Cindy Wu
Cindy Wu was a friend of the Tenth Doctor's companion Gabby Gonzalez, and became involved in many of their adventures, eventually becoming a companion of the Doctor alongside Gabby.
Biography[[edit] | [edit source]]
Early life[[edit] | [edit source]]
Cindy was born in Brooklyn. She had Chinese ancestry and was a descendant of the Wu Diaspora, who were clones of herself. Cindy noted she was her "own great, great, super-great grandmother". (COMIC: Vortex Butterflies) She lived in Brooklyn, New York where she became childhood friends with Gabby Gonzalez.
When the pair were ten or eleven, they went to summer camp at Echo Lake. During one night, the pair were told a campfire story about a rabid raccoon which would stalk the camp grounds looking to attack anyone who got too close. Gabby and Cindy spent the night cowering inside their tent, shining a flashlight out into the dark. Eventually they fell asleep. The next morning they realised that the whole story was a hoax made-up by the counsellors. (COMIC: Cindy, Cleo and the Magic Sketchbook)
She said her Dad loved his children, but "the weight of his expectation would crush you". She was going to college for social science. (COMIC: Revolutions of Terror)
Meeting the Doctor[[edit] | [edit source]]
Needs info from Echo, The Fountains of Forever, Spiral Staircase, Sins of the Father.
One day, while Cindy was hanging out with Gabby in her father's laundromat, all the washing machines malfunctioned and exploded around them. The two girls cleaned up the mess. Later, Cindy became possessed by a Cerebravore and tried to break into the laundromat, which Gabby barricaded. After the Cerebravores were defeated, Cindy was invited to the Gonzalez family dinner in honour of the Tenth Doctor. (COMIC: Revolutions of Terror)
When Gabby returned from her travels with the Doctor, she told Cindy about them. (COMIC: Echo) Initially, Cindy attributed these stories to Gabby's imagination, but when Gabby received a disturbing message from the Doctor, Cindy insisted on following her to the Upper East Side and found herself in Dorothy Bell's apartment just in time to witness her rejuvenation. (COMIC: The Fountains of Forever)
Encounter with Ebonite[[edit] | [edit source]]
Needs info from Cindy, Cleo and the Magic Sketchbook, Arena of Fear.
Shortly after the Anubis incident, Cindy met Jack Harkness and was pulled into Ebonite's Arena of Fear. (COMIC: Arena of Fear)
Initial travels[[edit] | [edit source]]
Needs info from The Wishing Well Witch, Lady of the Blue Box , The Infinite Corridor.
The Tenth Doctor brought Cindy and Gabby to a conclave along the road to Parthia in 111, where they discovered a plot by the Zoroniss to take over the world. Cindy was disgusted by the portion of their plan which involved incubating Roman soldiers with Zoroniss eggs and was willing to fend them off with her bare fists. (COMIC: The Long Con)
The Doctor later took Cindy and Gabby to Cosmomart, a planet converted into a shopping mall, where the two indulged themselves. (COMIC: Supremacy of the Cybermen)
Roscoe & Sutekh[[edit] | [edit source]]
Needs info from The Jazz Monster, Music Man, Old Girl.
During a stop-off in 1930s New Orleans, Cindy fell in love with jazz musician Roscoe Ruskin. (COMIC: The Jazz Monster)
As the MuWu[[edit] | [edit source]]
Cindy, Gabby and the Tenth Doctor spent many days together in the Garden of Osiris. Cindy grew very close with Noobis, who eventually admitted that he wanted to leave the Garden to travel with the Doctor.
While in the Garden, the team were attacked and absorbed by a consciousness from an alternate universe which placed each of them into fictionalised virtual environments. In the new reality, Cindy was in a romantic relationship with Cleo Hunsicker and had a black dog which resembled the real Noobis.
On one evening, Cindy and Cleo lost track of the dog as they headed for the subway. As Cleo entered the train, the dog pulled Cindy off at the last moment, revealing itself to be Noobis in disguise. In their few moments of open thought, Noobis helped Cindy remember the truth of their situation and helped her escape the virtual reality into the real world. Cindy awoke to discover herself connected to a archaic yet developed piece of technology, surrounded by dead bodies which closely resembled her. Disconnecting herself from her constraints, she began to investigate the complex. She eventually found the others, trapped as she had been, and freed them. After escaping the Wraiths, Cindy was kidnapped by an organism shaped like a red TARDIS (COMIC: Breakfast at Tyranny's) and brought to ancient China where she was cloned multiple times to form an army for the Red Jade General and then imprisoned. When freed by Gabby, Cindy managed to rouse her "children", leading them out when the Doctor chased away the Red TARDIS. (COMIC: Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth)
After naming all five hundred of her daughters, Cindy saw off the Wu Diaspora, suspecting that she was descended from one of them, before the group left China. After Noobis had been dropped off on Aramuko, the Doctor left Cindy and Gabby in Willesden in the year 2009 while he went off to discover the truth behind the Vortex Butterfly. When Gabby's powers began to mutate, Cindy met Sarah Jane Smith, an old friend of the Doctor's, who looked after and mentored the two girls, bonding with Cindy over unrequited love and their clashes with Sutekh. When the Vortex Butterfly was found to be a future Gabby, the Doctor simply swore to never abandon Gabby, ending its threat. (COMIC: Vortex Butterflies)
When the TARDIS came under attack from white energy, it made an emergency landing at Poseidon, an energy collecting facility. The Doctor, Gabby and Cindy pretended to be an inspection team to explain their appearance at the facility. As Cindy was shown around, the CyberNomads, infected by the white energy, invaded the station. Given an E-Suit to help navigate the vacuum, Cindy was attacked by a Cyberman only to find she was immune to the white energy. When the TARDIS took off, it wound up at St Luke's University, merging with a future version of itself. Joining forces with his eighth, ninth and twelfth selves, the Doctor managed to halt the white energy. (COMIC: The Lost Dimension)
Leaving Gabby on Zhe's moon to master her powers, the Doctor and Cindy went off to repair Marcie, meeting up with Cleopatra Hunsicker who told them that Earth would be destroyed in the 21st century. Suspecting that they'd stumbled upon a trap, the group went to Aramuko for answers. After meeting up with Noobis, Aramuko came under attack from a red singularity, which the Doctor recognised as the work of the Time Sentinels. As the group tracked the Sentinels, Noobis' girlfriend Siffhoni revealed herself to be Aspect Blue, and told them that the Red TARDIS was the true mastermind before the ship slammed into them. Crashing into the Time Sentinel's base, the group was able to cause its collapse, leaving the Red TARDIS to be swallowed by the Circle of Transcendence, but Gabby was likewise caught in the gravity field, leaving everyone to mourn their friend. (COMIC: The Good Companion)
Alternate timelines[[edit] | [edit source]]
In a timeline where Rassilon had joined forces with the Cybermen, the Doctor, Cindy, and Gabby were abducted by the Sontaran Empire to aid in their fight against the Cybermen. In the last stand on Sontar, Cindy and Gabby seized a Sontaran scout ship to distract the CyberKings only to wind up swatted out of the sky. This timeline was later negated through the efforts of a remorseful Rassilon and the Twelfth Doctor. (COMIC: Supremacy of the Cybermen)
Personality[[edit] | [edit source]]
Cindy's most close and personal relationship was with her best friend Gabby. The pair had been friends since they were ten or eleven. (COMIC: Cindy, Cleo and the Magic Sketchbook) Dorothy Bell noted that the two showed incredible loyalty to each other, and wished that she held something similar. She also told the Doctor that they needed space away from him to find themselves. (COMIC: Old Girl)
After Gabby left, Cindy missed her deeply. While she initially diagnosed this as jealousy, she eventually came to the conclusion that she could not bear the thought of not having Gabby around. This was why she eventually decided to join Gabby in the TARDIS. (COMIC: Old Girl)
Cindy was attracted to men and women. She referred to Captain Jack Harkness as "Jock Hotness" (COMIC: Arena of Fear) and dated the jazz musician Roscoe Ruskin. (COMIC: The Jazz Monster)
Cindy secretly held an unrequited loved for Gabby. (COMIC: Breakfast at Tyranny's) Sarah Jane Smith plainly stated that Cindy "love[d] Gabby because she's Gabby". (COMIC: Vortex Butterflies) Gabby explained to Cindy that while she did indeed love her, she wanted Cindy to realise that she didn't need their relationship to survive. (COMIC: Old Girl)
Cindy later developed a romantic interest in Cleopatra Hunsicker. In the simulated reality created by the Wraiths, Cindy dated a simulation of Cleo. When Cindy began to realise that the world was fake, the fake Cleo protested Cindy looking for Gabby, noting that she was "not interested". The fake Cleo claimed the real Cleo showed the body language of someone who was interested in her, but Cindy did not believe this. (COMIC: Breakfast at Tyranny's) Cindy would eventually find her feelings reciprocated by the real Cleo. After discussing her unrequited love for Cindy, she kissed Cleo and the two slept together. (COMIC: The Good Companion)
Behind the scenes[[edit] | [edit source]]
- Cindy Wu has been represented by uncredited models in photo covers of Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor #2.15 and #3.14.
- In The Wishing Well Witch, Gabby says she and Cindy are from New York. However, Cindy says that she is Canadian in a sarcastic manner, only to be elbowed by Gabby.
- Cindy later says she was born in Brooklyn in Vortex Butterflies, further confirming this was a sarcastic comment.
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