The Chromosome Connection (comic story)

Summary
Heather’s friends run outside but Heather feels someone is in trouble so she ventures inside deeper and sees a lady apparition being chased by a glowing monster. Heather knocks her head and is unconscious. She awakened by the Doctor who tells her the apparitions were echoes of the past. They should have passed right through her but didn’t. Heather recounts that the lady was wearing a dress from 1815 in a Regency day dress. The monster was a Mozhtratta, a molecular parasite but he can handle it. Using the sonic screwdriv er, he finds that there are traces of the thing’s DNA on her and that she has some mild fuzzy Vortex radiation on her. He thinks he’s met one of her ancestors and then learns her name…the same last name as Jamie McCrimmon. He doesn’t tell her that he once traveled with a McCrimmon. He tells her that the Mozhtratta has been trapped by residual vortex radiation in her family’s chromosomes ever since it attacked the woman in the past and now it is fighting to get free through Heather. The woman is her great great great great great grandmother. In the TARDIS, he Doctor works to extrapolate the data he scanned from the DNA and worked out precise time and location coordinates. Heather, excited, goes back in time with him to 1815 at High Street but they need to get to Cowgate. They are too late: the thing attacks the woman. Heather starts to feel strange as the thing gains strength and soon it will feed on Heather’s molecules. The Doctor gets to the woman and starts her to focus and fight back. It makes the thing leave for good. He calls McCrimmon stock good stuff. If the vortex energy wasn’t in the woman, the thing would have killed her

Characters

 * The Doctor
 * Heather McCrimmon
 * Mozhtratta
 * Rob
 * Suze

Original print details

 * Publication with page count and closing captions


 * 1) DWA Issue 96 (5 pages)

Continuity
''The Doctor only states that he was going to travel alone in "Planet of the Dead" and by that time he's lost both Heather, and Wolfgang, and possibly others, like Majenta Pryce, also, in the tenth Doctor's final comic strip in Doctor Who Adventures, Heather and Wolfgang mention it has been four years since Heather, and presumably Wolfgang, last saw The Doctor, and as he is about to face his regeneration we can place Heather and Wolgang's travels just after "Journey's End", but before "The Next Doctor" as all the specials, from "The Next Doctor" take place over 3/4 years, thus linking in Heather's statement, we can also link in the Doctor's statement about having "Lost companions" from "Planet of the Dead" and "The Next Doctor" As, at the time of "The Next Doctor" and "Planet of the Dead" both Heather, and Wolfgang, were both lost, to the Doctor as Wolfgang couldn't take travelling anymore and Heather couldn't travel with him as she was forced to stay on Earth because of jilted particles, that would result in her death if she travelled through time. ''
 * In the order of publication, Heather became the Doctor's companion after Donna Noble. Given statements made in the post-Journey's End era regarding the Doctor refusing to take on ongoing companions after Donna, Heather's presence either violates TV continuity, or take place at some earlier point in the Tenth Doctor's life, likely between DW: Voyage of the Damned and Partners in Crime.
 * Mozhtratta would be revealed to have survived his encounter with the Doctor and would return to exact vengence. (DWAM: Dead-line)

Timeline

 * This story takes place after DWBIT: Dark Side of the Moon
 * This story takes place before DWAM: The Aquarius Condition