Happy Deathday (comic story)

Happy Deathday
Doctor:	Eighth Doctor
Companion(s):	Izzy
Featuring:	Seventh Doctor, Sixth Doctor, Fifth Doctor, Fourth Doctor, Third Doctor, Second Doctor, First Doctor
Main enemy:	The Beige Guardian
Main setting:	The Doctor's TARDIS
Key crew
Publisher:	Panini Comics
Editor:	Gary Gillatt, Alan Barnes
Writer:	Scott Gray
Artist:	Roger Langridge
Letterer:	Roger Langridge
Release details
Number of parts:	1
Printed in:	DWM 272
Release date:	19 November 1998
Cover date:	16 December 1998
Reprinted in:	The Glorious Dead
Format:	Comic
DWM comic stories
← Previous	Wormwood
Next →	The Fallen

You may be looking for the titular video game.

Happy Deathday was a Doctor Who Magazine comic story featuring Izzy Sinclair aboard the Doctor's TARDIS. The comic celebrated the 35th anniversary of Doctor Who.

Summary

It seems the Beige Guardian has kidnapped all eight Doctors and is forcing them to defeat all their past enemies at once. Matters, however, are not quite what they appear.

Plot

The Beige Guardian has kidnapped all eight incarnations of the Doctor, tied them up and placed them on a huge birthday cake with hissing dynamite "candles" strapped to their heads. The Beige Guardian produces every enemy the Doctors have ever defeated and announces they will be forced to defeat them all again, which the Doctors find tedious. Leaving the First and Eighth Doctors tied to the cake with their explosive candle fuses burning, the Beige Guardian sends the rest to battle their assorted enemies.

The Sixth and Second Doctors find themselves aboard a space station. They meet what at first seems to be a Raston Warrior Robot, but it's worse; it's a Wildean Wit Enforcer Wit Enforcer, a creature which immediately kills any source of bad puns. The Sixth Doctor notes that they're still in a lot of trouble. Davros and the Daleks show up and chase the Doctors through the station's corridors.

The Third and Fifth Doctors find themselves outside The Queen Victoria, the pub from EastEnders, just as a crowd of intoxicated Ogrons and Sontarans are barred. The monsters drunkenly pick a fight with the Doctors and the Third Doctor gleefully leaps into the fray with his Venusian aikido while the Fifth Doctor looks on resignedly.

The Fourth and Seventh Doctors find themselves in a rocky, quarry-like environment and continue a conversation about their many food allergies which they'd begun back on the cake. An immense crowd of monsters run toward them, while they bemoan the effects of Time Lord biology and regeneration on their allergies. The monsters get closer, pushing each other out of the way to be first to the targets. Almost as an afterthought, the Doctors simultaneously point their sonic screwdrivers at a pile of rocks and neatly collapse it onto the entire crowd of enemies, burying them as they blithely bewail the frustrating state of Gallifreyan medicine vis-à-vis food allergies.

Back at the Queen Vic, the Third Doctor is still happily kicking around Sontarans and Ogrons while the Fifth Doctor chats with Dot Cotton about the merits of the biblical advice to turn the other cheek. As Dot turns away and begins to covertly extract a ray gun from her purse, the Fifth Doctor knocks her out from behind with a thrown cricket ball. He recognised her as his old enemy Broton the Zygon, as no amount of shape-shifting could mask his incredible body odour. The Third Doctor has the last semi-conscious Sontaran by the collar amidst all his fallen compatriots, and the Fifth Doctor suggests it may be time to move on; the crowd of locals seems weary of their presence.

The Wildean Wit Enforcer attacks.

On the space station, the Second and Sixth Doctors note that, of course, they're running in a circle. They slow deliberately, and the Second Doctor feigns a sprained ankle to allow Davros and the Daleks to catch up. As Davros gloats over the chance to kill the Doctor twice over, the Sixth Doctor goads him into making a bad pun about his imminent victory. The Wildean Wit Enforcer summarily dispatches Davros and the Daleks in a flurry of thrown weaponry. Amidst the smoking wreckage of the Daleks, the Second Doctor stops the Sixth Doctor from reflexively making a bad pun about the situation.

The Beige Guardian watches the battles with increasing horror. He bewails his constant failures and wonders whether he hasn't been trying too hard to get the other Guardians of Time to take him seriously. While he's distracted, the First and Eighth Doctors work together to break free of the cake. They use a giant fork to launch one of the dynamite "candles" at the Guardian just as it explodes, disintegrating him.

All the other Doctors reappear by the cake. The Eighth Doctor begins to explain his deduction that the Beige Guardian had been merely a collection of electronic impulses, easily dissipated by the explosion, but the First Doctor cuts him off and explains the same deduction in a longer-winded manner. The Fourth Doctor questions the nature of the Doctors' own existence; what if they're all just electronic impulses arranged for someone's amusement? The Third Doctor scoffs at the idea, while the Eighth Doctor responds that if such a thing is true, he hopes whoever is at the controls doesn't decide to cheat.

Izzy finishes the game.

Watching the exchange on the Time-Space Visualiser, joystick in hand, bowl of crisps in her lap, Izzy Sinclair grins at winning her video game.

Characters

• Izzy Sinclair

Video game characters

• Eighth Doctor
• Seventh Doctor
• Sixth Doctor
• Fifth Doctor
• Fourth Doctor
• Third Doctor
• Second Doctor
• First Doctor
• The Beige Guardian
• Davros
• Broton
• "Wildean Wit Enforcer"
• Phil Mitchell
• Pauline Fowler
• Borad
• Mara
• The Captain
• Chief Caretaker
• The Destroyer
• Mr Sin
• Kandyman
• Second Morbius
• K1
• Malpha
• Omega
• V3
• God of Ragnarok

Worldbuilding

• The Beige Guardian is a pastiche of the Black Guardian.
• Video game cases scattered about near the Time-Space Visualiser include Happy Deathday, The Five Doctors, Thirteen Doctors, The Three K9s, The Chalk Pit of Slough, Measles of the Daleks, and The Rubber Suits of the Bygones.

Notes

• Happy Deathday celebrates the thirty-fifth anniversary of Doctor Who.
• The Five Doctors, one of the video games shown on the last panel, shares its name with the television story The Five Doctors.

Continuity

• The Sixth Doctor threatens to leave if he is placed on trial again. (TV: The Mysterious Planet) Incidentally, the person to whom is complaining to, the Second Doctor, was also put on trial. (TV: The War Games)
• Pauline Fowler recognises the Doctors from their previous visit to Albert Square. (TV: Dimensions in Time)
• The First Doctor begins reciting his "One day I shall come back" speech before the Eighth Doctor interrupts him. (TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth)

External links

• Happy Deathday at the Doctor Who Reference Guide