Doctor Who – Fire and Brimstone
Issues: 251 – 255
Story: Alan Barnes
Pencils: Martin Geraghty
Inks: Robin Smith
Lettering: Elitta Fell
Editors: Gary Gillatt and Scott Gray
Doctor: Eighth
Companions: Izzy
Episodes: 5
Summary:
Icarus Falling and Ptolemy Muttonchops looks into his augury to look into the gazing pool to see the future. In it, he sees winged demons, a black sun and fire and brimstone… Rather than speak to the leader about it, he speaks instead to his Paragon Sister Chastity. She advises him to keep quiet about his vision for fear of it coming true.
Elsewhere in Icarus Falling, the TARDIS arrives and a rather puzzled Doctor emerges, followed by Izzy. His ship shouldn’t have landed so soon and he wants to know why. Before he can investigate, he and Izzy are captured by armed guards and taken to the Leaderene. The Leaderene demands to know what the Doctor and Izzy are doing on his satelloid and the Doctor tells him that the satellite is one of six revolving around an artificial sun called Crivello’s Cauldron. As he witnessed the launch of the cauldron two hundred years previously and now finds himself on the satellites when he was expecting to be elsewhere, he thinks it’s more than a coincidence. Incoming ships are detected and as the Leaderene prepares to gather what defenses he can, the occupants of the ship start to break in. On the Leaderene’s monitor they watch as daleks pour into the satellite. As the bulkheads are sealed, Muttonchops takes the Doctor to the augury to see his gazing pool which the Doctor identifies as being part of the living being contained within the cauldron. He takes a small sample, which he puts in his coat pocket. The daleks send flying creatures in through the floor of the satellite and one of them attacks the Leaderene. She’s alive but within seconds more of the creatures fly out of her body. As the possessed Leaderene lets the daleks in, Izzy and Sister Chastity do a runner. They encounter the Doctor and Muttonchops and, after the Doctor has explained to Izzy that the flying creature was a Contagium (a dalek device that attacks a biological host to generate nanites, which then take over the host) he gives her his jacket to look after. He then goes off to face the daleks who apparently exterminate him. In reality though, they teleport him to their ship where Marquez (see “The Keep”) greets him. Back on Icarus Falling, Izzy mourns the Doctor but Muttonchops senses that he’s still alive and on the dalek ship. Marquez explains to the Doctor that the Daleks recovered a ship from an alternate universe and discovered that the “pilots” were also daleks but of a different kind. They realised that if they could travel to the alternate universes then they could be masters of EVERYTHING. To travel between universes they needed a collapsed star and a time sensitive. They plan to cut the required elements to control the passageway through the collapsed star from the Doctor’s brain… On Icarus Falling, Izzy plans a rescue mission but is held back by Chastity, in reality a Threshold agent. Chastity revives the unconscious Doctor with the intention of talking to him. The Doctor isn’t keen, he still feels bitter about what they did to Ace. The Threshold explains to Izzy that they need the Doctor to operate the cauldron. They want him to open it, allow the daleks part of the way through and the close it again around them. The only drawback to the plan is that the Doctor will, unfortunately, die as a result of it. The Threshold aren’t concerned about this, they’re working for someone powerful and will only get their reward, a mysterious box, if the daleks are destroyed. Chastity manipulates the Doctor into operating the cauldron but at the last minute the Doctor realises it’s a trap. The Threshold had predicted the Doctor might figure it out and so gave the daleks his location. The daleks, meanwhile, have Muttonchops prisoner and have discovered that he’s not human. They realize that Muttonchops is in reality an offshoot of the cauldron and capable of controlling it. They get Muttonchops to collapse the cauldron and the daleks start to head through. However, the wormhole that they’ve opened is two way and “dalek creatures” swarm out of it and attack the dalek ships. Izzy takes the cauldron sample from the Doctor’s coat and instructs it to get a Threshold ring. It obeys and Izzy snatches up the reward “box” and takes it to the Doctor. The Doctor is saddened but not surprised to see the Seal of Rassilon on the box. As the daleks fight the alternate daleks, the Doctor instructs the Cauldron to go nova. As the TARDIS arrives seemingly out of nowhere, the Doctor and Izzy depart. Chastity manages to open the Time Lord’s box and looks inside. As the cauldron goes Nova, the TARDIS departs. The daleks are completely destroyed and Izzy and the Doctor watch as a new sun is born…
Episode Endings:
One – The face of the enemy is revealed… Daleks!
Two – The daleks exterminate the Doctor.
Three – Chastity is revealed to be an agent of the Threshold.
Four – The Daleks collapse the cauldron. The Threshold are appalled. The daleks have won.
Five – As they watch the new sun, Chastity reminds the Doctor that the final game has yet to be played. He should be prepared, after all, the Threshold are always just around the corner…
Continuity:
The story takes place 200 years after “The Keep” (so sometime in the 53rd century), on a Tuesday.
The Doctor says that the TARDIS’ destination monitor was damaged by “that trouble in the vortex” (presumably “A Life of Matter and Death”). He’s been to Ankh-Morpork. The Threshold know his character very well. There’s an 87.6% chance he’ll put his faith in someone if they’re lissom, auburn-haired and quite a performer. This rises to 94% if he’s had shredded wheat for breakfast.
Izzy is reading Terry Pratchet at the start of the story. Yet again her experiences want to make her sick, this time it’s a combination of the safety-rail-less transporter and Chastity’s speech. She makes more references to Star Trek and this is the first time she’s encountered robot monsters. She’s seen the Alien films, Batman and knows of Lynda Carter (Wonder Woman). She once got to level 29 of Descent.
The bulkheads of Icarus Falling are made of two meters of iron, steel and reinforced kevlar. It will take the daleks approximately 28 minutes to cut through. The daleks hold the Doctor down with tendrons, seemingly living tentacles. The daleks are ruled by the dalek surpreme. Their ships, made of dalekanium, weigh three billion tonnes. Its propulsion units generate the equivalent of 600 erupting volcanoes. The daleks found the craft with the “other” daleks in three centuries ago. It had emerged from a freak spatial rift in the Magellan cluster. Marquez was sent to infiltrate Crivello’s cauldron so they could use it for their own purposes. Their unit of time is still the Rel, a Rel being approximately the same as one second.
The TARDIS’ arrival in a beam of light is very reminiscent of Trial of a Timelord.
Chastity hasn’t had a cigarette in nearly six years. The Threshold can’t travel in time. This means that, for Ground Zero (which took place in 2092), Peri, Sarah and Susan must have been in suspended animation given that they were kidnapped in the twentieth century.
Comments:
Cross, double cross and a cross double cross. “Fire and Brimstone” is one hell of a story, the cliffhangers are impressive (the return of the Threshold is more than welcome) and there are some truly wonderful moments. The threat of the contagium is rather horrifying but the biggest moment in the story comes when the Doctor is exterminated by the daleks. Okay, so they didn’t *really* exterminate him but it made for a wonderful cliffhanger. The Threshold revealed as working for the Time Lords is also something of a shock and the nature of the contents of the box aren’t revealed. Guess the readers would have to wait and find out what it was.
Basically “Fire and Brimstone” is an excellent read, Izzy gets some great lines which bring out the fanboy (or girl) in all of us…
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