Cuckoo (comic story)
- You may wish to consult
Cuckoo (disambiguation)for other, similarly-named pages.
Cuckoo was a Doctor Who Magazine comic story featuring the Seventh Doctor, Benny and Ace. Barring the coda of The Last Word, it was the last in the short run of DWM comic stories set within the continuity of the Virgin New Adventures.
The story explored gender politics, taking advantage of having two independent, sexually-liberated female companions by setting the story in the Victorian era and featuring a sexist character who espoused virulently anti-feminist ideas who was literally a "monster".
Summary
The Doctor takes Ace and Benny to the village of Lifton in 1855, where young Mary Anne Wesley, a budding young paleontologist, is stirring up controversy in the village for her "unwomanly" pursuits. Mary Anne has recently discovered an unusual skeleton, and the Doctor is here to stop her from presenting it to the world; it is in fact the skeleton of an alien, and any attempt to work it into a theory of human evolution will inevitably fail and set back human science by centuries. Ace bows out of the Doctor's attempt to play God, but while walking alone on the beach she finds the remains of a human scientist, Dr Thomas Gideon. Dr Gideon himself appears to have arrived at the Wesley's home, where, much to the Doctor's surprise, he heaps scorn upon Mary Anne's discovery and drives her from the room in tears. As Benny and Reverend Wesley try to comfort her, the Doctor confronts Gideon, realising that any true human scientist would have been fascinated by the discovery. Gideon transforms into his true reptilian form and tries to kill the Doctor, but Ace arrives just in time and overpowers him. When the alien revives he identifies himself as a Surcoth, one of a race of explorers; he is here to recover the fossilised body of his ancestor, who was lost on this world millions of years ago. The Doctor is disgusted by the Surcoth's arrogant dismissal of the human races and the casual murder of Gideon, but when he turns his back the Surcoth breaks his bonds and attacks him again, for interfering in his noble mission. However, the Doctor gets the upper hand when he threatens to destroy the fossil, and forces the Surcoth to plead with him to spare it. Having taught the alien a lesson in humility, the Doctor allows him to depart, while Bernice comforts Mary Anne and takes her for a walk on the beach - where Mary Anne finds a fossilised ichthyosaur which will secure her place in history.
Plot
to be added
Characters
- Seventh Doctor
- Ace
- Bernice Summerfield
- Mary Anne Wesley
- Doctor Thomas Gideon
- Gilbert Mackley
- Reverend Wesley
- Sir William Gadling
- An unnamed Surcoth
- Boy
- Landlord
Worldbuilding
to be added
Notes
- The title refers to the British slang "cuckoo", meaning something being where it's not supposed to be. In part two, the Doctor refers to the alien fossil in the caves around Lifton as being a cuckoo that needs to be pushed out of the nest of human history, so that Charles Darwin will properly publish The Origin of the Species, rather than being suppressed by Mary Anne Wesley's incorrect assumption that somehow the alien fossil should "fit" into Earth's evolutionary "table".
- The Seventh Doctor takes a drop of Madeira in Lifton, evoking the scene in The Smugglers where the First Doctor also had some whilst visiting another part of the English coast. The scenes of Ace and Benny wandering around the caves at the beach are also reminiscent of surviving telesnaps of Polly, Ben and the Doctor walking on a Cornish beach in part one of the serial.
Continuity
to be added
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
