Uninvited Guest

1 parts (DWM 211) April 1994
Writer: Warwick Gray, Artist: John Ridgway, Editor: Gary Russell 

The Eternal Lord Prospero finds his dinner party interrupted by an uninvited guest - the 7th Doctor.

The Doctor tells the tale of a race who were cruelly destroyed thanks to the influence of the Eternals. 

 
 

Of course, the Eternals show no remorse at the fate of their mortal playthings.

The Doctor gives Prospero a gift - a crystal, which shatters, exposing the Eternals to the space-time vortex and making them mortal. 

The Doctor advises them to start making the most of their now mortal lives, and leaves.

 


The last of the 7th Doctor's regular run in the DWM strip, this one-off strip seems to realign with the TV series rather than the more recent Virgin New Adventures tie-ins that took in the likes of Bernice Summerfield.

Lent a very high brow and adult feel by the always excellent John Ridgway, this is a night-black tale of the 7th Doctor as master manipulator and avenging angel. 

As with all one-offs, there's a balance to be struck between not cramming too much in and being so slight and inconsequential as to barely even be there. It's fitting then, that a story about Enlightenment's Eternals is far from ephemeral! 

A satisfying takedown of callous exploiters born into privilege from the man who's never cruel and never cowardly that fits both the 7th Doctor of season 26 and both the TV and comic series at the same time. A superior and intelligent strip that makes this sort of thing look easy, which is a real skill in itself. Russell T. Davies once described Sylvester McCoy as a 'twinkling jewel of a man' and in this tale we have the literal as well as the metaphorical twinkling jewel; a real gem of a strip. 

8.5/10

TTFN! K.

Coming Soon... Victims