The Fallen (comic story)

The Fallen was the opening Doctor Who Magazine comic story of 1999. It was also the first non-parodic DWM story without a Threshold connection in several years. It shared many aspects of a televised "series opener", in that it was a "jumping-on" point for people who knew nothing of the previous Eighth Doctor continuity. It was thus the beginning of a new story arc — the first of the final batch of DWM strips in black-and-white. The events in this story would conclude in The Glorious Dead, after which the DWM strip relaunched as a colour comic strip.

In many ways a sequel to the television movie, it was the only story other than the movie and The Body Politic to use Dr Grace Holloway in more than a flashback or cameo. The story also introduced a of the Master, as well as the character of Leighton Woodrow. Both would appear again during the Eighth Doctor's DWM run.

Summary
A year after the events of the TV movie, the Doctor finds scientists working to splice human and Time Lord DNA.

Plot
The TARDIS lands in London in the year 2001, and as the Doctor and Izzy walk past a manic street preacher, Izzy learns that the Doctor has never actually seen the movie 2001. She has to return to the TARDIS to fetch her glasses, but there, she is accosted by soldiers. The Doctor hears gunfire break out, returns to the alley to find it deserted, and is then arrested by Duncan of MI6 and his ally, Dr Grace Holloway. Leighton Woodrow, the head of MI6, allows Grace to tell the Doctor what’s happened, and he is horrified to learn that Grace has been conducting experiments on the tissue she scraped off her arm after their encounter with the Master in San Francisco. After all the hints the Doctor had dropped about her glorious future, she had concluded that her destiny was to splice Time Lord and human DNA together and find a way for human beings to regenerate. Nobody but MI6 was interested in her work, and even though she realised they intended only to create an army of shapeshifting spies, she’d gone too far to back out. But nine days ago, her associate Dr Donald Stark vanished from a locked laboratory, and ever since then people have been vanishing from the streets.

The Doctor confirms Grace’s worst fears. The Master wasn’t in a Time Lord body at all; he had possessed the body of a morphant, a shape-shifting animal native to Skaro, and now Donald Stark has tested the procedure on himself and has become a human-morphant hybrid. Stark is now being driven mad by the memories of the people he’s eaten to increase his body mass; he has already eaten the entire platoon which attempted to capture Izzy, but when he tries to eat Izzy as well, he finds an image of the Doctor in her mind, and recognises him from Grace’s story...

The Doctor realises that Stark is now living in the Effra, London’s underground river. It comes to the surface in Bradwell Park, and MI6 evacuate the inhabitants (including the manic street preacher), using a terrorist bomb scare as a cover story. The Doctor advises using carbon dioxide gas as a weapon, but when Stark arrives, he is holding Izzy prisoner and the Doctor is forced to surrender. The carbon dioxide proves useless until Grace throws a canister into Stark’s mouth and Duncan shoots it, causing an explosion of gas that cripples Stark. The now completely insane Stark drops the Doctor and Izzy and retreats through the Effra to the Thames. The Doctor seizes a helicopter filled with CO2 canisters, planning to crash it into Stark’s body and kill him. At the last moment, Woodrow points out that the helicopter has an eject button, and the Doctor thus escapes moments before the helicopter collides with Stark and explodes.

Later, the Doctor apologises to Grace for meddling in her life, and she promises to torch all that remains of the morphant DNA. The Doctor gives her a whistle so she can call him if she ever needs him again, but as he and Izzy depart, the Doctor is left with a nagging feeling that he’s overlooked something. Meanwhile, Woodrow finds the remains of Duncan lying on the Thames; last seen confronting the street preacher, who’d appeared in a security zone for the third time in 24 hours, Duncan is now dead, his body shrunken to the size of a doll...

Characters

 * Eighth Doctor
 * Izzy Sinclair
 * Grace Holloway
 * Leighton Woodrow
 * Duncan
 * Donald Stark
 * Donald Stark

Continuity

 * Grace Holloway last appeared (and first met the Doctor) in TV: Doctor Who.