The Final Chapter (comic story)

The Final Chapter is a Doctor Who Magazine comic story featuring the Eighth Doctor, Fey Truscott-Sade and Izzy Sinclair.

Summary
Fey and Izzy return the Doctor to Gallifrey, where he enters the Matrix to save himself. When an Academy dropout takes an unhealthy interest in him, the Doctor and his companions are lured into a society that threatens the existence of Gallifrey... and Rassilon himself.

Plot
Fey uses the TARDIS manual to take the Doctor to Gallifrey, where his mind is placed in the Matrix while his lifestream is purged of the toxins in his system. While the Doctor rests, Overseer Luther -- the eyes and ears of the Capitol -- contacts Castellan Tenion to warn her that the lunatic Xanti is approaching the Doctor. Xanti, an Academy dropout, is convinced that he is being stalked by a secret society called the Elysians, and that only the Doctor can save him; but when he arrives, the Elysians teleport in and try to kill the Doctor. The Matrix agent Shayde arrives and guns down one of the Elysians, but the others capture Xanti, the “Template”, and take Izzy as a hostage while they escape.

Within the Matrix, the Doctor confronts Rassilon about the box given to the Threshold, and learns what it contained. Rassilon then warns the Doctor that the galaxy’s High Evolutionaries have all experienced visions of a militant Gallifrey that rules all Time and Space, and sends the Doctor’s mind back to his healed body to face the threat. The captive Elysian turns out to be a clone of Xanti, and Luther asks the Doctor to help him investigate; perhaps Xanti’s father Uriel, who committed himself to an asylum shortly after the boy’s birth, will know something useful. The Doctor finds that his old enemy Tubal Cain is now the Director of Calm, and Cain, apparently reluctantly, allows him to commune with Uriel’s sleeping mind. When it seems that the Doctor cannot escape from Uriel’s madness, Fey follows him in -- and on Luther’s orders, Cain severs the connection to their bodies, trapping them both in Uriel’s mind.

Uriel himself saves the Doctor and Fey from the demons of his guilt, which take the form of Xanti and the Elysians. Uriel explains that he and Luther were members of a secret society called the Final Chapter, who planned to overturn Rassilon’s principle of non-interference. An army of clones was to be grown from Uriel’s biodata and used to seize control of Gallifrey, but when Uriel saw the face of his first child, Xanti, his military ambitions evaporated. He thus enlisted Xanti in a Chapterhouse and fled to the Quantum of Solace to hide from his guilt. Uriel helps Fey and the Doctor to escape from his madness, and Fey knocks out Cain and helps the Doctor to investigate Luther’s background. It turns out that Luther himself built most of the current Capitol, over the remains of Old Gallifrey.

The Doctor and Fey take the TARDIS to Luther’s Watchtower to confront him, only to find that they’re too late. Xanti is a living link to the Eye of Harmony, and Luther has placed him in the heart of the Watchtower, a TARDIS which he intends to pilot back to the start of the Time Lords’ history. The Watchtower will materialise around the old Gallifrey and replace it with a new world run by a military quorum, and Luther will rule the Universe. As the Watchtower goes back to Gallifrey, Day One, Xanti -- who can see the future -- tells Izzy not to be sad, and uses the telepathic link with his clones to turn them against Luther. As the Elysians turn on Luther, the Doctor opens up the doors of the Watchtower, but as Luther is sucked out into the Time Vortex, he flings his trident through Xanti’s chest, killing him. Without a living time brain at its core, the Watchtower cannot return to the present, and the Doctor realises he’ll have to take Xanti’s place. But Shayde then arrives to pass on the Matrix Lords’ thanks for the Doctor’s sacrifice, and the Doctor asks him for a favour...

Moments later, the Doctor returns to the TARDIS, sets the co-ordinates, and then distracts Izzy and Fey. When they next turn around, they see the Doctor on the scanner screen, telling them that he’ll see them in the present. He then connects himself to the Watchtower and pilots it back to present-day Gallifrey, but the stress of the journey is apparently too much, and Izzy and Fey emerge from the TARDIS to see the traumatically injured Doctor regenerate into his ninth incarnation...

Characters

 * Eighth Doctor
 * Izzy Sinclair
 * Fey Truscott-Sade
 * Shayde
 * Rassilon
 * Dakon Theka
 * Thane of Kordar
 * Bedevere
 * Morvane
 * Demoiselle Drin of the Order of the Black Sun
 * Luther
 * Castellan Tenion
 * Xanti
 * Uriel
 * Tubal Cain

Continuity

 * The events of COMIC: The Stockbridge Horror are referred to, and the High Evolutionaries of COMIC: The Tides of Time appear.
 * The Threshold's clients in COMIC: Fire and Brimstone are retconned to be Rassilon and the Evolutionaries rather than the Time Lords, which is elaborated on in COMIC: Wormwood.
 * The events of the Black Sun War are mentioned. (COMIC: Star Death, 4-D War, Black Sun Rising)
 * The ceremony at the machine-heart through which Rassilon and a select group of early Gallifreyans officially became Time Lords, "locking in" the structure of history, is briefly glimpsed. This event would be described in more detail as part of the anchoring of the thread in PROSE: The Book of the War.