The Monster Upstairs (comic story)
Summary
Earth, England, tonight…33 Venture Drive, home of the Hopely family…John and Melissa with daughter Violet. She will be ten next week. Her mum asks her to fetch the magazine with Johnny Depp on the cover. Violet asks how to spell utopia. Violet is afraid to go upstairs because of the monster. As her parents chide her about watching too much telly, she goes up the steps. The Doctor knocks on the door and barges in as it’s opened. He runs upstairs, he’s been tracking the energy signature of a rogue Extron parasite. At the top of the steps, the Doctor meets Violet and the creature…which claims it needs a clear transference field…meaning it is trying to lock onto the girl’s human energy pattern. It wants to achieve full gene transmutation. The parents come upstairs and meet it. The mother apologizes to Violet. The thing is an alien parasite that transmutates to survive, combining with intelligent living mammals…in this case Violet. It usually tries an infant. It has been trying to break through for some time in this place. This one is an escaped prisoner on the run from the galactic penal institute of Inkarsera. Originally, it is from another galaxy. The thing asks the Doctor where his biometric tag is, claiming the Doctor does not have the right to take it back. John pushes the Doctor out of the way of the thing but it grabs up Violet, vanishes, teleporting away…and the Doctor has no idea where it and Violet have gone too… part two In a ruined city on the far side of the galaxy beneath a radioactive sky, Violet Hopely, who has been taken by an alien Extron, argues with the alien criminal. No one has been here for decades. The planet is called Onla-toch, in the 957 Dogron star system. The Extron cannot take her home because it needs to regain strength. This planet was once the cradle of civilisation in this area, once an intellectual and artistic paradise until the Extron came to it. He was caught by the Judoon who cannot have executed him. He was sentenced to eternal imprisonment. Violet flees and looks for a place to hide. The Doctor starts talking to himself, the parents think he’s mad. He runs back to the TARDIS, telling them to put the kettle on. He figures the Extron was once on Inkarsera, an automated space prison. He is backtracking to find out where the Extron, a natural teleporter could have taken Violet. Using his sonic screwdriver, the Doctor finds out via the internment records. A robot clamps bio metric handcuffs on the Doctor, believing him to be an escaped prisoner. He is taken to detention stasis, the Doctor believing this is worse than school. The Doctor immediately uses his sonic screwdriver to release the cuffs, kicks the robot, which tells him he has a further ten years added to his sentence. The Doctor tells it he does not have time for a twenty stretch but thanks for the cuffs. More of the four armed robots come at him but he has to dash he tells them. On the planet, the Extron has attuned Violet’s biomass and he must transmute. He looks for her. She hides in a huge, green building and kicks rubbish out onto it. It does not even hurt it. It will use her form to feed his transmutation and then he will devour her. Her atom structure will painfully be unraveled and woven into a new form. The sound of VWORP VWORP happens as the TARDIS appears. As the Doctor rushes out, apologizing to Violet for taking so long, the Extron asks, “What in the black star of Stungaar…” The Doctor and it fight. The Doctor drops the biometric cuffs but Violet manages to get the biometric cuffs onto the beast and the cuffs take him back to prison. The Extron gets a full existence sentence by the robot wards. Violet is reunited with her parents. Violet says, “I’ll never be scared to go upstairs again, now that I Know the Doctor is out there. He’s looking after us all.” Her dad says, “Overactive imagination…that’s what I say.” The Doctor heads back to the TARDIS.
Characters
Original Print Details (Publication with page count and closing captions)
- DWA Issue 46 (6 pages)
- DWA Issue 47 (6 pages)
Reprints
- None to date
Notes
- The DWAM comic strip adventures were very much aimed at a younger audience and the artwork and colours was bold and bright reflecting the tone of the magazine..
- Self contained one part stories were the norm in the early issues later being expanded to two-parters.
References
- The Judoon are mentioned to have cost the Extron its body.
Continuity
to be added
