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[personal profile] shankie
Just before the new Doctor Who TV series started, the 8th Doctor was still appearing in Doctor Who Magazine comics; but was not going to be in the show. Just before this arc, a sometimes-villain body snatcher Destrii became the Doctor's companion. Because she doesn't appear in her actual form with where I'm going with this, here she is.



In The Flood here, published in DWM #346 - #353, she's wearing an appearance-altering bit of tech obtained in the last adventure. The Doctor takes her to Earth, where she fits in rather poorly, regardless. This story was going to be the place where 8 regenerated into 9 at the end, but it didn't happen; it was decided that Rose Tyler, not Destrii, would be the 9th's companion first. I suppose it works; still, there's a reference to 9. Foreshadowing, really.

I love the 8th Doctor for a lot of reasons that can basically be summed up like this; he's the Scott Free of the Doctors, and that's awesome. This story is excellent, in colour, and shows that off pretty well. And shows how a Time Lord can have godlike power without it entirely going to their head. At least for a little while.

On my tiny monitor, some of the text is hard to make out. If that's an issue for you, too, well... sorry about that.







As a way of apology, the Doctor takes the Asian food vendor and his wife out to a pub; Destrii remains uninterested in them or their troubles, but it all soon gets interrupted, anyway. The Doctor catches someone trying to pick his pocket, and thinks it's kinda funny.



Then, Cybermen arrive.

Awesome, awesome looking Cybermen. I've gotta say, I prefer this design to either from the show, even if it's a little Star Wars, it's nifty.



Things get a little iffy, Destrii fights Cybermen like the fish-girl Amazon she is, and the Doctor gets sent to a doctor at MI6 after getting knocked out. He's not much for the guy running the place, from past experience; also, he looks a whole lot like the Master and I kept expecting him to be.





::teehee::

Destrii and the Doctor both get captured by the Cybermen after the first attempt to fend them off fails. He continues to be glib about the whole thing.



At least, until the Controller reveals what he's up to; using crazy-causing rain to genetically enhance humans to be better for Cyberman conversion.



With logic that isn't actually too far off, really. Especially considering they're temporally and spatially outsiders.

It takes Destrii screaming at him to kick the Doctor into gear with a plan; that begins with offering up his own suicide. Being a Cyberman, the head robot guy isn't about to say no to a dead Doctor.





Now, for climactic finale of awesome.













You can see where he was supposed to regenerate here; funny that it actually comes up, and not all that far from what had 9 become 10, really.













An appearance of cows that actually had me liking them, hehe. I don't usually like cows at all, but, that was kinda cute. If they knew what Destrii was saying, a mention of leather might set them off, yeah.

Presumably, some time closely following this, the Time War happens. I always assume it was 8 who was involved and it resulted in the regeneration to 9 shortly before the TV series started up again. He does seem a little surprised by his ears and all.

on 2008-08-13 01:56 am (UTC)
ext_55333: (8th Doctor)
Posted by [identity profile] victoria-wayne.livejournal.com
The Doctor Who Wiki entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_who) is a good place to start; it branches off into entries on every Doctor, brief descriptions of various items in the shows, details on the different media, etc. It's a good place to find the source material you really want to be into; because every Doctor is different and it appears in so many forms, for so long, Doctor Who is massively massive and the only way to get into it is really to test out different Doctors and what-not. The main bad guys (Cybermen, The Master, and the Daleks) appear in nearly all, so the learning curve isn't as huge as it looks, really.

Doctor Who canon can't agree with itself half the time, so, just having a general idea is mostly what you'd need.

YouTube has episodes of the old series, I think even the 1996 movie (in which the 8th Doctor is the only good thing, alongside the Master's creepy gross gayness) is there. The BBC site (http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/) has some fun stuff, even free ebooks (http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/ebooks/) and other stuff.

Timelines have been made in a few places: at Whoniverse.org (http://www.whoniverse.org/biography/timeline.php) for a decent one. There's also one on Wiki, I think, and a few lurking on the internets here and there.

on 2008-08-13 03:01 am (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] wad.livejournal.com
Wow, thanks! Looks like I have a lot of reading to do.

on 2008-08-13 03:29 am (UTC)
ext_55333: (aquaman crotch)
Posted by [identity profile] victoria-wayne.livejournal.com
Possibly. I grew up watching Tom Baker on PBS so I can only imagine getting into it from scratch must be a project and a half. Good luck. :D

Honestly, the new Who is great, but watching the old episodes then being all like "OMG lookit who it is!" squee on seeing them re-done... cannot be duplicated. XD
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