Oblivion (comic story)

Oblivion is a Doctor Who Magazine comic story featuring the Eighth Doctor and the departure of Izzy Sinclair.

Summary
The Doctor and Izzy's adventures reach their apotheosis as the TARDIS is brought to the mysterious world known only as Oblivion.

Plot
Izzy Sinclair awakens in a bizarre court populated by grotesque animal/human hybrids who believe her to be the Primatrix Destrii, daughter of the Matriax Scalamanthia - a violent matriarch who orders her "daughter" to prepare for her coming wedding. Outside the court, the Doctor's TARDIS materialises in an urban wasteland festooned with skulls, on a world which isn't listed in the TARDIS data banks. Fey Truscott-Sade sets off in search of Izzy, but Destrii then flees, telling a group of passing peasants that the Eighth Doctor is from the castle. The angry peasants attack him, but he is rescued by the leonine Jodafra, Destrii's uncle, who detected the arrival of the Doctor's TARDIS. Jodafra is also a scientist who built the chronon capsule that first enabled Destrii to escape Oblivion, and as her test flight has proven that his theories are sound, he needs only a suitable power source in order to escape the planet himself.

Fey enters the palace, where Scalamanthia, assuming that she's trying to help Destrii escape, orders Helioth and Hassana, the twin energy-based beings who kidnapped Izzy from Kyrol, to destroy the intruder. With Shayde's guidance, Fey survives the assault and retreats to safety outside the city's protective dome. Outside the city, the twins are no longer bound to obey the Matriax, and instead they greet Fey as one who is like them, two minds co-existing as one. Fey explains why she's there, and the twins return to the city to "fix" the broken Destrii.

Destrii learns that this is the day of her wedding and rushes to the palace, unwilling to see her old body destroyed. Izzy is shocked when she's marched into a killing arena where she must prove her worthiness to wed by fighting a duel to the death with the vengeful Lady Tetronnia. At the last moment, Destrii arrives and stabs Tetronnia in the back, and then Hassana and Helioth arrive and use their powers to switch Destrii and Izzy's minds back into their own bodies. In the process, they momentarily share each other's memories. Destrii sees how Izzy withdrew into herself after learning she was adopted, and was never able to trust herself or reveal her homosexuality, and Izzy sees how Destrii was punished and abused all her life, forced to fight duels to the death in the arena and treated with reverence and fear by everyone but her uncle Jodafra.

The Doctor and Jodafra arrive in the arena just as the enraged Scalamanthia begins to beat her daughter for making a mockery of their traditions -- but Destrii, finally pushed too far, stabs her mother to death. At the moment of the Matriax's death, a horde of creatures just like the twins, ten billion strong, descends upon the city, melting away anyone and anything in their path. Fey rescues the others and takes them back to Jodafra's laboratory, where he explains that the ruling families of this world once unleashed upon their enemies a biological weapon that stripped away its victims' minds. The elite sealed themselves inside this citadel to wait until the plague burned itself out, but instead it transformed its victims into psychic generators with no sense of individual identity. The Horde's power shielded Oblivion from the rest of the universe and transformed the royal family into monsters, and they've been forced to fight for the Horde's amusement ever since. Presumably some vestige of memory kept them deferential to their Matriax, and there's nothing holding them back in the wake of her death.

Destrii, shaken by her experiences, surrenders to the Horde, but they pour all of their energy into her. The Doctor realises that the people of the Horde have no identities of their own, and that the gladiatorial combats were meant to weed out a leader. Destrii now has all the power of the Horde at her disposal, but as she prepares to strike back at the cruel palace that destroyed her childhood, Izzy reminds her that she's always wanted to be free, and as long as she's the core of the Horde, they'll be with her for the rest of her life. Destrii, confused, follows her uncle back to his laboratory, where the Doctor has just realised the truth; Jodafra sent Destrii into the Vortex as a distraction, and while the twins were searching for her, he constructed a psionic extractor with which he intends to use to drain the psychic energy out of the Horde and into his chronon capsule. Realising that even her uncle has used her, Destrii makes her own decision what to do next - she grabs the capsule with Jodafra inside, carries it up above the city, and draws the Horde into it. The capsule vanishes in a burst of psychic energy, and Destrii recovers inside, mortal once again. Now she and her uncle are free to travel throughout time and space together.

The surviving courtiers flee in terror as the peasants raid the palace, realising that their rule is at an end. Izzy has come to terms with who she really is at last, and, after kissing Fey farewell, she asks the Doctor to take her home so she can set things right with her adoptive parents. The Doctor returns her to Stockbridge at the moment she first started travelling with him, and after bidding him a fond farewell, she returns home, having grown and learned from her travels.

Characters

 * Eighth Doctor
 * Izzy Sinclair
 * Fey Truscott-Sade
 * Destrii
 * Shayde
 * Matriax Scalamanthia
 * Count Jodafra
 * Helioth
 * Hassana
 * Duke Borvathorius
 * Lady Tetronnia
 * Lord Kaluthis
 * Dolt
 * Sandra Sinclair
 * Les Sinclair
 * Maxwell Edison

Worldbuilding

 * The Doctor compares Izzy's past trousers to Rupert the Bear's.

Continuity

 * Izzy's last memories before awakening on Oblivion were of being at Alpha's secret Dalek society on Kyrol. (COMIC: Children of the Revolution)
 * Until she sees her in-person, Izzy still thought Destrii had been killed by the Mobox. (COMIC: Ophidius)
 * Destrii informs the Doctor that Izzy told her about Grace Holloway. (COMIC: Ophidius)
 * The Doctor remembers his promise to taker Izzy to the Library of Alexandria. (COMIC: The Company of Thieves)
 * Before returning her to the very time she left Stockbridge, the Doctor repeats Izzy's joke that he "really [hasn't] got this time-travel lark sussed out" to her. (COMIC: By Hook or By Crook)
 * When asked about her day, Izzy thinks back on her travels, seeing images of the Toymaker, (COMIC: Endgame) the Pariah, (COMIC: Wormwood) Varney, (COMIC: Tooth and Claw) Donald Stark, (COMIC: The Fallen) Frida Kahlo, (COMIC: The Way of All Flesh) Sister Chastity, (COMIC: Fire and Brimstone) Kroton, (COMIC: The Company of Thieves) Emperor Zero, (COMIC: The Autonomy Bug) Sato Katsura, (COMIC: The Road to Hell) and a Torajenn. (COMIC: The Way of All Flesh)