Hunters of the Burning Stone (comic story)

Hunters of the Burning Stone
Doctor:	Eleventh Doctor
Featuring:	Ian, Barbara
Main enemy:	Hunters of the Burning Stone, Miss Ghost, Captain Gol Clutha
Main setting:	Earth's orbit, 1965; Cornucopia, 2013
Key crew
Editor:	Tom Spilsbury & Peter Ware
Writer:	Scott Gray
Penciller:	Martin Geraghty
Inker:	David A Roach
Colourist:	James Offredi
Letterer:	Roger Langridge
Release details
Printed in:	DWM 456 to 461
Release date:	10 January 2013
Format:	Comic, 6 parts
DWM comic stories
← Previous	Imaginary Enemies

Hunters of the Burning Stone was a Doctor Who Magazine comic story released in 2013, starting in issue 456. It was DWM's 50th Anniversary special, celebrating 50 years of Doctor Who. Although it has not been released in full yet, Scott Gray confirmed in the starting issue that it will be a six-part story. It featured the return of Miss Ghost and the city of Cornucopia, introduced in a previous DWM strip, The Cornucopia Caper. It is most notable for the shocking re-appearance of Ian Chesterson and Barbara Wright.

Summary

Part 1: Hunters of the Burning Stone

Earth, 1965. On a former Sontaran timeship orbiting the planet, Captain Gold Cluthah has just obtained an important package that she and her crew will be paid heavily for.

Returning to her quarters, she finds the Doctor waiting for her there. He tells her that he noticed her ship and came aboard. Examining the ship's memory logs, he sees that the ship was taken from the Sontarans after massacring its original crew with halisiton gas, an incident of which Clutha frequently watches the video footage.

Clutha picks up a sculpture from her desk, revealing it to actually be a Traulian mind-spike. She points it at the Doctor and threatens to kill him. The Doctor tells her he has already reconfigured it to kill the user instead of the target, but, unfortunately for her, she doesn't believe him. She fires the weapon and drops dead to the floor.

Cornucopia, 2013. In the aftermath of the Doctor's previous encounter with the place, the planet has become a working spaceport with Miss Ghost in charge. The takeoff of a ship has been delayed, and its captain, Pala, demands to speak to Miss Ghost.

Ghost and Pala talk, and Ghost lures Pala to a private area on the premise of negotiating the sale of medical supplies. Pala moves to attack Ghost but Ghost knocks him out instead.

Ghost, revealing her real name to be Cheshire, contacts an unseen controller, saying, "Pala didn't play along. I'll have to do this the hard way." She also says she's going to start searching for a certain item in the starboard cargo holds, on which a scan with what appears to be the Doctor's sonic screwdriver has revealed the security to be most focused.

Revealing her true form to be an android and entering "wraith mode," Cheshire gets to her destination and discovers, as she had expected, several large containers of psi-responsive metal, the same material used to build the Ziggurat of Cornucopia.

Pala wakes up and is discovered by a crew member. He issues the order to take off as soon as possible.

Cheshire attempt to leave, but her power is draining and she can no longer sustain Wraith Mode. The crew of the ship discover her and she only narrowly escapes.

Back on Gol Clutha's ship, her death is discovered by one of her crew. Elsewhere on the ship, the Doctor enters a locked area using Clutha's key card, incapacitating the guards with exo-genetic foam. Inside, he discovers a large object similar to the Pandorica, but glowing orange and with sun symbols on its sides.

On Pala's ship, six objects are seen approaching on the radar. The ship is violently rocked as the mysterious objects land on the ship's hull - while the ship is in trans-light mode, which would normally result in the objects being torn to pieces. The objects - now shown to be six glowing skeleton creatures wearing armor adorned with the same sun symbols as the cube - tell the crew they seek the Burning Stone, which the ship's crew has stolen, and proceed to kill the crew in their search.

The Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver on the glowing cube, made of the same psychic metal Cheshire saw earlier, and walks through its walls, hoping that whoever is behind the chaos he has been witnessing is inside. It teleports him to a different location, and the Doctor looks on in surprise and horror...

...as Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright welcome him to Coal Hill School.

Part 2: Doctor Who?

to be added

Part 3

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Part 4

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Part 5

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Part 6

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Characters

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References

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Notes

• This is the first comic story to feature the TARDIS' new interior, from TV: The Snowmen.
• This is the first DWM strip that features the Eleventh Doctor travelling solo.
• This strip, in many ways, acts as something as a prequel to The Snowmen, which was released first but takes place later. It features the Doctor's darker personality, his new tweed jacket, the new look for the TARDIS, as well as sees the Doctor reunited with companions and adversaries from his past.

Continuity

• Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright believe that they are at Coal Hill School. (TV: An Unearthly Child)
• A year has passed on Cornucopia since the Bank of Heaven robbery. (COMIC: The Cornucopia Caper)
• When Gol Clutha states that he is "a dead man", the Doctor says "and I want to keep it that way", referring to the fact that the whole universe thinks that he is dead. (TV: The Wedding of River Song - The Angels Take Manhattan)
• The Doctor mentions his recent visits to Athens (COMIC: The Chains of Olympus London (COMIC: Sticks and Stones) and Prague (COMIC: The Broken Man)
• When he remembers his adventures with the Doctor, Ian mentions Daleks, Thals and Skaro (TV: The Daleks)
• The Doctor recalls Ian and Barbara stumbling into the TARDIS. (TV: An Unearthly Child)

External links

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