Ophidius (comic story)

Ophidius was a Doctor Who Magazine comic story featuring the Eighth Doctor and Izzy Sinclair. It introduced Destrii, who would later become the Eighth Doctor's companion.

Summary
The Doctor and Izzy are trapped in a massive starship as events that will greatly affect one of them begin.

Plot
The Eighth Doctor and Izzy Sinclair are sightseeing in the Andrallis Nebula when the TARDIS is swallowed by an enormous spaceship in the shape of a snake. A force field prevents them from escaping, and they emerge to find themselves in an enclosed jungle-like interior full of damaged starships. An eye-shaped station floats in the middle of it all, observing events. Unaware that their every move is being monitored by an alien named Panoquai, who has time-shifted nanoseconds into the future to avoid detection, they explore further and are attacked by a herd of Mobox, silicon-based predators that disintegrate their prey with bio-energy streams. A fish-woman named Destrii rescues them at the last moment, but the Gorolith who controls the world-snake decides that things have become too complicated and orders Panoquai to kill them all. Before he can do so, the Doctor detects his presence and grabs his arm, forcibly phasing him into the present and causing him to lose consciousness from the shock.

Destrii takes them all to her camp, which is located behind a hole in the jungle wall. The remote drones which are supposed to repair the damage are malfunctioning in this area, and the Doctor picks one up for later study. In the meantime, he decides to use Panoquai's time-cloak to explore further. Left alone, Izzy and Destrii share life stories, and seem to hit it off, as they both left their own worlds to seek adventure. When Panoquai awakens, Destrii and Izzy force him to lead them to a transmat, which takes them to the central eye-station; there, Destrii finds a machine which she claims is a telepathic transmitter Izzy can use to locate the Doctor. Izzy allows Destrii to connect her to the machine - and it transfers her mind into Destrii's body, and vice versa. Destrii is in fact on the run, and she intends to destroy her old body, throwing her pursuers off the trail while she escapes with the Doctor in Izzy's body. She finds herself unable to shoot and kill her old body, and thus sets the machine to overload and explode. She shoots Panoquai as she goes, but with the last of his strength, he releases Izzy so she can take revenge against Destrii.

Inside the floating eye, the Doctor finds hundreds of beings like Panoquai - some of whom are restrained and are vowing revenge. Just as he reaches the Gorolith's chamber, the time-cloak is discovered and forced back into phase, and the Doctor is taken prisoner by bipedal Mobox wearing the clothing of the Ophidians. Given the opportunity to make a final statement, he requests confirmation of his suspicions, which are correct; the Ophidians are dying, and intend to transfer their race's minds into stronger bodies. They have thus kidnapped several space travellers and used a psionic field to revert them to an animalistic state in order to determine which are the strongest. The world-snake Ophidius is now taking them all to the Mobox homeworld, where they will use their psionic agitators to transform the entire race into beasts, unable to resist when the Ophidians take over their bodies.

The Doctor creates a distraction and flees, having slipped the malfunctioning spider-drone into the control systems; thus, while the Ophidians pursue him, the drone causes the anti-grav systems and psionic agitators to fail. The eye crashes into the jungle, where the Ophidians' victims find their intelligence returning. Enraged at what has been done to them, they attack the eye-station and begin to slaughter the Ophidians, ignoring the Doctor's pleas for mercy. He frees the Mobox who have been transferred into Ophidian bodies, telling them to hide until their own kind stop killing every Ophidian in sight. He then tries to deactivate the Gorolith before it can trigger Ophidius' self-destruct circuits, but is attacked by its organic defences. At the last moment, "Izzy" apparently appears and guns down the Gorolith, saving the Doctor's life. He is taken aback by her casual display of violence, and tricks her into slipping up, revealing that she is really Destrii. Destrii tries to force the Doctor to take her back to the TARDIS, but then her crimes catch up to her. On her way to find the Doctor she was confronted by an angry Mobox, and killed it when it tried to prevent her from escaping - but this was witnessed by the Mobox's lover. The grief-stricken Mobox tracks her down just as the real Izzy arrives - and Izzy, still in Destrii's body, watches in horror as her old body is blasted to ashes.

Characters

 * Eighth Doctor
 * Izzy Sinclair
 * Destrii
 * The Gorolith
 * Panoquai
 * B'rostt
 * K'yruss
 * Boris

Worldbuilding

 * In the TARDIS wardrobe, Izzy wears clothing that used to belong to Leela, Jamie McCrimmon, and Zoe Heriot.
 * The Andrallis Nebula is an area of space that contained nothing but cosmic gas for half a dozen light years.
 * Destrii watched Bonanza, Rawhide, Wonder Woman and Lost in Space when she was young.
 * Izzy compares the Andrallis Nebula to the opening credits of Battlestar Galactica.

Continuity

 * Izzy mentions the Doctor having "a girlfriend back on Earth". (COMIC: The Fallen)
 * Much like Izzy, Destrii vomits after her first ride in a transmat. (COMIC: The Keep)
 * Izzy still dosn't know how to swim. (COMIC: Tooth and Claw, The Fallen)