A Little Help from My Friends (comic story)

A Little Help from My Friends
Doctor:	Thirteenth Doctor
Companion(s):	Graham, Yaz, Ryan
Featuring:	Tenth Doctor, Martha
Main enemy:	Weeping Angels, Autons
Main setting:	London, 1969
Key crew
Publisher:	Titan Comics
Writer:	Jody Houser
Artist:	Roberta Ingranata
Colourist:	Enrica Eren Angiolini
Letterer:	Richard Starkings & Comicraft's Sarah Jacobs & John Roshell
Release details
Printed in:	TFTTY3 1 - 2, 13DY2 3 - 13DY2 4
Release date:	2 January - 20 May 2020
Reprinted in:	13DY2 1 - 13DY2 2, TFTTY3 3 - TFTTY3 4
Format:	Comic
Official trailer
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Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor
← Previous	Old Friends

A Little Help from My Friends was the only story in the second year of the Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor comic series, published in 2020.

This multi-Doctor story tied into the events of the series 3 TV story Blink, taking place in 1969 during the time when the Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones were stranded there by a Weeping Angel.

Quite unusually for this series, the first two parts of the story had their worldwide debut not in the ongoing American comic series, but in its UK sister series Doctor Who: Tales from the TARDIS, appearing in the first and second issues of its third year, less than a week before their respective American printings. Regardless, the fine print on the issues' contents pages still credit 13DY2 1 and 13DY2 2 as their original printings.

The story ended on a cliffhanger, which led into the Doctor Who (2020) story, Alternating Current.

Summary

The Thirteenth Doctor is back with her friends – Yaz, Ryan and Graham – in a brand new time-travelling adventure. This time she faces the horrific Weeping Angels – who else can help her out but one of her previous incarnations: the Tenth Doctor himself! Landing in the swinging 60s, the Thirteenth Doctor and fam are stranded in the middle of a territorial battle between the Angels and the creepy Autons, all the while having to avoid her former self and causing the universe to implode! What could go wrong?

Characters

• Thirteenth Doctor
• Graham O'Brien
• Ryan Sinclair
• Yasmin Khan
• Tenth Doctor
• Martha Jones
• Janice
• Nestene Consciousness

References

The Doctor

• The Thirteenth Doctor owns library cards corresponding to each of her previous incarnations. Cards for the First, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Doctors can be seen.
• The Thirteenth Doctor, while hiding her identity from Martha, uses the name "Jane Smith", which caused Martha to remark that she has a mate named "Smith".
• The Tenth Doctor claims to be allergic to blue moons.

Times and places

• The Thirteenth Doctor tries to take her companions to Woodstock. They end up in the right era, but the wrong location.
  • The Doctor believes that they've landed in the right era, "unless it's one of the many late 1960s fashion resurgences".
• The TARDIS lands in front of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament.
• The Tenth Doctor's ID card shows "SHOREDITCH" under the address.
• The Tenth Doctor visits a park while testing his timey-wimey detector.
• The Tenth Doctor recognises that Yaz hails from 2020 by sniffing her phone.

Devices

• The Tenth Doctor is using his timey-wimey detector.
• Yaz hands the Tenth Doctor her mobile phone.

Food

• The timey-wimey detector makes a carton of chicken eggs explode.
• The Thirteenth Doctor and Martha chat over tea and cookies.
• The Thirteenth Doctor asks where to find custard creams.

Society

• Biological sex is more "flexible" for Time Lords.
• The Thirteenth Doctor states that gender is a social construct.

Retail

• Martha works as a shop girl at a clothes shop called Face Fashion.

Time Agency

• Yaz pretends to be a time agent when interacting with the Tenth Doctor.

Companions

• Sally Sparrow is mentioned.
• Rose Tyler appears on a "Wanted" poster in present day London.

Notes

• This is the first Titan Comics story to make its debut in the UK before the US, at least as far as parts one and two are concerned.
• This comic story is contentious to date in the Thirteenth Doctor's era. The intention, evidently, was that the story was meant to be set during Series 11, noticeable due to details such as the TARDIS interior. However, several TV stories after the comic's release would bring this into question. First, Series 12's TV: Spyfall would illustrate Ryan, Graham, and Yaz still showing confusion about the Doctor's ability to change bodies, implying that they had never been a part of a Multi-Doctor event. More perplexing, Series 13's TV: Once, Upon Time, which premiered after the exit of Ryan and Graham, would feature Yaz meeting the Weeping Angels for, according to her, the first time. As with most continuity issues in the franchise's history, the solution to these contradictions are left to personal interpretation.
• While in 1969, the Thirteenth Doctor says the Weeping Angels are "22 years away", which would be 1991. Despite this apparent mistake from the writer, she mentions the correct year of 2007 on the previous page.

Continuity

The Doctor's library cards.

• The Thirteenth Doctor has a library card of her first incarnation. (TV: The Vampires of Venice)
• Team TARDIS are fully aware that the Doctor used to be a man. (TV: Spyfall)
• Ryan calls Graham "granddad". (TV: It Takes You Away)
• The Doctor and Martha are stranded in 1969 after being sent back by a Weeping Angel that they encountered in 2007 inside a "haunted house". The Tenth Doctor is using his timey-wimey detector to detect the appearance of Billy Shipton. (TV: Blink)
• Martha says that being a shop girl is at least better than being a maid. (TV: Human Nature / The Family of Blood)
• Martha didn't know that time travel was even possible until "that day [she] met [the Tenth Doctor] at the hospital". (TV: Smith and Jones)
• The Thirteenth Doctor elaborates that not just gender but biological sex is more "flexible" among Time Lords. (TV: World Enough and Time)
• The Thirteenth Doctor tries to take Team TARDIS to Woodstock. The Doctor was believed to have been present at Woodstock at least twice before their seventh incarnation, (PROSE: The Left-Handed Hummingbird) with the Twelfth Doctor going so far as to imply he performed a tambourine solo there. (PROSE: The Crawling Terror)
• Two mannequins at Face Fashion are dressed in clothes worn by Ben Jackson (TV: The Tenth Planet) and Polly Wright. (TV: The War Machines)
• The Thirteenth Doctor expresses her appreciation for Janice's ginger hair, saying that she had thought about going ginger herself. Likewise, the Tenth Doctor, upon meeting his future self, expresses his disappointment that she isn't ginger. (TV: The Christmas Invasion, The End of Time)
• Ryan questions why the Thirteenth Doctor cannot simply remember what is about to happen to her past self. The Doctor tells him that memory flows very differently when crossing ones own time stream. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
• Yaz poses as a time agent when meeting the Tenth Doctor. (PROSE: Time Lapse, COMIC: A New Beginning, Hidden Human History, Old Friends)
• The Thirteenth Doctor mentions wanting custard creams. (TV: The Ghost Monument)
• The Thirteenth Doctor assures Martha that her and the Tenth Doctor do eventually get their TARDIS back using Sally Sparrow's notes, (TV: Blink) and that Martha goes on to live past her travels with the Doctor. (TV: Last of the Time Lords, et al.)
• When first encountering a Weeping Angel, the Tenth Doctor tells Ryan, Graham, and Yaz, "whatever you do... don't blink". (TV: Blink)
• Martha mentions the Doctor's love of "little shops". (TV: New Earth, Smith and Jones, Silence in the Library)
• The Tenth Doctor notes the new temporal paint job of the Thirteenth Doctor's TARDIS, before saying "I don't like it." (TV: The Three Doctors, The Five Doctors, The Two Doctors)
• The Tenth Doctor says he has not seen the Autons since "back when [he] first met-" before his successor cuts him off. (TV: Rose)
  • Despite this, the Doctor has in fact encountered an Auton on at least one other occasion since his first meeting with Rose. (COMIC: Untitled)
• The Thirteenth Doctor tells the Weeping Angels that they do not know "just how much [they have] taken away from [her]". (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan)
• The Tenth Doctor recalls having been in the tunnels under the River Thames "at Christmas", remarking that he didn't much like who he was that day. (TV: The Runaway Bride)
• The Thirteenth Doctor opens the doors of her TARDIS with a snap of her fingers, to the surprise of her predecessor, who has not yet learned it was possible. (TV: Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead)
• The Tenth Doctor recalls there being a "big vat of goo" when he last encountered the Autons. He goes on to mention that he left all his anti-plastic "a few decades in the future". (TV: Rose)
• The Thirteenth Doctor recalls how she and her friends used a stellar net to save a star whale. (COMIC: Old Friends)
  • The Tenth Doctor is surprised to hear that she has met one, this being before his Eleventh incarnation's encounter with one. (TV: The Beast Below)
• The Thirteenth Doctor uses River Song's phrase, "Spoilers", whenever her predecessor asks a question about their future. The Tenth Doctor later admits to liking the phrase, with his successor saying that "[he] certainly will". (TV: Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead)