Plague Panic (comic story)

Plague Panic was a comic story printed in Doctor Who: Battles in Time. It was written by Claire Lister.

	Tenth Doctor
	The Zeerover
	England, 1348
	GE Fabbri Ltd
	Ben Robinson
	Claire Lister
	Lee Sullivan
	Alan Craddock
	1
	DWBIT 16
	18 April 2007
	Comic
DWBIT comic stories
← Previous	Lonely Planet
Next →	Exhausting Evil

Opening narration box

When the Doctor lands in 1348, he doesn't realise that the Black Death will be the least of his worries...

Summary

The Doctor arrives on a coastal hilltop in England, 1348, around the same time as the Black Death. He bumps into another doctor, dressed in a bird-like costume, who has been visiting the local sick villagers. The Doctor is fleeing from some "different" plague victims with green flesh, behaving like zombies, who are in pursuit. The two hide in a nearby forest.

In the forest they learn from two children that the zombie victims must have angered the "fairies". They take the Doctor to the giant, egg-shaped "fairy nest" which the Doctor identifies as a Zeerover space craft. The Zeerover are a race of tiny creatures who exist to heal others, and they are far from home. The zombie villages catch up with them and infect the doctor by cheek to cheek transmission.

The Zeerover explain to the Doctor that they ran out of fuel, were unable to return and landed on Earth, a planet whose air is poisonous to them. They tried to use the human villagers as hosts, hoping they would filter out the toxins but instead the villagers become ill. The Doctor returns to the TARDIS and prepares a fuel cell to launch their craft and allow them to leave the planet In exchange for his help, the Zeerover heal the surviving victims.

Characters

• Tenth Doctor
• Zeerover

Worldbuilding

to be added

Notes

• Supporting the series of collectible Doctor Who trading cards, the magazine carried a regular four page, individually titled comic strip of the Tenth Doctor's adventures.
• The artwork and colours were bold and bright, reflecting the tone of the magazine and, as did Doctor Who Adventures, reflected the appeal to readers younger than those catered to by Doctor Who Magazine.
• The "primitive" doctor, going by the size of his beak, is quite obviously a quack.
• Interestingly, the healed villages dancing on the hill in the penultimate frame all (bar one) still have green skin.
• The Zeerover are capable of "leaping" from host to host within close range and yet strangely needed a ramp to walk up to get back into their egg-like craft.
• The Battles in Time comic strip sought to reinforce the association of its Doctor with the one seen on screen with "props" from the TV series: blue/brown suit, intelligent-looking glasses, sonic screwdriver and psychic paper.

Original print details

• 1/1 DWBIT 16 (4 pages) THE END

Continuity

to be added