The Path of Skulls (comic story)

The Path of Skulls
Doctor:	First Doctor
Companion(s):	Susan, Ian, Barbara
Main setting:	Path of Skulls
Key crew
Publisher:	Titan Publishing Group
Editor:	Jessica Burton
Writer:	Richard Dinnick
Artist:	Mariano Laclaustra
Colourist:	Carlos Cabrera
Letterer:	Comicraft's Sarah Jacobs and John Roshell
Release details
Printed in:	The Many Lives of Doctor Who
Release date:	26 September 2018
Format:	Comic - 1 part
The Many Lives of Doctor Who
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The Path of Skulls was the first story of The Many Lives of Doctor Who, published in 2018.

Summary

After a bout of exploring the bowels of the TARDIS, Ian Chesterton arrives back in the TARDIS control room, gushing over the ship's interior dimensions before the ship materializes on a new planet.

Arriving, Susan runs off as always, heading down a path. Digging into the ground, Ian pulls free a Pathicol skull, a race that, like many in the galaxy, the First Doctor knew nothing about, even if he often acted otherwise.

Though Barbara theorizes that the path is a sacrificial site, the Doctor is quick to deduce that the path honours the dead, with its position facing the sunrise marking rebirth and renewal.

And as a Time Lord, of all beings, should know, life depends on change and renewal.

Characters

• First Doctor
• Susan Foreman
• Ian Chesterton
• Barbara Wright

References

• The Doctor lands the TARDIS on an unnamed planet with a pink sky.
• The skull path was laid to honour the dead.
• Barbara initially believes the altar to be a sacrificial site.

Continuity

• The skulls are from Pathicols. (COMIC: The Great Shopping Bill)
• The Twelfth Doctor recalls how his first incarnation was always "trying to be old and grumpy and important", and justifies the attitude due to his youth. (TV: Time Crash)
• He also recalls how Ian had thought the TARDIS interior to be an illusion. (TV: An Unearthly Child)