The Forest Bride (comic story)

The Forest Bride was a comic story published in Doctor Who Magazine in 2021. Starring the Thirteenth Doctor, it was the first strip to be explicitly set after the on-screen departures of Ryan Sinclair and Graham O'Brien, with the strip being a Thirteenth Doctor and Yasmin Khan-led story.

Behind the scenes, it marked the end of the main comic strip's second hiatus, starting in March, brought about by the struggles of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Part one
Deep within a thick, lush forest filled with wildlife, a barefooted young woman wearing a green dress and flower crown sprints in panic before catching her foot on a tree root and falling to the ground. She is caught by a group of people, also wearing all green, who grab her and tell her she should feel honoured and should go through their ritual willingly. As the group's elder looks on, a bard sings about their law requiring a fair maiden to be inducted as the forest's wife, and the woman yells as two people push her towards a tree.

One year later, the Thirteenth Doctor lands her TARDIS in the forest but chooses to stay behind to fix the TARDIS biscuit dispenser while Yasmin Khan goes to look around. She relaxes upon taking an apple and hearing the sound of a party nearby, joining the green-clothed people in song and dance for their Bridal Day. However, she is interrupted by the sound of a scream and sprints to join them, finding a second young woman captured.

Meanwhile, the Doctor, finished with repairs, searches for Yaz but is distracted by seeing a series of faces engraved in the trees' bark. She wonders about their purpose and is disturbed further upon that seeing the final face is screaming with an arm reaching out of the wood. Hearing the sound of running, the Doctor bumps into the young woman Yaz found, who explains she had been told to run as her captors are held off. The Doctor immediately realises the woman was saved by Yaz.

However, Yaz has already been caught by the forest elders, who tell her that everyone knows about their pact to return the forest's kindness with a bride. With the previous woman having run away, the elders decide to use Yaz instead, forcibly changing her into the green dress of the forest bride and forcibly manoeuvring her towards the closest tree.

Characters

 * Thirteenth Doctor
 * Yasmin Khan

Events

 * The forest is having a Bridal Day.

Food and beverages

 * The TARDIS has a biscuit dispenser. Biscuits it dispenses include fig rolls, garibaldis, and ginger nuts.

Places

 * A woman asks Yaz if she comes from the Thaos Woods or the Lomek Valley. Yaz claims she comes from "the Sheff Field".
 * The Doctor once tried to throw a tea party for Yaz's birthday in Boston in 1773.
 * The Doctor wonders if the faces in the trees are like "a tree version of Mount Rushmore".

Miscellaneous

 * The Doctor says Yaz has a "heart of gold" and a "backbone of Sheffield steel".
 * The Doctor claims to own a form of bug spray that turns its user into a giant bug in case of emergencies.

Original print details

 * (Publication with page count and closing captions)


 * DWM 570 (6 pages): To be continued!

Continuity

 * The TARDIS has a biscuit dispenser. (TV: The Ghost Monument)