supreme beings but both unable to reach it (with the Time Lords being too pacifistic and stopping the Daleks all the time), creates Time Daleks out of Leela's several half-human, half-Time Lord children. He then tries to threaten the Time Daleks' mom. You can probably guess what happens next.
Dalek Ahn: EXTERMINATE! |
- Heinz Hybrid: The Time Daleks are half-human, half-Time Lords in Dalek casings.
- Loads and Loads of Characters: At least ten Doctors and their companions and the list only grows from there.
- Loads and Loads of Races: Pretty much every race but the Krotons makes an appearance.
- Mind Rape: Part of what the Keeper is doing to his "experiments".
- Ms. Fanservice: Peri, of course, has a considerably more revealing neckline than the rest of the female companions.
- My Name Is Not Durwood:
Nine: I am the Doctor, not "Thete", not "The Professor"! |
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Ten has the power to stop the entire Time War from ever occurring by giving the Daleks' attack strategies to Eight. He doesn't.
- So the entire reason the Time Lords lost the Time War is that the Valeyard, which the Time Lords created in the first place, killed one Time Lord before he could get the Daleks' attack strategies to the Doctor. If this hadn't happened, the war would have been much less destructive, the Time Lords and Gallifrey would still be around, and the events of The End of Time would never have happened. So it's the Time Lords' fault they got into the Time War, which isn't too surprising.
- Ninja Zombie Pirate Robot: Dalek-Time Lords-Humans. What more can you ask for? (As a close second, there's cyberized Silurians.)
- Not So Different: At the end, each Doctor thinks it would have been much smoother if they'd handled the whole thing themselves. The author's note for the page lampshades it.
- Oh Crap: The Master has just enough time to realise how screwed he is before Nyssa takes out his fighter.
- Two and Two-and-a-Half immediately make a panicked break for the TARDIS when Glitz shoots Omega with a stun blast of pure matter.
- One Steve Limit: As it would be very difficult to have ten-er, elev-er, ten and a half characters named "the Doctor" running around, many of the Doctors are referred to by their incarnation.
- Order Versus Chaos: It's eventually revealed that the whole thing has been masterminded by the Black and White Guardians, who have decided that the universe can no longer exist in a state of imbalance and want the Doctor to choose whether it falls to absolute order or chaos. Nine and Ten decide that the Guardians aren't doing a lot to help the balance themselves, and feed them both to the Reapers.
- Original Character: There is precisely one character in this story who is not from Doctor Who canon or (in the case of the Creator Cameo) Real Life, that being the Lady President of Gallifrey.
- Precision F-Strike: Some mild swearing is occasionally employed, but the highlight is Nyssa blowing up the Master's ship and snarling "That was for every soul you wiped out in the Traken Union, you evil son of a bitch."
- Second place has to go to Nine, whose use of the word "tosser" is part of what convinces the other Doctors that he's finally snapped.
- Put on a Bus: Nine and Ten get a bit of this, with the former acting like a bit of a spaz and the latter being converted into Dalek Tor. But they more than make up for this later with their confrontation with the Guardians of Time.
- Screaming Woman: "Mel, as we all feared, screams." For three straight panels.
- Self-Deprecation: From Rich's Notes on Page 202:
"The 10 Doctors merge their consciousnesses, experiencing each others' memories past and future. Then, combined into one mighty Doctor, they face off against the Dalek conditioning. Y'know, written down, that sounds stupid." |
- Sequel Hook: Most plot threads are wrapped up in a rather conclusive manner, except Dalek Ahn escaping. Rich admitted this was a deliberate hook for a possible future story.
- Seven Minute Lull: Page 141 features everyone talking at once, and Jamie gets a line at the very end:
Jamie: An' I could see her bra... |
- Shown Their Work: Holy crap has he. The author's even pointed out exactly where and when all the Doctors and their companions are coming from.
- Summon Bigger Fish: Quite a few villains are defeated or set back by one or other Doctor summoning their arch enemies, but the best example of this trope comes towards the end, when Nine and Ten unleash the Reapers on the Guardians.
- Take a Third Option: The Black and White Guardians demand that the Doctor choose between one of them, condemning the universe either to strict, stifling, perfect Order or the mass destruction of perfect Chaos. Have they watched the show?
- Timey-Wimey Ball: Mentioned by name as to how all ten Doctors can be in one place at the same time.
Ten: It's...squishy-squashy... |
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Ace and Rose, eventually. Though they bond over blowing up Cybermen with Nitro-9.
- Unwitting Pawn: Maxil.
- What Could Have Been: In the complete .pdf, Rich Morris includes an appendix with sketches of how some scenes would have originally played out, including Leela stabbing the Valeyard through the last of his regenerations until he dissolves into a puddle of goo. It's exactly as disturbing as it sounds.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Barbara, Ian, Dodo, Bret Vyon, Steven, and Vicki aren't mentioned, but that's okay because they travelled with One, who hasn't met them yet. But Polly, Ben, Victoria, Adam and Chang Lee aren't mentioned either. No, wait, hold on, Nine hasn't met Captain Jack and Six hasn't met Mel or Sabalom Glitz. Wait, Jack also travelled with Ten, which won't happen for another 11 episodes yet. At least the dead ones are mentioned by name, near the end of the comic.[2]
- What Measure Is a Mook? / What Measure Is a Non-Human?: While Three, Four, Five, and Seven are manipulating a space battle:
Five: You know, if actual lives weren't involved, this would almost be exhilarating. |
- Xanatos Roulette: As mentioned above, there's a number of tables going at once, but special mention must be made of Omega, who piggybacked onto a bunch of other people's plans in an effort to destroy One so that he and the actions of his successors would be removed from all time.
- You Can't Go Home Again: Nine and Ten suffer this trope the hardest, obviously. Still, the disruption to the timeline allows them to successfully travel to Eight's Gallifrey in order to investigate the mystery. They can't stick around, however.
- You!: Ten when he meets the Valeyard, and vice versa.
- Your Answer to Everything: Two when Three suggests reversing the polarity.
- You're Mad: Ten's reaction to the Keeper's plan. When Eight sees it, he says almost the exact same thing.
Ten: You're barmy! Bonkers! Totally flip-noggan twitters and shakes mad! |