The Monster Makers (comic story)

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The Monster Makers

Talk

The Monster Makers
Doctor:	Fifteenth Doctor
Companion(s):	Ruby
Key crew
Publisher:	Panini Magazines
Editor:	Marcus Hearn
Writer:	Alan Barnes
Artist:	Mike Collins, James Offredi
Letterer:	Roger Langridge
Release details
Genre:	Science fiction
Release number:	210
Printed in:	DWM 608 -
Release date:	12 September 2024
Cover date:	October 2024
Format:	Comic
DWM comic stories
← Previous	The Hans of Fear

The Monster Makers was the two hundred and tenth comic strip published in Doctor Who Magazine by Panini Magazines and was written by Alan Barnes. It starred the Fifteenth Doctor and Ruby Sunday.

Plot

Part One: The Monster Makers

Inside the Doctor's TARDIS following their encounter with Hans Christian Andersen, Ruby Sunday asks the Fifteenth Doctor if he is sure they will land in Reykjavik for their party this time - he ensures that they will. However, they instead land in a strange city square with two moons in the sky, face to face with a smiling crowd all shouting "We surrender!" with their hands in the air. Sharing a baffled look, the Doctor and Ruby dematerialise, but almost instantly wonder what was going on. The Doctor wishes to discover why the people were surrendering and who to, so he hits the fast return switch to go back. He quickly gets his answers when, upon returning, the square has turned into the scene of an invasion: hulking green-armoured monsters with laser guns and heads consisting of giant red eyes are attacking the terrified locals.

Ruby, pointing to a city hall clock with sixteen hours on its face, notes that almost no time has passed since they were last there, so the Doctor faces up to a monster and demands answers. However, it cannot respond, and he and Ruby are forced to escape a group of them by running in opposite directions. On West Street, the Doctor runs into a bakery where he meets a local woman named Felice, while on East Street, Ruby runs into a fashion house and meets a man named Ferdy. Both of them agree that they have to do more than just run away. The Doctor plans to distract a monster while Felice hits it in the eye with a cake so he can use his sonic screwdriver on their weapon; Felice asks if he can change their stun guns to kill instead. Deeply concerned, the Doctor wonders why she would want that.

The Doctor and Felice continue with their plan, as do Ruby and Ferdy with covering up a monster's eye with a coat, but they are all caught off-guard when the monsters' eyes rotate 360 degrees, bewildering the Doctor. However, all stop dead when a loudspeaker tells the "invaders and invadees" that the invasion is over. The shadow of a huge spaceship fills the sky and several smartly-dressed assessors with clipboards and propellers descend to the ground. One woman speaks to Ruby, asking her to rate the invasion on a scale of one to five, and as the monster holds Ruby in place, the woman orders her to respond or else she is returned to head office for "reconstitution".

Part Two: Inside the Factory!

A TV advertisement plays in which a cheesy presenter describes CoHurtCo™, a company that can create an army of completely bespoke soldiers for planetary invaders across the Five Galaxies. He says they can make whatever their clients need, showing a testimonial from the elephant-like Grand Trunk Ultima Nel-I IV of Pachydermus Prime and his army of Scytheghouls as proof. Additionally, he explains that the soldiers are guaranteed to comply with all orders with a tactical error refund guarantee, saying that that is why they are called "the Monster Makers".

On one of several linked-together saucers in orbit that make up CoHurtCo™, a businesswoman named Ranceen shows the advert to an extravagantly dressed man obsessed with the letter X named Xirxis. He wishes to see the company's process in action, so Ranceen shows him the fallout of their trial invasion, where they witness Ruby telling the assessor that she is highly dissatisfied with the invasion. She is released from the monster's grip, and Ferdy tells the assessor how Ruby and her friend have great experience with monsters. Xirxis' interest is piqued, and Ranceen tells the assessors to collate the information on the two strangers from the monsters, which she names i-Balls. Ruby and Ferdy's assessor tells them they are wanted at Head Office, which Ferdy is convinced can only be a good thing.

The Doctor watches Ruby, Ferdy, the assessor, and all but one of the i-Balls heading into the saucer, but he cannot reach her because the i-Ball is threatening him and Felice. Knowing how much their stun guns hurt, Felice demands to know what the Doctor will do to help. He realises that the i-Balls' brains cannot be in their heads, and is immediately proven right when Felice's twin Felipe appears and knocks its head off with a hockey stick. She tells her sister to escape before Head Office finds them interacting with an outsider, but Felice picks up the i-Ball's gun and forces the Doctor back into the bakery, telling him to explain how the monsters work. He reasons that their brains must be in their torsos and that they control their eyes with telepathy, then tries to convince her to put down the gun and explain what is going on so he can find Ruby.

At CoHurtCo™ Head Office, Ferdy explains that he is tired of being a focus groupie who is chased by monsters every day and wants to be promoted to assessor. The assessor tells Ferdy to follow the i-Balls into a green-lit room so he can talk to their CEO, Ranceen, and Ruby demands to see her too. She arrives and shows Ruby the green room, noting how only 21% of respondents were satisfied with the invasion and 36% described the monsters as "silly". As such, she activates peeling jets, immediately dissolving the army of i-Balls and Ferdy so they can be reused as different monsters. Despite Ruby's shock, Ranceen turns to her and offers her a job.

Part Three: The Apprentice!

Ruby finds herself sitting in a chair in a sparse room in the CoHurtCo™ fleet with a device pointing at her head. Holding a tablet, Ranceen tells her to sign her contract of employment. Although Ruby protests that she has not read the terms and conditions, Ranceen tells her to hurry up and sign before her monsters are sent to kill the Doctor for trespassing into the focus group and causing them to rebel - the same reason that Ferdy was killed. After being forced to sign, Ruby is told that she has given away the rights to everything in her head for the rest of her life, and Ranceen's mind probe displays images of the many monsters Ruby has encountered on the walls of the room.

In the city, the Doctor has also caught up on the truth about the false invasions from Felice and Felipe. They explain that nobody knows how long it has been going on as a sleep saucer knocks everybody out at 28:00 every night and repairs all the damage for the next morning. Thinking it unnatural, the Doctor realises they are on an artificial satellite connected to CoHurtCo™ and uses the sonic to speed up local time. Felipe tries to stop him, but he explains that he is trying to help.

As Ruby's mind is probed, Xirxis arrives and gathers from Ranceen that she is trying to create a chimera monster taken from the strongest attributes of Ruby's memories. He is particularly surprised that there is no AI involved. Ranceen's assistant enters and tells her about the Doctor meddling with the sleep saucer, and Xirxis suddenly declares that he recognises the TARDIS.

The Doctor gathers the focus group in the town square and tells them that when the sleep saucer arrives in five minutes, he will emit a sound barrier from the TARDIS that prevents them from being knocked out, allowing them to take over the saucer by force and him to rescue Ruby. Felice asks him what they should do afterwards, but he says it is up to them. The saucer arrives, and Ranceen, watching on, shows Ruby how she will deal with the dissenters: jets are launched from the saucer across the city. Instead of melting everyone like with Ferdy and the iBalls, however, these jets contain nanoagents to remake the townspeople's biology in the pattern of the creatures that Ruby has encountered. Felice hammers on the TARDIS's door to tell the Doctor that their plan has gone wrong, but as he exits, she has already transformed into a powerful six-armed beast and attacks him on sight.

Part Four: Ghoul Reunion!

to be added

Characters

• Fifteenth Doctor
• Ruby Sunday
• Felice
• Felipe
• Ferdy
• Assessor
• Presenter
• Nel-I IV
• Ranceen
• Ranceen's assistant
• Xirxis

Worldbuilding

• The city includes a main square, city hall, and petrol station.
  • West Street features a library, bakery, shoe shop, barbers, soda shop, and newsstand.
  • East Street features a fashion house, fishmongers, cheese shop, and bookshop.
• The Doctor nicknames one of the i-Balls "Eye Claudius", in reference to the novel I, Claudius.
• i-Balls have no mouths, ears, or noses. Despite being completely organic, their eye-heads can fully rotate, which the Doctor initially attributes to them potentially being on gimbals before realising they use telepathy.
• Pachydermus Prime is part of the Tuskus constellation. It is ruled by a Grand Trunk Ultima.
• Nel-I IV claims that his species was held back from domination by low birth rates and gestation periods lasting centuries.
• Titles that Xirxis proclaims for himself include "the X-acting", "the X-punger", "the X-communicator", and "the Great X-cisor". He is also referred to as "His Excellency" by others.
• The Doctor states that he has been hit by stun weapons "once or twice".
• Felice claims that being stunned in real life badly hurts, unlike what is shown in vid-shows.
• Ranceen claims to have a sustainability certificate for her peeling jets.
• The terms and conditions of working with CoHurtCo™ are 7007 pages long.

Notes

• In part three, the dotted line that Ruby signs on incorrectly overlaps with the stylus she uses to sign.

Original print details

(Publication with page count and closing captions)

• DWM 608: (6 pages): Next Issue: Inside the Factory!
• DWM 609: (6 pages): Next Issue: The Apprentice!

Continuity

• This story follows immediately from the previous one, COMIC: The Hans of Fear ^[+]Loading...["The Hans of Fear (comic story)"], with the Doctor and Ruby again attempting to reach the Scandi Superclub. Ruby wonders if the TARDIS hitting the sloop in Copenhagen caused its settings to lose accuracy.
• The Doctor utilises the fast return switch in his TARDIS, first seen in TV: The Edge of Destruction ^[+]Loading...["The Edge of Destruction (TV story)"].
• Mavity is once again mentioned, continuing the trend started in TV: Wild Blue Yonder ^[+]Loading...["Wild Blue Yonder (TV story)"], this time by the CoHurtCo™ presenter.
• When Ruby is mind probed, various monsters she has encountered on her travels can be seen, including the Goblin King and his minions from TV: The Church on Ruby Road ^[+]Loading...["The Church on Ruby Road (TV story)"], the Bogeyman from TV: Space Babies ^[+]Loading...["Space Babies (TV story)"], a Man-trap from TV: Dot and Bubble ^[+]Loading...["Dot and Bubble (TV story)"], the Chuldur leader from TV: Rogue ^[+]Loading...["Rogue (TV story)"], moth people from COMIC: Mancopolis ^[+]Loading...["Mancopolis (comic story)"], and Snedronningen from COMIC: The Hans of Fear ^[+]Loading...["The Hans of Fear (comic story)"], among others.
• The Doctor again shows the ability to feel the turn of a planet's rotation, as in TV: Rose ^[+]Loading...["Rose (TV story)"].