The Hans of Fear (comic story)
The Hans of Fear was the two hundred and ninth 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 Hans of Fear
In 19th-century Copenhagen, a young boy named Erik spots what appear to be floating snowflakes in midair that he nicknames "frost bees" while walking with his mother, but she tells him off for seeing things as it is a midsummer's day. However, a passerby notices a whirlwind approaching from the north that freezes everything it touches, including the sea itself. A nearby sailor spots something else in the blizzard too - a blue box.
On cue, the Doctor's TARDIS skids across the ice and smashes into the side of the sailor's boat. The Fifteenth Doctor and Ruby Sunday exit, ready for a wild night of partying with Scandinavia's biggest stars, but are forced to change their plans when they notice the time period. Realising that the townsfolk are whispering "Snedronningen" at them, the Doctor and Ruby climb off the ice and onto the land to find a man and his bodyguards pushing through the crowd to see them. The Doctor is delighted to see him too, as he is the famous fairy-tale writer Hans Christian Andersen. However, he has no time to get acquainted as Hans' bodyguards Thomas and Kwame restrain him and Ruby, allowing Hans to check if Ruby is Snedronningen or not. He looks into her eyes and confirms that she is nothing to be afraid of. Hans apologises and explains that Snedronningen is a magical being capable of summoning an ice storm in June, as the Doctor examines the frost bees, nicknaming their material as "Shimmerglisten", and states that the polar cyclone came through the same fissure in the Time Vortex that the TARDIS was pulled through.
As the cyclone approaches land, however, the Doctor notices a figure at the eye of the storm: Snedronningen herself, a floating, pale blue-costumed ice queen, holding a sceptre and a book. She proclaims to have come for Hans, and when Thomas and Kwame protect him, she easily freezes them to death with her frost bees and shatters their bodies. As the Doctor leaps into action, Erik explains that Snedronningen is taken directly from Hans' fairy tales, which she describes as "a betrayal". As compensation, she has come to kill his child, wrongly believing it to be Erik. Ruby jumps in front to protect him, but Snedronningen attacks her with her beam of ice anyway, as the Doctor cries out to her.
Part Two: A Grim Fairy Tale
Snedronningen proclaims that Ruby is now her "Iceling" and demands that Hans follow her bidding. The Doctor interrupts and rationalises that the crystal on the end of her sceptre is cloaking her in the cold needed for her to survive, and therefore threatens to shatter its matrix with his sonic screwdriver to melt her. Snedronningen simply flies away with the frozen Ruby in tow, vowing to return. As the Doctor wonders how he can track them, Erik points to two twin girls who have caught a frost bee in a jar. Knowing that the frost bee's nanomatter will return to where it came from when he opens the jar, the Doctor tells Hans to take a deep breath of it, and suddenly, they both glow with the same icy energy and fly off in the direction of Snedronningen.
After crossing a sub-dimensional fissure in their flight, Hans spots their destination, which the Doctor identifies as an alternate version of the Faroe Islands. However, the nanomatter leaves them slightly too early, leaving them hurtling towards the ground, and their fall is broken by the soft Shimmerglisten that makes up the snowdrifts. The Doctor spots a large crystalline ice palace in the distance and decides that Snedronningen must be inside.
In the palace, Ruby wakes up, unfrozen but chained to a seat of ice by a metal ankle chain. She spots some figures nearby and asks them for help, but is shocked at seeing their true appearances: a fish-like mermaid, a match girl with flaming hair, and a person with the head of a duck. Snedronningen greets Ruby and details her three "experiments" to her. Before Ruby can demand to find answers, she feels something on her back, and turns to see shimmering blue wings making her take flight. Snedronningen announces her latest experiment: a fairy.
Part Three: Soldiers of Misfortune
to be added
Characters
- Fifteenth Doctor
- Ruby Sunday
- Hans Christian Andersen
- Snedronningen
- Kwame
- Thomas
- Erik
- Erik's mama
- Asta
- Astrid
- Mermaid
- Match girl
- Duck person
- Hans Christian Andersen's father
- Skarnbassen
Worldbuilding
Clothing
- The Fifteenth Doctor is wearing his previously used black leather jacket and light yellow tank top, but paired with a maroon and brown checked kilt, calf-length grey socks and avocado green boots.
- Ruby Sunday is wearing a white jumper with large black checks, royal blue shorts, and black boots.
Locations
- The Doctor and Ruby were attempting to visit the Scandi Superclub, which includes Avicii, Loreen and Måns Zelmerlöw in the Arctic Circle.
- Hans states that Snedronningen hails from the "Stellatundra".
Hans Christian Andersen
- Hans Christian Andersen's works include Thumbelina, The Red Shoes and The Ugly Duckling, although the Doctor gave him the idea for The Emperor's New Clothes.
- Hans grew up in Odense.
- Hans' father was offered money to fight Napoleon.
- Hans' mother was illiterate.
Popular culture
- The Doctor claims that his sonic screwdriver can make a sonic pulse of the note G in the high tenth octave, which he states can shatter ice.
- He also states that this is a higher note than Mariah Carey or Jenny Lind could hit; Hans is very familiar with Lind, nicknaming her "the Swedish Nightingale", and says that she was an inspiration for his poetry. The Doctor remembers that Hans "had a thing for her".
- Before the Doctor and Hans fall from their flight, the Doctor warns Hans that they are about to have "a Wile E Coyote moment".
- Hans' father read him The Thousand and One Nights as a child, which included stories of Aladdin and Ali Baba, jackal viziers and lion kings.
Notes
- This story's title is a reference to TV: The Hand of Fear [+]Loading...["The Hand of Fear (TV story)"].
- Like with COMIC: Liberation of the Daleks [+]Loading...["Liberation of the Daleks (comic story)"] and Mancopolis [+]Loading...["Mancopolis (comic story)"] before it, this story was not named in DWM 604 to spoil the surprise of its historical figure. It was referred to as "A brand-new comic strip" on the issue's spine and simply "Comic Strip" in the contents, with the title only being revealed when Hans Christian Andersen first appears on page 3.
- As implied by the character, Snedronningen is the original Danish name of Andersen's real-life 1844 fairy tale, "The Snow Queen". Several lines of narration in this story are taken almost directly from the original text.
- Additionally, the characters encountered by Ruby Sunday - a mermaid, match girl, and duck person - are based on Andersen's "The Little Mermaid", "The Little Match Girl", and "The Ugly Duckling", respectively.
- Hans' statement that nobody "has exerted a more ennobling influence" on his poetry than Jenny Lind is a real quote.
- The Fifteenth Doctor sarcastically asks if Snedronningen's lair is found at the "second star to the right and straight on till morning", quoting Peter Pan.
Original print details
(Publication with page count and closing captions)
- DWM 604: (6 pages): Next Issue: A Grim Fairy Tale
- DWM 605: (6 pages): Next Issue: Soldiers of Misfortune
Continuity
- The Fifteenth Doctor refers to the Advance on Reykjavik, which was mentioned in TV: The Talons of Weng-Chiang [+]Loading...["The Talons of Weng-Chiang (TV story)"] and depicted in AUDIO: The Butcher of Brisbane [+]Loading...["The Butcher of Brisbane (audio story)"] and PROSE: Under Reykjavik [+]Loading...["Under Reykjavik (short story)"].
- The Doctor claims to have given Hans Christian Andersen the idea for the story, The Emperor's New Clothes, as the First Doctor previously claimed in TV: "Conspiracy".
- The Doctor notes that the frost bees are not the same type of snow that he and Ruby Sunday had encountered on previous occasions, starting in TV: The Church on Ruby Road [+]Loading...["The Church on Ruby Road (TV story)"].
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