Final Genesis (comic story)

Final Genesis
Doctor:	Seventh Doctor
Companion(s):	Ace, Benny
Main enemy:	Mortakk
Main setting:	Alternate Earth
Key crew
Publisher:	Marvel Comics
Writer:	Warwick Gray
Artist:	Colin Andrew
Release details
Number of parts:	4
Printed in:	DWM 203 - 206
Release date:	5 August - 28 October 1993
Cover date:	1 September - 24 November 1993
Reprinted in:	Emperor of the Daleks
Format:	Comic
DWM comic stories
← Previous	Emperor of the Daleks!
Next →	Time & Time Again
DWM "New Adventures order"
← Previous	Lucifer Rising
Next →	White Darkness

Final Genesis was a 1993 Doctor Who Magazine comic. A part of the brief run of comics that were closely integrated into the Virgin New Adventures continuity, it starred the Seventh Doctor and Benny, and, for the first time, a post Dalek Wars Ace.

The story itself posited the notion of the Doctor watching over a parallel Earth in which a dead, alternative Third Doctor had brokered a successful peace between humans and Earth Reptiles at the end of The Silurians. This story therefore offered a second parallel Earth within the Virgin New Adventures continuity that had to do with a more dominant Silurian race.

Summary

Then: A bomb explodes, killing the Third Doctor and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.

Now: The TARDIS arrives with a rising tone, rather than the usual "vworp, vworp", the first sign for Ace and Benny that something is not quite right. Unable to get a straight answer out of the Seventh Doctor, they find the world itself isn't quite right. They see dinosaurs and are arrested by strangely familiar soldiers working for URIC rather than UNIT. The Doctor ingratiates himself into the URIC command; the late Doctor's assistant is familiar enough with regeneration and time travel to work out that although this is a Doctor, he is not their Doctor.

The Doctor becomes embroiled in the prevailing mystery. People across the globe — humans, Silurians and Sea Devils — have disappeared and unnatural beasts are attacking URIC. After an attack, one is captured and autopsied. It is a gestalt, a combination of the best genetic features of all three dominant species. After capturing a double-agent in URIC, they discover Mortakk, a rogue Silurian scientist and eugenicist, is behind the creation of the hybrid beasts. He has developed a gas he plans to release across London and then the globe. It will kill two-thirds of the infected and mutate the survivors. However, during a URIC attack on his base, an accident releases the gas, killing Mortakk. The Doctor watches coldly, protected by his Time Lord immune system and respiratory-bypass ability.

Before returning to the TARDIS, the Doctor visits his other self's grave, leaving Ace and Benny to muse about their "accidental" arrival and how for the Doctor, his parallel selves could be the closest thing he has to family.

Characters

• Seventh Doctor
• Ace
• Benny
• Mortakk
• Professor Thactus
• Captain Kathryn Paris
• Colonel Muriel Frost
• Doris
• Chimeras

References

• Doris Lethbridge-Stewart speaks to "Liz" at Cambridge.
• Mortakk is based out an abandoned nuclear research station in Darkmoor. This is taken from Captain Britain, who used to work there.
• URIC is this universe's UNIT equivalent (standing for United Races Intelligence Command).
• This story's Third Doctor, despite having his exile on Earth lifted, chose to stay on Earth and help cement the peace between humans and Earth reptiles.
• Mortakk's mutagen gas affects all Earth sentients - humans, Silurians and Sea Devils - mutating them an amalgamation with traits of all three or killing them outright.

Notes

Part 2 (DWM 204)

Part 3 (DWM 205)

• The TARDIS console room changes appearance in the middle of the story with no explanation.
• The opening page shows the Brigadier's house from TV: Battlefield and refers to his "retirement... being ancient history". With the parallel universe not revealed as such until Part 2, this is an attempt to trick the audience into thinking 'their' Brigadier has been killed off.
• This story features a parallel Earth that was created by an alternate ending to Doctor Who and the Silurians. It should not, however, be confused with the Silurian Earth of Blood Heat. In Silurians, the titular species is destroyed. In Blood Heat, the humans are destroyed. This Earth is the middle ground of peaceful co-existence between homo sapiens and homo reptilia that the Third Doctor failed to achieve at the end of Silurians.
• The strip was almost cancelled when the magazine learned of Blood Heat. Scott Gray successfully argued to his editor that as parallel universes, both stories could happen and contradict each other.
• In the backmatter commentary for a 2017 trade collection, Gray asserted that he "would have preferred to stick with the TV version of Ace" in this strip, partly as the New Adventures Ace "wasn't much fun" and partly because he felt tying into the books didn't make sense when the comic strip had more readers.

Continuity

• The Silurians first appeared in TV: Doctor Who and the Silurians and the Sea Devils in TV: The Sea Devils.
• The Doctor, Ace and Bernice Summerfield travel to another alternate universe where Silurians and Sea Devils are present in PROSE: Blood Heat. In a possible nod to this, Final Genesis states the number of possible futures and divergent timelines from the first Silurians story is near endless.
• Benny says human and Earth Reptile "don't get together for another five centuries" in the original timeline, referring to the New Adventures chronology as established from PROSE: Love and War.
• As in TV: The Robots of Death, the Doctor's enhanced respiratory system means he is unaffected by airborne chemicals (helium in Robots, here a mutagen that affects all Earth sentients - humans, Silurians and Sea Devils).
• Characters recognise Muriel Frost from COMIC: The Mark of Mandragora.