The Monster Upstairs (comic story)
Summary
part one
The Doctor thinks it is important to brush up on his alien languages even though the TARDIS has a universal translator. He reads a book called You Want To Speak Clang’n. Others sit beside him: Kavese, the Easy Way and Conversational Clangon. The collision avoidance compensators fail again and the TARDIS hits an interstellar body with a planetary mass, atmosphere in the middle of a major galactic bypass. The floor is squishy and it seems made of paper mache. It is comprised of vegetable fibers bonded with hydrogen and wood pulp. He finds a ship that had a crew that managed to eject in time. He finds a warning beacon and a paper that is handed out at spaceports: the Daily Eon…all the discarded copies end up here. A green bunny man asks for help from a digital ink on one of the pages of the sports section. The Doctor tells the bunny that his hobby is printing and that he gave the Chinese a few pointers on moveable blocks, way back during the Tang Dynasty. The bunny is Ray Royce, Hoopball Superstar and head sports writer at the Eon. He’s trapped in the New Factory. Hundreds of writers didn’t read the small print on their contracts and now they are being held and forced to work on staff. The Doctor has a few issues with the Daily Eon himself. The Doctor will find the address on the Letters to the Editor page. Soon the TARDIS arrives, Ray telling the Doctor to unfold him so he can see his way around. The Doctor finds crystalline memory that can store the neural matrices of a million sentient life forms, people, civilizations, or disgruntled journalists. The Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to try to stop the machine but a metal claw comes out of a wall and knocks him off a ledge toward giant rollers of a Robo Copier. They detect the Doctor and figure he has over 900 years of stories to tell. If scanned, the Doctor will end up trapped, too. The Doctor ask the flying attacking machines to take him to their Editor. They scan him and digitise…
part two
The Doctor has disrupted the Robcopier’s filing system to send him to the sports page and he meets Ray in person. Ray’s a very tall green rabbit-man in a football jersey that is short cut. Each journalist has their own private virtual universe, generated from their memories. Ray is forced to replay his most famous victories and defeats over and over, then the Matrix converts that data directly into the column inches for newspaper. The Doctor tells Ray if they used the Doctor’s stories, they would have to publish a whole colour supplement every single week with a free gift. SubEds exist to root out bad spelling mistakes, bad grammar, and erroneous copies. The Doctor calls himself the biggest grammatical error they’re ever going to see. Ray uses his team (a blue female with tentacles out her head; a purple-pink man with three pink fingers; and a blue elephant like being) to distract and block for the Doctor and he to get away from the Sub Eds. The Doctor tries to locate a crystal node to resonate and open a portal to another page. Ray has tickets, guest passes to the opening of the Envelope, hottest new nightclub in the galaxy. High fiving each other, the pair go to this nightclub area. Green wife of Ray’s—named Boudica---wants to maintain her WAG status and has to have pictures taken with Ray. She doesn’t want bad pictures though and this makes Ray think eternal enslavement might not be so bad. She likes the Doctor. The SubEds catch up to them, they drag Boudica with them; a blast from the SubEds knocks Ray through the air. The Doctor cannot open the next portal by finding the frequency because it is a deadlock seal. Ray jumps at the opening and then jumps out of the way, causing the SubEds to go through it. Inside, a big green slug is the Proprietor. Ray resigns. The SubEds crashing in, disrupted the fabric of the Crystalline Matrix and caused a massive neural feedback loop. The slug tells the Doctor people need gossip but the Doctor tells him the people just look at the pictures between hyperspace jumps to kill time. The Doctor suggests the slug get into recycling: there are an awful lot of discarded copies of Eon out there. He also suggests to Ray’s wife that the vidcast chat shows are running short on showbiz couples in the Ell-Ay Galaxy and perhaps she and Ray can go there.
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
