Doctor Who and the Nightmare Game (comic story)

Doctor Who and the Nightmare Game
Doctor:	Eighth Doctor
Companion(s):	Billy, Stobbs
Main enemy:	The Prime Morg
Main setting:	Delchester stadium, 1977
Key crew
Publisher:	Panini Comics
Writer:	Gareth Roberts
Penciller:	Mike Collins
Inker:	David A. Roach
Release details
Number of parts:	3
Printed in:	DWM 330-332
Release date:	1 May - 26 June 2003
Cover date:	28 May - 23 July 2003
Reprinted in:	The Flood
Format:	Comic
DWM comic stories
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Doctor Who and the Nightmare Game was a 2003 Eighth Doctor comic story in Doctor Who Magazine. It paired the Eighth Doctor temporarily with an adolescent human companion — something that hadn't been done since Arnold's departure from the Third Doctor's TARDIS in the TV Comic comic story The Amateur. From a behind-the-scenes perspective, it was the only published attempt at the Eighth Doctor for writer Gareth Roberts and penciller Mike Collins.

Summary

When Delchester United's penalty is blocked by the TARDIS, the Doctor ponders who is operating a Para-static Vortex beam and just what is hidden under Delchester's stadium?

Plot

to be added

Characters

• Eighth Doctor
• Billy Wilkins
• Ray Stobbs
• The Prime Morg
• Milo Shakespeare
• Frank Shakespeare
• Bobby Blackstone

Worldbuilding

• The crowd calls the deteriorating Delchester United side "a bunch of Jessies".
• The Doctor feeds crisps to the Nukaryote and thereby escapes it.
• Billy finds the Doctor's methods of dealing with the Morg ineffectual, claiming that "Spider-Man would've finished it off by now" and that "Steve Austin would've rescued us by now".
• The Shakespeare Brothers have gravity bubble technology, and grow a Nukaryote.
• The Doctor wears a fez.

Notes

• Doctor Who and the Nightmare Game was reprinted in The Flood graphic novel.
• A flashback is depicted with the limited white-black-red/blue colouring of many old British comics. This later comes up again with the Doctor's lies to the Morg. In further comic pastiches, the Doctor's lie about galactic police is represented by knockoffs of Judge Dredd and the strip ends with a period appropriate tagline to "Join the Doctor for a brand-new adventure next issue, chums!"
• Mike Collins chooses to portray the Eighth Doctor in a more casual way, such as by replacing his cravat with an unbuttoned shirt.

Continuity

• The Doctor has a noisemaking football rattle — just as he did when his fourth incarnation scared horses in San Martino. (TV: The Masque of Mandragora)

External links

• Doctor Who and the Nightmare Game at the Doctor Who Reference Guide