Perceptions (comic story)

Perceptions
Doctor:	Eighth Doctor
Companion(s):	Stacy, Ssard
Main setting:	London
Key crew
Publisher:	Radio Times
Writer:	Gary Russell
Artist:	Lee Sullivan
Colourist:	Alan Craddock
Letterer:	Elitta Fell
Release details
Number of parts:	10
Printed in:	Radio Times
Release date:	4 January - 8 March 1997
Format:	Comic
Radio Times comic stories
← Previous	Ascendance
Next →	Coda

Perceptions was a Radio Times comic story featuring the Eighth Doctor, Stacy Townsend and Ssard.

Summary

The Doctor and his friends, Ssard and Stacy Townsend, arrive in Victorian London, where they discover a spaceship which is invisible to the people of the time. They meet the ship's occupant, P'fer'd, an Equinoid. He resembles a gaudily-coloured horse. P'fer'd tells the Doctor his wife M'rek'd is missing. Stacy and some street urchins rescue M'rek'd from a freak show. However the owner of the freak show is not himself human, but a shape-shifting alien; Stacy and the urchins are attacked. P'fer'd is re-united with M'rek'd and the Doctor and Ssard with Stacy... apparently.

Characters

• Eighth Doctor
• Stacy Townsend
• Ssard
• P'fer'd
• M'rek'd

References

• Ssard joined the TARDIS so he could "see the universe."
• P'fer'd disguises his ship and himself with a Mark III Image Inducer, which takes up too much power.
• The Doctor says without the arrogance of the British Empire, humanity would have never progressed and ventured out into the stars, and Stacy would never have been born.
• Stacy complains about Victorian London's smells, fleas, cold, and germs.
• P'fer'd's ship got lost and ran out of fuel because his wife had the stellar map upside-down.
• M'rek'd is captured and put in a freak show in Kennington Park.
• Equinoids have knowledge of Galactic Law.
• The Doctor calls P'fer'd's tactic of employing street urchins "very Holmesian.”
• P'fer'd's ship is disguised as "Binns, Beech & Evans Solicitors." P'fer'd is Mister Binns.
• Stacy says the urchins smell bad, talk badly, and have walked straight out of Oliver Twist.
• The Doctor offered Stacy to see the universe, "one trip round the outer rims."
• The shapeshifter electrocutes and kills a young boy.
• The Doctor gives P'fer'd space energy cells.
• A woman mentions Carfax and Bedlam.

Notes

• The Equinoids match the description that the Doctor gave in the television story Frontier in Space of a race attending the third intergalactic peace conference.
• This story was intended to be continued in Deceptions, where the shapeshifters would be revealed as Zygons. Instead, the final story was Coda.

Continuity

• The Doctor mentions the body bepple fad of the late 29th century. (PROSE: Original Sin)
• Ssard calls a policeman a "blue guard." (TV: The Talons of Weng-Chiang)

External links

• Perceptions at the Doctor Who Reference Guide