Endgame (DWM comic story)

Endgame was the first Eighth Doctor strip in Doctor Who Magazine. It reintroduced the character of Maxwell Edison, absent since the Fifth Doctor's DWM run and linked him to the Eighth Doctor's new companion, Izzy Sinclair. Furthermore, the story depicted the first comic-based story encounter between any incarnation of the Doctor and the Celestial Toymaker.

Summary
Returning to Stockbridge, the Doctor is reunited with an old friend, gains a new companion and comes into conflict with an old enemy.

Plot
On horseback, Knight Templar Marwood pursues and kills a man named Felix. The TARDIS arrives in the valley below, in the village of Stockbridge, but things are not as familiar as they should be, and the Eighth DoctorDoctor is soon attacked by grotesquely doll-like people. He is saved by Izzy Sinclair and Maxwell Edison who tell him that Stockbridge has been invaded by aliens. However, Marwood arrives and disputes this. Izzy has a pendant named the Focus that belongs to him. He and his fox-headed huntsmen give chase as the Doctor, Max and Izzy run for the TARDIS. But the Celestial Toymaker is waiting for them.

The Toymaker reveals that the village is not the real Stockbridge and demands a rematch, but the Doctor and Izzy escape into the TARDIS. Max is sadly caught. Izzy explains that two days’ before, she and Max returned to Stockbridge to find it strangely changed and all the people either missing or possessed. They met Felix, who was Marwood’s adjutant, who had stolen the Focus. He charged Izzy and Max with getting it away from Stockbridge. The Doctor thinks the real Stockbridge is close by and disengages the TARDIS’ sub-spatial gyros to get there, but the Toymaker has them and the whole village trapped in a snowglobe.

Realising the stakes, the Doctor and Izzy return to the Toymaker’s version of Stockbridge to play the games set for them. Entering a floating castle, they are drawn into the Toymaker’s domain where the Toymaker forces the Doctor to play a deadly game of hangman... with Izzy on the gallows. He loses and surrenders the Focus, which is part of a contraption known as the Imagineum, a device capable to transmuting raw light into matter itself. The Toymaker uses it to create a champion to defeat the Doctor... a twisted version of the Time Lord himself.

Izzy and Max are pursued by the fox-headed huntsmen in a game of Mousetrap while the Doctor battles himself. However, as his destruction seems inevitable, he tells his evil duplicate that the Toymaker will never set him free and will always keep him as a plaything. The duplicate stops to listen. Izzy and Max, meanwhile, turn the tables on the huntsmen and drop a large weight on them, just as in the traditional game. Marwood is distraught at the demise of his little foxes and turns on the Toymaker, who casually kills him. This act is enough to convince the Doctor’s duplicate that the Doctor speaks the truth. While he distracts the Toymaker, the Doctor uses the Imagineum to create a duplicate Toymaker who drags the real Toymaker back to the Shadow Dimensions, locked in perpetual stalemate. The Doctor’s duplicate then destroys the Imagineum and himself. With the Toymaker gone, the fake Stockbridge begins to break apart. Max finds the real village locked in the snowglobe, actually a macro-dimensional linkage device and the Doctor is able to transpose the containment vectors to restore the village. The Doctor invites both Max and Izzy aboard the TARDIS, but only Izzy accepts.

Characters

 * Eighth Doctor
 * Izzy Sinclair
 * Celestial Toymaker
 * Max Edison
 * Knight Templar Marwood
 * Felix

Continuity

 * The Celestial Toymaker first appeared in TV: The Celestial Toymaker. He also appeared in: COMIC: The Greatest Gamble, PROSE: The Nightmare Fair/AUDIO: The Nightmare Fair, PROSE: Games, PROSE: Divided Loyalties, AUDIO: The Magic Mousetrap and AUDIO: Solitaire.