Tesseract (comic story)

Tesseract
Doctor:	Tenth Doctor
Companion(s):	Matthew Finnegan, Emily Winter
Featuring:	Martha
Main enemy:	Acari, Tef'Aree, the Advocate
Main setting:	the Doctor's TARDIS, unnamed Acari vessel, Fifth Dimensional Space
Key crew
Publisher:	IDW Publishing
Writer:	Tony Lee
Artist:	Al Davison
Colourist:	Lovern Kindzierski
Release details
Printed in:	Doctor Who (2009) #7-8
Release date:	January - February 2010
Format:	American comic book - two issues
Doctor Who (2009)
← Previous	Fugitive
Next →	Don't Step on the Grass

Tesseract was the third part of the story arc begun in Doctor Who (2009) #1. It was divided into two chapters: "Time Smash" and "Implosion".

Summary

While the Tenth Doctor gives his new companions, Emily Winter and Matthew Finnegan, a tour of the TARDIS, the vessel is invaded by a number of dimension-hopping aliens. The Advocate places doubt into Matthew Finnegan's mind about the Doctor's morality, while the Tef'Aree have much the same effect upon Emily Winter. Meanwhile, the proximate cause of the invasion — the breech of the TARDIS by the Acari spaceship —forces the TARDIS interior to rearrange itself. Because the Doctor is psychically linked to the TARDIS, this trauma causes the Doctor to undergo temporary mental instability and his past selves begin to bleed through. Only by disengaging from the Acari ship and quickly restoring the proper console room will the Doctor's tenth persona fully reassert itself.

When Emily finds the right console, order is restored. But the Doctor's superphone rings before they can enjoy their victory. Martha Jones calls with an urgent appeal for the Doctor to return to Earth and help UNIT solve a mysterious new problem . . .

Characters

• Tenth Doctor
• Matthew Finnegan
• Emily Winter
• Acari soldiers
• The Advocate
• Gizou posing as Acari soldier
• Tef'Aree
• Martha Jones

References

• The Shadow Proclamation is mentioned.
• The Doctor is shown simultaneously wearing elements of the Sixth and Fifth Doctor's outfits, as well as the Fourth Doctor's scarf (which is used to save his life later), the Seventh Doctor's hat and the Eighth Doctor's cravat.
• Donna Noble is mentioned.
• The Cloister Bell sounds.
• One of the two watches the Doctor offers his companions is a Mickey Mouse watch (Emily takes this one).
• Vislor Turlough is mentioned. He apparently kept a diary in the TARDIS, which Matthew discovers, but whose contents he does not reveal to his fellow TARDIS travellers.
• When the Doctor answers his superphone he initially wonders if Lady Christina might be phoning him. Exactly how she obtained his phone number — or, to be precise, Martha's old phone number — is not explored.
• An oblique reference to the Zero Room is made when the Doctor notes that the sudden rearrangement of the TARDIS interior is causing him "temporal disarray".
• The Tef'Aree predict a number of events in Emily's future, including her standing beside a memorial to a dead friend and an encounter with "the Soul Free". The Doctor believes that the Tef'Aree are only mythical.
• Martha is described as being fresh from her wedding to a man she does not specify. The Doctor got them a wedding gift which reacted badly with champagne and sent her mother to the ceiling. Martha gains yet another UNIT appointment by the time of this story, filling in as UNIT's scientific advisor while Malcolm is in Geneva.
• The Doctor obliquely mentions Blon Fel-Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen's role in giving him the tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator when he mentions "big, farting green aliens". (TV: Boom Town)

Notes

• The story takes place almost entirely within the bowels of the TARDIS. Only a handful of stories have explored the interior of the TARDIS, including TV: The Invasion of Time, TV: Castrovalva, TV: The Doctor's Wife, Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS (TV story), and COMIC: Changes. Invasion of Time is referenced in Part 2 when the Doctor revisits the swimming pool area last seen in that story.
• The notion of the TARDIS existing in a state of "temporal grace" is mentioned, and a sly aside is given to the fact that script editor, Eric Saward, sometimes forgot about the concept, introduced in TV: The Hand of Fear.

Continuity

• The Doctor says the TARDIS is "full of old console rooms", evoking The Masque of Mandragora, where the secondary console room was introduced. It perhaps also implies that all the old console rooms seen throughout the years still exist within the TARDIS. Indeed, at one point the Doctor goes to a part of the TARDIS that strongly resembles the JNT-era interior. At another, he goes into the Cloister Room, as seen in the TV movie. Matthew Finnegan later discovers the First Doctor's console room. The later TV episode TV: The Doctor's Wife would confirm that the old console rooms had been archived. By this point in his life, the Doctor believed the old console rooms "were all deleted or remodelled", possibly during the TARDIS' regeneration in TV: The Eleventh Hour.
• The Doctor's wind-up mouse (TV: The Doctor's Daughter) is used and is mistaken for K9 by the Acari.
• At one point the Doctor spews quotes from various previous adventures. Whilst in the pool from The Invasion of Time, he recalls precise lines from State of Decay, The Ultimate Foe, and An Unearthly Child. At the same time, he is loitering in the TARDIS pool area seen in The Invasion of Time, and remarks that he thought the area had been jettisoned. The scene is strongly reminiscent of the Fifth Doctor's first moments of consciousness in Castrovalva, wherein snatches of his former selves bleed through.
• The tribophysical waveform macrokinetic extrapolator is used to disengage the TARDIS from the Acari ship, and the events of TV: Boom Town are referenced.
• The events of COMIC: Silver Scream are referenced.
• The Doctor refuses to allow Emily to take possession of Jack Harkness' sonic blaster as he says it is reserved for "someone else". (TV: Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead)
• Adric is mentioned several times, including a reference to his death, which is recalled in detail. (TV: Earthshock)
• Malcolm Taylor and Captain Magambo are namechecked by Martha Jones. However, Don't Step on the Grass makes it clear that she's no longer a UNIT employee, but "strictly freelance", foreshadowing her statements in The End of Time.
• Emily arms herself with the Fifth Doctor's cricket bat in the cricket club seen in TV: Castrovalva.
• Lady Christina de Souza is briefly mentioned, as the Doctor wonders if it is she who is calling him. (TV: Planet of the Dead)

Cover Gallery

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  Doctor Who Ongoing
  Issue 7 (Cover A)

• 

  Doctor Who Ongoing
  Issue 7 (Cover B)

• 

  Doctor Who Ongoing
  Issue 8 (Cover A)

• 

  Doctor Who Ongoing
  Issue 8 (Cover B)

Reprint

Reprinted in the IDW graphic novel Tesseract.