Blue Skies Thinking (comic story)

Summary
The Doctor suspects something is wrong when the TARDIS lands on the supposedly unpopulated planet Thelka in the year 2495 and he finds it populated. No sooner do the Doctor and Amy Pond leave the TARDIS than they find the TARDIS being painted orange and their blue clothes (Amy’s jacket and the Doctor’s tie) removed, burnt and referred to as illegal items. Arrested for their crime of possession of blue things, the Doctor soon realises by the state of the rusty handcuffs that it is a long time since the rules were challenged. Producing a pen from his pocket he squirts blue ink over one of the inhabitants which had the surprising result of a blue entity bursting out from the body and, as the Doctor and Amy escape in a ‘borrowed’ buggy, pursuing them towards a weather control station's large mast. The Doctor explains that the entity that came out of the chest was a cyanophobic (a creature that doesn’t like blue) and has somehow possessed the leaders of the colony. As they head towards the mast, pursued by the colony, the Doctor hurriedly changes the settings of the transmitter which is thinning out the atmosphere causing it to absorb too much red and green spectrum light. With a few modifications using his sonic screwdriver, the Doctor redresses the balance and blue skies quickly reappear above the planet. Exposure to the colour blue sees the Aranjia (creatures from another galaxy who arrived through a wormhole), forced to leave their host bodies as their energies are weakened and they are forced to retreat. The advance party of Aranjia return through the wormhole which the Doctor blocks by extending the spectrum so that they can’t return. The colony is grateful and unusually the Doctor asks for their help – by repainting the TARDIS blue!

Characters

 * The Doctor
 * Amy Pond

Original print details

 * Publication with page count and closing captions


 * 1) DWA Issue 176 (4 pages) NEXT WEEK – Dragon danger in Japan!
 * No reprints to date.

Continuity

 * The Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to restore the controls of the weather control station, enabling the blue skies to return to the planet unfiltered.
 * In a nod to Amy’s hair colour the colonists all appear to be ginger but apart from the three colonist rulers the others could have been as a result of the light spectrum being filtered.