Food for Thought (comic story)

Food for Thought
Doctor:	First Doctor
Companion(s):	Polly, Ben
Main enemy:	Mollusi
Main setting:	Apresar IV
Key crew
Publisher:	Marvel Comics UK
Editor:	Gary Russell
Writer:	Nick Briggs
Artist:	Colin Andrew
Release details
Number of parts:	3
Printed in:	DWM 218-220
Release date:	29 September - 24 November 1994
Cover date:	26 October - 21 December 1994
Reprinted in:	Land of the Blind
Format:	Comic
DWM comic stories
← Previous	The Lunar Strangers
Next →	Change of Mind

Food for Thought was a First Doctor comic story featuring Ben and Polly.

As of 2023, it is the only wholly-surviving story told in a visual medium which featured this particular TARDIS team, since Ben and Polly's only complete serial, The War Machines, also included Dodo. In fact, it was the comic debut of this TARDIS team, as Polly and Ben had only appeared in World Distributors annuals prior to this story — and then only with the Second Doctor.

Summary

The Doctor visits a planet under the control of massive slugs.

Plot

The Doctor, Ben and Polly materialize on Apresar IV, where they find giant slugs roaming a deserted city. One such slug consumes the TARDIS, and while hiding from it Ben falls through a panel into the city's control network. There, he is pursued by robot service units who are feeding the cryogenically frozen Apresarians to the slugs' young. A spaceship lands on the planet to investigate the lack of response from the surface; Captain Galloran is returning terraformer Ellis Melthorpe following a survey of the outlying planets. They are attacked by a slug which the nervous, terrified Ellis identifies as a Mollusi, and Ellis flees as the Doctor is consumed by the Mollusi. Polly accompanies Galloran and his crew to planetary control, where they find Ellis and Ben. Ellis accuses Ben and Polly of killing his people, but before Galloran can execute them the Doctor arrives with a vat of larval Mollusi which he found in Ellis' quarters on Galloran's ship. Ellis admits that he was consumed by a Mollusi on his last expedition and gave in to its will in order to survive; upon returning to Apresar IV, he initiated the Apresarian emergency control procedures, placing the entire population of the planet into cryogenic stasis and programming the robot service units to harvest them as food for the Mollusi. The Doctor has used his own willpower to turn the Mollusi which attempted to consume him against its fellows, and he now instigates a security shut-down procedure which deactivates the service units. The Mollusi young break out of the cryogenic chambers and attack them, but Ellis, blaming himself for the deaths, flings himself at a Mollusi which consumes him. The Mollusi then becomes overwhelmed by Ellis' suicidal self-loathing and despair, and turns on the other Mollusi, killing them all.

Characters

• First Doctor
• Ben Jackson
• Polly Wright
• Ellis Melthorpe
• Galloran

Worldbuilding

• Upon seeing Apresar IV's capital city deserted, Ben thinks it must be Sunday.

Notes

• This was the first story to feature Ben and Polly as companions of the First Doctor outside the television series, though, given that there was originally no narrative gaps between The War Machines, The Smugglers or The Tenth Planet, it was unclear how Food For Thought fitted between them until the 2017 audio story The Bonfires of the Vanities explained the discrepancy.
• Galloran describes being parked in orbit as "hanging about like Temperon droppings", a reference to the creature from Nicholas Briggs' Audio Visuals series, that later appeared in Big Finish Productions' first Doctor Who audio, The Sirens of Time.
• In 2018, this story was collected in the graphic novel Land of the Blind.

Continuity

to be added