Weapons of Past Destruction (comic story)

Weapons of Past Destruction
Doctor:	Ninth Doctor
Companion(s):	Rose, Jack
Main enemy:	Arnora
Main setting:	Excroth system, Fluren's World, the Perpetual City and Traxis
Key crew
Publisher:	Titan Comics
Editor:	Andrew James
Writer:	Cavan Scott
Designer:	Rob Farmer
Artist:	Blair Shedd Rachael Stott
Colourist:	Blair Shedd Anang Setyawan
Letterer:	Richard Starkings Jimmy Betancourt
Release details
Printed in:	Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor #1-5
Release date:	1 April - 2 December 2015
Cover date:	April - December 2015
Reprinted in:	[[reprint::Tales from the TARDIS #1-3|'Tales from the TARDIS #1-3]]
Traded in:	Weapons of Past Destruction
Format:	Comic - 5 parts
Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor
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Weapons of Past Destruction was the five-part story of Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor comic strip mini-series published in 2015.

Summary

Leaving World War II behind, the Ninth Doctor, Rose and Captain Jack discover that Time Lord technology, lost in the wake of the Time War, is being sold on the intergalactic black market!

Now the threat of a NEW temporal war brews on the horizon. Can the Doctor stop history repeating itself?​

Plot

Part one

Having just saved Blitz-stricken London from the threat of a damaged Chula warship and its runaway nanogenes, and with Jack having revealed his inner heroism by nearly blowing himself up while towing a German bomb into space, the Doctor, Rose and Jack are taking a tour of the universe, hoping for more sightseeing opportunities and fewer occasions of near-certain death.

However, the three arrive at Excroth to find the planet destroyed, despite the fact that they should have arrived "slap bang in the middle of the Second Excrothian Tetrarchy, a period of unparalleled scientific enlightenment". Almost immediately, a massive ship decloaks and captures the TARDIS with a tractor beam; the Doctor storms out of his timeship to confront a platoon of massive robotic Lect, which confine the Doctor, Rose, and Jack inside a localised force field and demand to know why the travellers have come to the Excroth system.

The Doctor, however, uses his sonic screwdriver to activate Jack's vortex manipulator and teleport the three to the safety of a storage bay. There, Rose finds a tachyon inhibitor, which, the Doctor explains, protects "its wearer from cause and effect", and the Doctor explains that "the whole system is buzzing with chronon particles". Moments later, the storage bay's artificial gravity fails as a squadron of armored centaur-like Unon attack the ship.

The Doctor attempts to lead Rose and Jack back to the TARDIS, but the three are intercepted by a group of Lect, who order the Doctor and his companions to leave the ship. Another moment later, one of the Lect is destroyed by an Unon fighter, who blasts a hole in the ship, creating a decompression leak that nearly drags Jack and Rose out into space. Rose begins to glow when the tachyon inhibitor on her wrist activates, and one of the Lect reactivates the ship's external shield, saving the two humans. The Doctor offers to help the Lect escape their damaged ship even as another of the robots is destroyed by an Unon fighter, but the Lect insist that his kind "never run from battle" before attempting to terminate the Doctor.

Jack knocks the Doctor out of the way, blasting off the Lect's arm with his sidearm before the three escape and head for the TARDIS while Rose demands to know why she started glowing when the tachyon inhibitor activated. When they are intercepted by another Lect, Jack blasts it with his sidearm before the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to destroy Jack's weapon, and the three of them finally make their way back to the TARDIS. The Doctor and Jack rush into the timeship, but Rose's jacket becomes snagged on the severed arm of the destroyed Lect as the police box door slams shut. The TARDIS dematerialises just as the Lect ship is destroyed, causing Rose and the Lect to be thrown directly into the Time Vortex, where the tachyon inhibitor on Rose's wrist activates.

Part two

As Rose falls through the Vortex, the Doctor tries to materialise the TARDIS around her, but only her jacket appears within. Meanwhile, Rose wakes up next to a squid-like alien. The Doctor refuses to believe she is dead, and uses the TARDIS to track the DNA from her jacket. However, the coordinates it finds would place her in the blast radius of a nascent supernova Beart-54 in the Beart system. Jack materialises the TARDIS on a nearby planetoid, Fluren's World. They find the sun's nova is being held back by a time bubble, technology that hasn't existed since the Time War.

Jack takes the Doctor to the Fluren Temporal Bazaar, a black market for time weapons. There, they find Rose, who has been stuck there for four days. She fell through the Vortex, and the tachyon inhibitor protected her from the time winds. Glom, the squid alien, picked her up with his ship's time scoops. The Doctor recognises one of Glom's weapons, and realises they're all from Gallifrey. He flips Glom's table in anger, and steps up to make an announcement. He's offering his Time Lord mind for sale, in an attempt to attract the Unon. Instead, the Lect appear.

Part three

The Doctor tries to open the Lect robotic armour with his screwdriver to see who he is dealing with, but he is not quick enough. While Jack and the Doctor wrestle with the Lect, the Unon arrive and engage the Lect in a fight without so much as a warning.

The ensuing chaotic battle between the Lect, the Unon and the security guards of the Fluren Temporal Bazaar triggers the emergency protocol. The time bubble that have been keeping the supernova in check will disperse in ten minutes. All the traders, including Glom, hurry to leave Fluren's World.

The Doctor seems to pay little heed to this development. He is busy trying to get the attention of the Unon. At the same time, Jack notices that the Lect are loading the TARDIS into their ship.

An Unon directs a blast of energy at the Doctor that completely dissolves him, leaving no trace of the Time Lord. Rose, horrified, cries: "You killed him!", while Jack drags her away from the commotion in a last minute attempt to save at least the TARDIS.

But, unbeknownst to both Rose and Jack, the Doctor was not vaporised. Instead, he was dumped into a sub-dimensional void. He can tell that he is being watched by someone unseen. This observer is Arnora, the mother superior of the Unon. She knows a lot about the Time Lords, Time War and the Doctor himself. As if that knowledge is not enough, she tries to get into his head, causing some memories to resurface that are best left forgotten. She wants to learn how the Doctor has survived the Time War.

Back on the Fluren's World, the Lect demand that Rose and Jack open the TARDIS. Just as Rose begins protesting, the door of the TARDIS opens. But it is not the Doctor inside. It is Jack. While the Lect and Rose are baffled by the second Jack and with only ten seconds before the collapse of the time bubble, the Jack on the ground understands the hint of the Jack from the TARDIS and operates his vortex manipulator. He manages to circumvent the TARDIS defences and transport himself into the TARDIS and a couple of seconds into the past. Ignoring the ill effects of his little trick, he runs to the TARDIS door and opens it from the inside. Now he is the Jack in the TARDIS. Rose makes a run for the TARDIS but cannot reach it in time before the time bubble deactivates.

Arnora demonstrates to the Doctor what happened, accusing him that once again he left his friends to burn.

Part four

to be added

Part five

to be added

Characters

• Ninth Doctor
• Rose Tyler
• Jack Harkness
• Glom
• Arnora
• Evja
• Borga
• Marleth

References

• Rose calls Earth the Doctor's favourite planet.
• The Doctor's psycho telemeter tracks the time-space origin of DNA fragments.
• Fluren's World in the Vienna Cluster is the host of the Fluren Temporal Bazaar.
• Species at the Fluren Temporal Bazaar include a Raxacoricofallapatorian, a Blowfish, an Amstron, a J'arrodic, and some Hoix.
• Organizations selling objects at the Bazaar include Bah'raith Industries, Source Equation Defense System, Granex Community Defense, Galatron Trade Corporation, Temporal Studies Inc., Oseidon Robotics, Glom Enterprises and Forge Industries. One sign is labeled Bad Wolf Bargains.
• The Fluren Temporal Bazaar has a hypercube for sale.
• The Doctor claims to know the Lost City of Sakkrat's post code and Colonel Sanders' secret ingredient.
• The Doctor was the Time-Tot hide and seek champion for forty-two years in a row. He claimed it used to drive the Rani nuts.
• The Corsair had a sub-dimensional void he kept in 23rd century Swindon.
• The Doctor calls a charging Unon Champion the Wonder Horse.
• The Doctor mentions tea and HobNobs.
• When Jack damages the Lect keeping the hull of the spaceship intact, the Doctor sarcastically calls him Einstein.
• According to the Doctor, Rose's mum, Jackie Tyler, liked to shop at the Elm Grove Market, where bargains were good but dodgy.
• When the Doctor tried to mimic Jackie, Rose told him that Dick Van Dyke wanted his accent back.
• Jack knows a good dry cleaner near Epsilon Volantis.
• When Jack walks out of the TARDIS brandishing a gun, the Doctor says that this wouldn't be a good Connery impression and would barely pass for Moore.
• Arnora mentions the home planets of the opponents in the Time War: Gallifrey and Skaro.
• When the Doctor and Jack are suddenly transported to Traxis, the Doctor says: "I'm guessing we're not in Kansas any more?"
• On Traxis, dinosaurs, mammoths, neanderthals and robots all coexisted due to a fracture in time.

Notes

• This is the first Ninth Doctor comic story to be released since Prisoners of Time in 2013, and the first to be released by Titan Comics overall.
• Captain Jack jokingly calls the Doctor "Spock", referring to the character from Star Trek. The actor who played him, Leonard Nimoy, passed away a couple months before the release of the comic mini-series.
• Rose calls Glom "Squidward", a reference to Spongebob Squarepants.
• The Doctor compares Jack to James Bond by mentioning two actors who played him: Sean Connery and Roger Moore.
• Jack criticises how the Doctor negotiates with the Lect by saying: "Hardly the way to make friends or influence people." This is a reference to the book How to Win Friends and Influence People.
• Rose calls armed security "stormtroopers", a reference to Star Wars.
• "Colonel Sanders's secret ingredient" is a reference to the founder of KFC.
• "Champion the Wonder Horse" is a reference to a horse character from film and movies.

Original print details

to be added

Continuity

• This adventure takes place between the episodes The Doctor Dances and Boom Town.
• The Doctor destroys one of Jack's sonic blasters with his sonic screwdriver, telling him he has seen enough weapons to last him several lifetimes and will not let the people who travel with him use them. Jack jokes that he has a "bananas only" policy. (TV: The Doctor Dances)
• The Doctor refers to Jack as Rose's boyfriend. (TV: The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances)
• Jack is wearing the costume he will later wear in Cardiff. (TV: Boom Town)
• Jack jokily calls the Doctor "Spock", a callback to Rose's choice of introduction for the Doctor when introducing him to Jack. (TV: The Empty Child)
• Rose had known that the Doctor would catch her if she fell since he grabbed her hand on Westminster Bridge. (TV: Rose)
• The Doctor refers to the TARDIS outrunning the Big Bang. (TV: Castrovalva)
• In the Fluren Temporal Bazaar there is a vendor called "Bad Wolf Bargains". (TV: Bad Wolf)
• The Doctor has a flashback to the Dalek fleet attacking Gallifrey. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
• Arnora ravages through the Doctor's mind, bringing up memories of the Eighth and War Doctors, as well as the barn where the War Doctor was planning to finish the Time War. (TV: Doctor Who, The Night of the Doctor) Notably, this is the first time he is forced to acknowledge the War Doctor instead of trying to forget him. (TV: The Name of the Doctor)
• This is the earliest appearance of the Hoix in the Doctor's life so far. They were first introduced in TV: Love & Monsters.
• The Doctor mentions taking an evening class to learn how to speak Horse instead of how to speak Mammoth following an advice of Romana. (TV: The Ribos Operation et al.) He doesn't think it will ever come in handy. (TV: A Town Called Mercy)
• The seers of the Unon foresaw many other wars taking the place of the time war, some of the combatants in these wars would be Cybermen (TV: The Tenth Planet et al) and Sontarans (TV: The Time Warrior etc.)
• The Unon also foresaw Jack being shot by the Daleks, coming back to life, (TV: The Parting of the Ways) and sacrificing his grandson, Steven. (TV: Children of Earth: Day Five)
• Rose compares the Lect with Slitheen, (TV: Aliens of London / World War Three) Daleks (TV: Dalek) and Shadeys (COMIC: A Groatsworth of Wit), who were also hiding behind armour and disguises. She calls them all bullies and cowards.
• The Unon defend the Web of Time. (AUDIO: Neverland, Zagreus etc.)