Bat Attack! (comic story)
Bat Attack! was a Doctor Who Adventures comic story featuring the Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler.
Summary
Part one Bat Attack!
After helping Inspector Lestrade solve "the case of the unsuitable suitor" and stop the evil Professor Janus getting married (!), the Tenth Doctor and Rose leave to catch a cab to Waterloo, boat train to Paris and a night at Le Moulin Rouge. Their journey, however, is interrupted immediately. A cloud of vampire bats block the sun, congregating above the Royal Lyceum Theatre.
Following the bats, the Doctor and Rose's timely arrival stops a young girl from being attacked by a bat. Yet all is not as it seems. The theatre is rehearsing for Bram Stoker's new production — Dracula. Bram is supported and assisted by his wife Florence, who warns her husband that the descendant of the real Count Dracula has arrived from Transylvania. Furious that his and his family's name is being wrongfully misrepresented, he arrives intent on exacting his revenge on the writer by killing him.
Florence saves her husband from Dracula, revealing herself as a vampire; she had been bitten some twenty years earlier by Oscar Wilde, who is currently serving a sentence at Reading Gaol.
For twenty years Florence had lived on a diet of small cats and mammals. Bram has protected and supported his wife as she has him. The Doctor identifies this type of vampirism as an alien disease, a virus strain, and offers to help. To save Florence (and the kittens), the Doctor must first find a cure for Oscar. With Rose, he heads to Reading Gaol.
Part two The Battle of Reading Gaol
Using Florence's bats to fly him into the gaol, the Doctor finds and rescues Oscar Wilde who has been there two years. Oscar explains that he was turned into a vampire when a strange shining creature, an alien probe, arrived at his door one evening while he was holding a séance with a few of his friends, drawn by the séance and travelling the thought waves. His friends were killed and their blood used to fill the aliens' tanks.
Oscar was spared and left alive to spread the virus, its survival letting others know of the planet Earth's rich pickings. Florence was Oscar's first love and while in Ireland, he infected her. Rose and Florence's distraction, created for the Doctor, had led to their capture by the prison staff who have themselves been turned into vampires by the prison doctor and manager, who had been using Oscar in their experiments. Arriving just in time, the Doctor and a very "butch" Oscar rescue Rose and Florence. Oscar, the stronger, original carrier of the virus, takes command of the infected guards.
The Doctor needs a nano-filtration system to synthesise an anti-virus, but there isn't one. He "manufactures" one himself by drinking batch 272 of the Vampire Virus (which has already been made and distributed across Great Britain). The Doctor explains how every Time Lord carries an anti-vampire serum. The Doctor then projects it as a burp. The Doctor's infectious burps carry the antigens, which spread out and save the world.
Florence is caught by the burp and returned to her old self. She can again go out in sunlight without having to be shielded from the sun by her bats. Oscar takes the opportunity to leave the prison and start a new life in Paris.
Characters
- Tenth Doctor
- Rose Tyler
- Inspector Lestrade
- Professor Janus
- Bram Stoker
- Florence Stoker
- Frederick von Dracula
- Oscar Wilde
References
- The Doctor's psychic paper is used by Rose and Florence to gain access to Reading Gaol.
- Rose refers to The Fearless Vampire Killers, Nicole Kidman and Moulin Rouge!.
- Mr Irving is an actor and a great friend of Bram Stoker.
Notes
- The comic strip adventures were aimed at a younger audience and the artwork and colours were 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.
- Referencing Oscar Wilde's homosexual tendencies this story creates a parallel with Oscar's vampiric virus.
- Oscar's imprisonment is attributed to a "terrible scandal".
- Oscar talks of "unnatural urges — to kill or turn the things I love".
- The Doctor questions Oscar's "unnaturalness" with "born that way, or made".
- Oscar even talks of a foul fellow, the prison doctor, who "carries out invasive procedures on my person!"
Original print details
- Publication with page count and closing captions
Continuity
to be added
