The Fountains of Forever (comic story)

The Fountains of Forever
Doctor:	Tenth Doctor
Companion(s):	Gabby
Featuring:	Cindy, Ninth Doctor, Dorothy Bell, Vivian, Trinity
Main enemy:	Cleopatra Hunsicker, Erik Ulfriksson
Main setting:	New York City, November, 21st century
Key crew
Publisher:	Titan Comics
Editor:	Andrew James
Writer:	Nick Abadzis
Designer:	Rob Farmer
Artist:	Elena Casagrande, Eleonora Carlini
Colourist:	Arianna Florean
Letterer:	Richard Starkings, Jimmy Betancourt
Release details
Printed in:	10D 11-12
Release date:	10 June - 24 June 2015
Cover date:	June - July 2015
Reprinted in:	TFTT 2
Format:	Comic - 2 parts
Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor
← Previous	Echo
Next →	Spiral Staircase

The Fountains of Forever was the first part of the fifth story of the Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor comic story series, published in 2015.

Summary

Cindy and Gabby have a falling out after Gabby's homecoming — as an ancient artefact from the centre of the universe, a rogue Black Ops organisation, and a secret auction conspire to cause galaxy-shattering chaos!

Plot

Part one

Cindy Wu has assumed that Gabby Gonzalez is avoiding her, unaware of her travels with the Doctor, and is sending angry text messages to her. Gabby and the Doctor are prepared to go to 'somewhere noisy' when he receives a cloaked signal on his sonic screwdriver. Using Gabby's mobile phone, he pinpoints it to The Ebonite Auction Rooms, and decides to investigate, but not before upgrading her phone with universal roaming and suggesting she find Cindy.

Gabby accidentally bumps into Cindy in the streets, who angrily accuses her of having a new best friend and not answering her texts. Gabby says it's a long story, but Cindy tells her to explain.

Meanwhile, the Doctor traces the signal to the Rockefeller Center and uses his psychic paper to enter the auction rooms, unaware that he is being trailed by a mysterious woman. The Doctor finds that the rooms are auctioning off alien technology, which he brushes off as junk until he notices Lot Twenty-Eight. Unfortunately, the item has already been bought in a private bid. The Doctor leaves and sends a message to UNIT HQ, NY to retrieve the alien technology, but is attacked immediately after by the woman.

The woman grabs his sonic screwdriver and holds the Doctor at gunpoint. She has assumed the Doctor has bought the item in Lot Twenty-Eight and demands it, while also calling him a villain due to being British. The Doctor gets the screwdriver to zap the woman and tackles her, explaining he wants to find the item too. The woman suggests they help one another.

Gabby and Cindy are walking in the park, with Gabby having told her about the Doctor and their adventures, but Cindy assumes it's just Gabby being imaginative. They walk off, but Gabby is getting worried at not having received a text from the Doctor.

The Doctor and the woman, Cleo, trace the item, but they drive off before the Doctor and Cleo can catch them, while UNIT arrives to take the alien tech. Cleo's energy tracker is unable to pinpoint their car, but the Doctor's sonic screwdriver tracks it to the upper east side, to the apartment of famous movie star Dorothy Bell and her assistant Vivian.

The Doctor prepares to enter, but is knocked on the back of the head by Cleo, who intends to take the item by force, but the Doctor has already disabled her gun, leading to Vivian subduing her and Dorothy holding both the Doctor and Cleo at gunpoint. Cleo mentions that she's a fan before grabbing her Oscar and knocking Vivian away with it, allowing her to grab Lot 28, which Dorothy wanted to use to become younger. Cleo then turns Vivian into a baby, before shooting the Doctor with it, which retro-regenerates him into his previous incarnation.

Part two

to be added

Characters

• Tenth Doctor
• Gabby Gonzalez
• Cindy Wu
• Cleo
• Dorothy Bell
• Vivian
• Seeker
• Erik Ulfriksson
• Hanif
• Ninth Doctor
• Auctioneer

Worldbuilding

• The Tenth Doctor says that it is very quiet in the city of Ramoothra.
• The cloaked signal the Doctor receives is from Manhattan.
• The Ebonite Rooms are in the Rockefeller Center.
• The Doctor mentions CBGB and Joey Ramone.
• UNIT responds in force to the Doctor's message to UNIT HQ, NY sent using his sonic screwdriver.
• Gabby already explained earlier to Blanca that she is not in love with the Doctor.
• Erik paid for classified information from UNIT's Black Archive, Department C4, Torchwood and the Strondheim Project.
• Cindy and Gabbi ate burritos.
• Cindy mentions Gabbi's Poppa.
• Cleo thinks Dumbledore is a villain.
• Cindy mistakes Cerebravores with the X-Men's mutant detection computer.
• The Doctor introduces himself to Cleo as John Smith.
• Dorothy Bell lives on the Upper East Side. Her apartment number is 4G.
• When Gabby and Cindy search for the Doctor, they get off at the 96 Street station of the subway 1 and 2 trains.

Notes

• Joey Ramone was the leader of the punk rock band the Ramones, which often gave performances at the club CBGB. This club was situated in East Village, far away from the Rockefeller Centre, which the Doctor was trying to get into.
• The fact the Tenth Doctor reverts back to the Ninth Doctor when his age is regressed implies that the Tenth Doctor has not existed as an incarnation for more than a few years as the quantum harvester was set to revert the targets back by a few decades.

Original print details

to be added

Continuity

• The Doctor upgrades Gabby's phone to a superphone. (TV: The End of the World, 42, The Doctor's Daughter, Planet of the Dead)
• When the Doctor shows his psychic paper to the security guard at the entrance to the Ebonite Rooms, the security guard thinks he is Mr Ebonite. (COMIC: Cindy, Cleo and the Magic Sketchbook, Arena of Fear)
• The Tenth Doctor continues to object to guns. (TV: The Poison Sky, The Doctor's Daughter) He objects hypocritically since he used guns in his third, (TV: Day of the Daleks) fourth, (TV: The Talons of Weng-Chiang) fifth, (TV: Earthshock) sixth, (TV: Attack of the Cybermen) eighth, (COMIC: The Forgotten) ) and war incarnations. (TV: The Day of the Doctor) His seventh incarnation also allowed Ace to use an anti-tank rocket which she used on an Imperial Dalek, (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) and the ninth tried to use an energy cannon on the Metaltron Dalek out of revenge but is shown the monster he is becoming by Rose Tyler. (TV: Dalek; PROSE: Dalek)
• Cindy asks Gabby to tell her again about living statues (COMIC: The Weeping Angels of Mons) and walking sculptures. (COMIC: The Arts in Space) Cindy also reminds her how she walked off with the Doctor after the Day of the Dead feast. Cindy does not remember anything about Cerebravores, for which Gabby thanks Pranavores. (COMIC: Revolutions of Terror) Cindy recalls that the city went crazy with noise. (COMIC: Echo)
• Cleo has a Jeridian energy tracer. (COMIC: Medicine Man, Arena of Fear)
• The age-regression gun reverses the Doctor's local time field and temporarily "retro-regenerates" him back into his previous incarnation. The Fourth Doctor suffered a similar effect after encountering a Space amoeba. (COMIC: Timeslip) The Sixth Doctor also suffered a regression to all his previous regenerations. (PROSE: State of Change)
• When the Doctor returns to the form of his tenth incarnation, he is unsure whether he has been forced back by one or two regenerations. (TV: The Stolen Earth) His eleventh incarnation determined that he did indeed lose a regeneration during the Dalek invasion of 2009. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
• The Doctor tells Vivian that "everything has its time." (TV: The End of the World) However, she argues that when his time comes, he won't want to go. (TV: The End of Time)
• One of the items being sold at the auction is the "hairdryer" from Henry Van Statten's the Vault in Utah. (TV: Dalek)