Pureblood (comic story)
Pureblood was a four-part Seventh Doctor comic story published around the 1992-1993 holiday season. It showed "ancient", non-cloned Sontarans, gave readers a rationale for why the Sontarans evolved into a clone race, and also served as a prequel to The Sontaran Experiment. Indeed, it offered a plausible explanation why Styre would have been seemingly unacquainted with Earth or humans in the distant future, even though Sontarans must have collected extensive data on the planet during the events of The Poison Sky — or as a consequence of Strax's life in Victorian London.
Pureblood is also important for furthering the then-close ties the Doctor Who Magazine comic stories were trying to forge with the Virgin New Adventures books by introducing Benny into the strip. While those fans who had never read a New Adventures book might have been completely confused by the sudden replacement of Benny for Ace, those who had been dutifully following along would have picked up on a number of continuity beats between the two ranges.
The story contained some of the earliest visual depictions of Benny. Penciller Colin Howard's interpretation long predated either Lisa Bowerman or Adrian Salmon's involvement with the character, leading to a Benny quite dissimilar to the "Big Finish Benny".
Plot
Sontara, the home world of the Sontarans is about to fall.
Their mortal enemies, the Rutans, are the apparent cause of their demise, but Marshal Stave and his men have little time to analyse the situation. They have only enough time to load the racepool into his flagship, the Warburg, and get into the comparative safety of space. The ship narrowly escapes as Sontara explodes.
Elsewhere in the galaxy, the Seventh Doctor and his new companion, Bernice "Benny" Summerfield, arrive on the orbital genetics laboratory called Pandora Spindle. Though owned by the Lauren Corporation, it's affiliated with the Terran Federation, if only because its crew are dominantly human.
No sooner have they surprised one of these humans than Pandora is attacked and occupied by a Sontaran assault force. The Sontarans want to turn the world the humans are researching into a new homeworld. However, a Rutan spy who had been masquerading as the human Modine contacts the Host's allies - Pureblood Sontarans who see the clones as weak and impure.
With the Pandora now about to be beset by both Rutans and Pureblood Sontarans, the Doctor quickly hatches a plan to save the Sontarans, turn back the Rutans and help the humans with one fell swoop. He convinces Marshal Stave that if he can broker a peace between he and his distant cousis, and then defeat the Rutans, all he'll need is one tiny little favour in return. The Marshal agrees, so the Doctor presses Benny into service. She goes off to the brig where the humans are keeping their Rutan "guest".
The Doctor, meanwhile, materialises the TARDIS onboard the lead Pureblood ship and takes a surprise audience with Vord. He tries to convince the leader that the Rutans are deceiving the Purebloods into destroying the clone Sontarans. Vord is sceptical, having no reason to think the Rutans his enemy. The Doctor therefore chooses to offer proof.
He establishes communication with Benny, who is by now face to face with Modine. In full view of the Purebloods, she gets the Rutan spy to disclose the full Rutan plan, which includes the destruction of the Purebloods after they kill the clones. Vord changes his tune almost immediately, and he joins the Doctor in the TARDIS for a quick hop back to Pandora. There, the two Sontaran groups reconcile and turn their might against the Rutans, who are successfully repulsed.
Marshal Stave then gets the Doctor's bill. In return for this victory, the Doctor wants Stave to breed out of the racepool all memory of humanity, thereby giving humanity a relief from Sontaran encroachment for centuries to come. The Sontaran agrees, cognisant of the fact that he has a lot of rebuilding to do. Stave transports the humans on Pandora back to Terran Federation space, and begins the long process of rebuilding the Sontaran Empire, using the planet beneath the station as their new home world.
As she slips back into the TARDIS, Benny isn't convinced the Marhsal will keep up his end of the bargain. The Doctor is more optimistic, because he's already lived through it. As he tells his new assistant, "Earth will be spared Sontaran interference for a long time. Until a Field-Major called Styre comes along, actually."
Characters
References
- The Rutan-Sontaran War is the backdrop against which the story is told.
Notes
- to be added
Production error
- Unusually, the story contains a glaring editorial error. At the top of part one, the opening narration establishes that it's the 26th century. Part two's opener, though, says it's the 25th century. Which is right? Part one. Not only does it tell the century, but it gives corroboration: it renames the 26th century as the time when "the Second Dalek War has ravaged the stars". Since Frontier in Space and other stories set during the time of the Second Dalek War also point to the 26th century, it appears as though editor John Freeman dropped the ball on part two.
Continuity
- Immediately obvious in the script is the overwhelming presence of the word cruk, a swear word Paul Cornell had gifted to Benny in her very first story. As a percentage of total word count, this story is likely the "sweatiest" in the history of Doctor Who across all media.
- Benny mentions Heaven, the planet on which the Doctor first encountered her.
- The Doctor says that Benny has just joined his crew, indicating the story can't be too far gone from Love and War.
- As of June 2013[update], the retcon this story usefully provides to The Sontaran Experiment has not been invalidated. By setting the 26th century as the time in which the Sontarans suddenly "forget" about humans, it allows writers to have Sontarans on modern day earth — or even in Victorian London! — but be completely unfamiliar with humans or Earth by the time Styre needs to torture Sarah Jane in Experiment.
- The Doctor is shown here wearing his light jacket, but by the next story he is back to his dark jacket. This doesn't actively contradict the television series, but it's different than his approach on television. There, we're led to believe that once he abandoned the light jacket, it was gone for good. This, of course, was because the dark jacket was created by the costume designer because the light jacket was no longer available to use. In comics, where those real world concerns didn't exist, Marvel UK artists flipped between the two.
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