The Punch & Judy Trap (comic story)
The Punch & Judy Trap was a Doctor Who Adventures comic strip published in 2012.
Summary
At a birthday party for children on Earth, Punch and Judy have got the children really excited. The ‘puppets’ aren’t puppets, they are alien Punchellion, using Harvester Pods on the hypnotised children capturing their mental energy to charge up their psych batteries. However, they take on too much energy and the neuron drive on their spacecraft blows and rips a hole in time and space.
Nearby in the TARDIS, the Doctor, Amy Pond and Rory Williams crash land in a duck pond. An angry Doctor races off to find out who is responsible for the rip in time and space that has let in savage space crocodiles from another dimension (anti-matter carnivorous variforms) to terrorise the streets. Other creatures to appear include clowns and anti-matter babies in nappies.
Homing in on the community centre, they find the children in a trance, a rift above the puppet booth and the terrified crew of a Punchellion entertainment cruiser (Punch and Judy). The only way to close the rift is to fly the small craft into it and implode the warp core. Punch blames himself and offers to do it but Judy refuses to let him, saying that it was her repairs that were responsible and she should do it.
The Doctor, seeing they meant no harm, refuses to let either of them do it. Instead he uses a ball of string to rig the handling of the craft like a puppet and flies it into the rift, where it implodes and closes the gap.
Named characters
References
- Amy refers to the Doctor as being “bendy” – but not bendy enough to squeeze into the Punchellion cruiser.
Notes
- It is unclear, with their Punchellion entertainment cruiser destroyed by the implosion, whether Punch & Judy remained on Earth or were returned home by the Doctor.
- Key to the traditional Punch & Judy storyline is a crocodile that eats the baby, so it is perhaps no surprise to find that through the rift comes what Rory describes as "space-crocodiles" (along with anti-matter babies in nappies!).
Original print details
- Publication with page count and closing captions
- DWA 261 (4 pages) DON’T MISS ANOTHER NEW ADVENTURE NEXT TIME!
- No reprints to date.
Continuity
- Unlike Leadworth, this village duck pond has ducks in it.
