The Choice (comic story)

The Choice was the eleventh issue of Prisoners of Time, and featured the Eleventh Doctor and his companion Clara Oswald.

Publisher's summary
Our yearlong celebration of Doctor Who's 50th anniversary continues! Geronimo! The Eleventh Doctor joins the fray in this issue of a 12-part epic adventure featuring all 11 incarnations of the Doctor. Now that the Doctor has uncovered the true identity of his latest adversary, he must track him through time and space for a final confrontation!

Plot
The Eleventh Doctor and Clara Oswald have just ended a civil war among a race of people called the Frogmen, having told them that Fratalog was the rightful king. The Doctor then says "When I say 'Duck!', I really mean, 'Duck!'. However, before anything else can happen a powerful blast of energy knocks both of them unconscious. The Doctor comes round just in time to see Adam Mitchell teleport away with an unconscious Clara in his arms.

He heads back to the TARDIS and goes to all the places in which Adam kidnapped his other companions, just after the kidnappings took place, where he attempts to gain information from people who were there, including Agent Paul and the Judoon. But he finds nothing of use, and realises that rather than delving into his own past, he needs to look at Adam's.

The Doctor breaks into a library, and finds a room where Adam has pinned up pictures of his past incarnations and companions, including a large red cross over the picture of his ninth incarnation. Feeling guilty about what his actions drove Adam to do, he decides to head back to Henry Van Statten's Vault in Utah, where he first met Adam, hoping to find some sort of trace he can use to track him down.

However, he discovers that Adam has taken every last bit of alien technology that was in there. He breaks into Adam's lab, where he finds the Time Agent whom Adam had captured on the floor, "frozen in time." He releases the Agent, named Neal Shaw, who tells him that he had been awake the whole time and had been forced to wait for months as Adam experimented on him. He gives the Doctor a tracker that will help him find his vortex manipulator (that Adam had stolen) and asks to come with the Doctor. The Doctor declines, saying that he would not put any more innocent people in between him and Mitchell.

The tracker brings him to a giant fortress in the Time Vortex, which the Doctor enters, calling out for Adam. Adam greets him with a gun, which he uses to paralyse him. He awakes later to see Adam, who tells him that he treats all companions like he had treated him: with no care for what happens to them afterwards. After some time, enters, scarred, having survived the attack by Aerolith after being tortured for decades and barely escaping alive. Adam reveals that he discovered the Master on his hunt for other people who wanted to "make [the Doctor] suffer." The Doctor warns Adam of the evil of the Master, and of the thousands of lives he had ended to call himself "king of the universe." The Master laughs the Doctor's words off as lies, and instructs Adam to continue with the plan. Adam leads the Doctor and the Master into a large room, where all of the Doctor's companions sit in tubes along the walls, even the ones he had not seen captured. Adam holds a remote, one which will kill every companion in the chambers when he presses the button. He tells the Doctor that all of his companions dying might destroy the universe as all of the Doctor's history is rewritten, but as they are in limbo they will not be affected and Adam does not care. He tells the Doctor to choose one companion to save, and the rest will die.

Characters

 * Eleventh Doctor
 * Clara Oswald
 * Adam Mitchell
 * Neal Shaw
 * Paul
 * Judoon
 * Judoon

Adam's prisoners

 * Steven Taylor
 * Harry Sullivan
 * Nyssa
 * Tegan Jovanka
 * Sarah Jane Smith
 * Adric
 * Peri Brown
 * Ian Chesterton
 * Barbara Wright
 * Jamie McCrimmon
 * Zoe Heriot
 * Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart
 * K9 Mark I
 * Leela
 * Sara Kingdom
 * Vislor Turlough
 * Mel Bush
 * Mickey Smith
 * Ace
 * Romana II
 * Jack Harkness
 * Vicki Pallister
 * Victoria Waterfield
 * Rory Williams
 * Jenny
 * Martha Jones
 * Ben Jackson
 * Amy Pond

Worldbuilding

 * The Master notes how young the Eleventh Doctor is.

Continuity

 * Among the pictures of the Doctor that Adam Mitchell has gathered, there is the Sixth Doctor wearing a blue coat. (AUDIO: Real Time)