Witch Hunt (comic story)

 was a comic story published in Doctor Who Magazine. It was the final regular DWM comic story to feature Clara Oswald as the Twelfth Doctor's companion.

Summary
to be added

Part one
A young girl is running with tears streaming down her face, surrounded by monsters. She runs into a witch, who is revealed to be Clara Oswald, and it turns out they are at the Coal Hill Halloween fair. Clara asks what the matter is, and the girl, who is called Susie, tells Clara her cat has gone missing and 'the lady' said she'd never see him again. Clara tells Susie everything will be fine and they go to find the cat, unaware someone is watching them, holding a jester head on a stick.

Clara is on the phone, recalling what just happened, as the duo went to the fortune tellers tent, where Clara mistakenly believes the fortune teller upset Susie. Susie then informs Clara it was a little fat lady. Still on the phone, Clara says she wrote it off as a mystery, until Archie Jones told her one of the teachers had been attacked. She rushed to see what had happened and had found Mr Perkins, dressed as a Devil, sitting there dazed and very confused. She says how the fair was supposed to be a fundraising event for a new ICT suite, but hardly anyone turned up. She asked around for a description of the attacker, and thought he sounded like a seventeenth century puritan, as exactly that bursts into the room.

On the other end of the phone, the Twelfth Doctor dismisses it as someone stirring up trouble, as his entry for the great martian bake-off is ready. He then realises no-one is replying on the other end, and he rushes to the fair, to find all the children under attack from a huge bear. Elsewhere, in a forest, Clara wakes up dazed to find the puritan demanding to know where she sent him. Clara tries to explain it's all a mistake and she's not a witch, as the puritan's guards grab her. The puritan remarks he has evidence to the contrary, looking at Clara's drink, jokingly labelled Witch's brew.

The Doctor and the children are hiding from the bear and one of the boys says he stepped on a crack in the pavement and made it appear. He goes on to explain how superstitions are coming true, but the Doctor dismisses it as nonsense. He then asks for someone to drop a penny on the floor, and tells the boys to run. The Doctor goes up to the bear, and remarks he has a lucky horseshoe, and picked up a penny off the ground. He also says how technically his regenerations mean he is lucky number seven doubled and calls himself the king of good luck. The bear then falls through a hole in the ground, and the Doctor is informed he needs to complete the witch hunt to find Clara.

Clara is tied up and being interrogated by the puritan. The puritan tells of how he was conjured to a land of demons, and saw the devil himself, who was actually just Mr Perkins dressed up, and how he followed the witch hunt and found Clara. Clara asks what he's going to do to her, and the Puritan asks if she can swim.

The Doctor completes the witch hunt, and enters the needlework room and finds a little fat lady in a jesters costume and in possession of the jester stick sitting on the table. She introduces herself as Miss Chief, and tells the Doctor she can travel faster than the speed of time. She says she brought in a real witchfinder for the witch hunt, and remarks she then sent them both back in time, but Clara let herself be captured. The Doctor realises Clara is stranded in the past, but Miss Chief dismisses it, absent mindedly. The Doctor asks which witchfinder it was, and learns it was Matthew Hopkins. He asks Miss Chief if she knows how many innocents he killed, but Miss Chief says it was fine and he was just offering to take Clara for a swim. The Doctor proclaims that was one of his methods, to swim a witch and that if they were guilty they floated and were burnt, and if they were innocent they sank and drowned, just as Clara, in the past, is tied up and thrown into a lake.

Part Two
to be added

Characters

 * Susie White
 * Clara Oswald
 * Mrs Temple
 * Archie Jones
 * Mr Perkins
 * Matthew Hopkins
 * Twelfth Doctor
 * Miss Chief
 * Agnes Leech
 * Danny Pink
 * Smudge
 * Purnima Parry

Original print details

 * (Publication with page count and closing captions)


 * DWM 497 (12 pages) Next: Sink or Swim?
 * DWM 498 (12 pages) Next: Cat and Mouse!
 * DWM 499 (12 pages) The End.

Continuity

 * The Doctor finds a copy of the book The French Revolution in Coal Hill School. (TV: An Unearthly Child, Remembrance of the Daleks)
 * The Doctor still has his sonic screwdriver. He had previously abandoned using it when he gave one to the boy Davros, (TV: The Magician's Apprentice) but retrieved a copy of it from Clara last September. (COMIC: Clara Oswald and the School of Death)
 * The Doctor says he won't forget Clara, an ironic statement as that is exactly what happens later on in his travels. (TV: Hell Bent)
 * Clara hallucinates Danny Pink and references his death. (TV: Dark Water) Later, she has a computer lab at Coal Hill School named in his memory.