Games (short story)

Games
Main character(s):	The Mandarin
Featuring:	The Entity
Main setting:	Shadow Dimensions
Key crew
Publisher:	Marvel Comics UK
Writer:	Warwick Gray
Illustrator:	Warwick Gray
Release details
Genre:	Science fiction
Printed in:	DWM 192
Release date:	1 October 1992
Cover date:	28 October 1992
Format:	Short story
Brief Encounters
← Previous	Reunion
Next →	Toy

Games was thirty-fourth Brief Encounters short story published in DWM 192 on 1 October 1992 by Marvel Comics UK and written by Warwick Gray. The story featured the Mandarin, aka the Toymaker, playing four dimensional chess with the Entity, aka Fenric.

Summary

The Mandarin and the Entity play four dimensional chess, and, as the Mandarin realises he is about to lose, strategically plays into a stalemate to prevent the Entity from taking over his body.

Plot

Having wanted to challenge the Entity to a game for a while, the Mandarin arrives in his dimension and, after agreeing to the stakes, the Entity chooses their contest: four dimensional chess. Shifting into a shadowy version of the Mandarin's appearance, the duo begin their match, playing at lightning-fast speed. The game goes on over a span of unknowable time, the advantage "see-saw[ing]" between them, and the endgame begins to near — the Mandarin is losing. Understanding there is no way to win, a foreign concept crosses his mind: a stalemate is the only way to not lose, and so he groups his pieces, preventing the Entity from penetrating the Mandarin's defences without leaving himself exposed.

The Entity demands a rematch, but the Mandarin refuses, believing it to be pointless as they are too equally matched. The Mandarin thanks the Entity for teaching him such a "valuable lesson", that winning isn't always everything.

Characters

• The Mandarin
• The Entity

Worldbuilding

The Mandarin

• Some concepts the Mandarin doesn't understand or know of; these include evil and what a stalemate is.
• The Entity refers to the Mandarin as a "Magician".
• The Entity states that while the Mandarin is "beyond death", he is not beyond his reach.

The Entity

• The Mandarin believes the Entity to be a "curious creature".
• The Entity is a shapeless, formless black cloud, personifying pure evil. The cloud "throb[s] with a terrible passion".
• While in the Arabian plains, the Entity went by the name "Aboo-Fenran".
• The Mandarin's thanks remains with the Entity even after the Mandarin left the dimension.

The Entity's domain

• The grey void where the Entity resides is described as a non-world — "an unimaginative little world — a dimension of shadows and half-lives" — by the Mandarin. While the Entity asserts that it is his domain, the Mandarin contrarily claims that it is his prison.
• The Mandarin tells the Entity that he is in his non-world for a better reason than to admire the decor.

The Mandarin-the Entity chess match

• The duo agree on the stakes; if the Mandarin is the victor, the Entity will become his toy, but if the Entity is instead the victor, the Mandarin's body will become the Entity's so he may be free.
• The Entity describes four dimensional chess as "elegantly simple".
• Growing from a small light, the board appears as a large translucent sphere with wooden chess pieces on it. As the game goes on, the sphere begins spinning and its pattern changes several times; this changes the "structure of the conflict" along with it. As the sphere increases speed, the amount of pieces on the board also increases.
  • Four dimensional chess contains non-linear moves, with moves occurring in the future affecting moves in the present.
• The game's duration was "impossible to judge", as it could've gone on for a nanosecond, a day, or a year.
• The game had been a "magnificent gambit", as at one point three of the Entity's Kings fell during the middle of the game, but the Mandarin's forces eventually weakened.

Notes

The title of the story.

• The accompanying illustration by Warwick Gray might be intended to be Fenric, but it doesn't match the description of the Mandarin's face "duplicated in obsidian darkness".
• All of the Toymaker's speech is in standard quotes, while Fenric's speech is in italics.
• No accent mark was used for Aboo-Fenrán.

Continuity

• This story is a sequel to the novelisation The Curse of Fenric ^[+]Loading...["The Curse of Fenric (novelisation)"], as it shows Fenric within the Shadow Dimensions having been trapped their by the Seventh Doctor.
• This story describes the Shadow Dimensions as a non-world, a piece of terminology later adopted by the Faction Paradox novels The Book of the War ^[+]Loading...["The Book of the War (novel)"] and Of the City of the Saved... ^[+]Loading...["Of the City of the Saved... (novel)"], which describes the concept as an area of reality linked to the Spiral Politic but without a physical location.
• The Mandarin states that he was previously known as a Toymaker; the Mandarin was known as the Toymaker since his debut in The Celestial Toymaker ^[+]Loading...["The Celestial Toymaker (TV story)"], with The Nightmare Fair ^[+]Loading...["The Nightmare Fair (novelisation)"] establishing his change of name, however other sources since have reverted back to "the Toymaker".
• The The Iytean Menace ^[+]Loading...["The Iytean Menace (game)"] expansion of The Doctor Who Role Playing Game established that four-dimensional chess was a Time Lord variation of Earth's equivalent, although its mechanics seem to differ slightly from those seen in this short story.
  • The comic War-Game ^[+]Loading...["War-Game (comic story)"] previously depicted the Sixth Doctor and Frobisher playing four-dimensional chess.

External links

• Games at the Doctor Who Reference Guide