The Curious Tale of Spring-Heeled Jack (comic story)

The Curious Tale of Spring-Heeled Jack was a Doctor Who Magazine comic strip. It was the last to feature the Doctor travelling alone until Hotel Historia in 2008. This story saw the Doctor Who universe address the myth of Spring-heeled Jack, making him an alien figure.
The tale originally involved , a type of fiction commonly seen as the precursor to comics. After watching a DVD commentary of the show , Scott Gray took note of a commentator who suggested removing the thing you like the most from a story to make it work. After discarding the penny dreadfuls, Gray found the story worked better. He also set it in the 1840s as gaslights were being introduced in London at that time and offered a backstory. Some character changes were also made. A character named Molly became Penny Chapman and the ending was rewritten so that Jack did not die. In an overview of this comic published in The Flood graphic novel, Gray noted Penny had all the appropriate companion attributes: pretty, brave, had been in the TARDIS, but decided that Destrii was a better fit.
== Summary ==
In London, a demonic figure is searching young ladies on his quest for Morjanus. The Eighth Doctor is also there, trying to enjoy London's new night life, thriving with the invention of the gaslight. Something is hidden in London and the Doctor must find it before the city is consumed in fire...
== Plot ==
=== Part one ===
London, 1840: the Eighth Doctor is unable to see Les Huguenots and decides to wander instead. He bumps into Penny Chapman and finds her in a trance-like state muttering about "the essence". Worried, he tries to care for her. She cries out in her trance. Suspecting him of harassment, those near close in on him, but, at that moment, Spring-heeled Jack appears.
The police rush in and Bates fires upon him. He moves to attack Penny, but is knocked aside by the Doctor. This stranger's courageous behaviour raises Jack's suspicions and he leaves.
Inspector Arnold Porter questions the Doctor who asks him about Jack. It turns out the Jack has been attacking women in London for three years and the police have yet to catch him. Porter asks the Doctor to explain the disturbance before Jack's arrival but Penny vouches for him and they leave.
The Doctor walks her home and promises to call on her tomorrow. As he leaves he considers how he will find Jack, but he does so straight away as he jumps into a nearby carriage. Jack tells the Doctor he can smell that he has come a long way, before unleashing a fiery burst upon the Doctor.
=== Part two ===
Jack can see inside the Doctor's mind. He sees Time Lords on "a dull grey world in a bottle he couldn't wait to break"; he see the TARDIS, "a box of delights, its heart so warm and pure"; and finally, Susan, "a precious little flower, so dear yet so far away". The Doctor forces Jack out of his mind.
The Doctor turns the tables, seeing into Jack's mind. He sees a world aflame with his people dying. Out of her window, Penny sees the fight and grabs a gun, she fires upon Jack scaring him away. The Doctor tells Penny that it wasn't fire, just a psychic conduit. He examines the carriage;s driver, finding him unconscious but still alive. Penny tells the Doctor that she coming with him and they both leave in the carriage.
Returning to his TARDIS, the Doctor opens a map on the wall and finds anachronistic technology present in the Blackthorne Gasworks, where Penny happens to work. They go there and Penny again falls into a trance. She touches a padlocked door and it opens. Within is a large mechanical-looking object that the Doctor identifies as a proto-morphic lifeform. Suddenly, Penny grips her head and says, "I remember, the Pyrodines, they're coming".
On the street, Bates asks the inspector if he can smell something funny. The gaslights rupture and the Pyrodines are released from them.
=== Part three ===
The civilians run, as does the inspector, warning Bates to do the same. However, the latter turns to attack and is killed. In the Blackthorne Gasworks, Penny is still clutching her head. The Doctor tries to care for her, but she tells him she remembers everything, hitting him as she does so. Threatening him with a gun, she forces him onto the roof.
"Penny" tells the Doctor that her real name is Morjanus. He works out that she used self-hypnosis to pretend to be Penny to escape Jack's telepathy. Her people are at war with the Hunters, Jack's species. The Doctor finally realises that she started to wake up as the Pyrodines had fully attached themselves to the gasworks. Morjanus tells him that the Pyrodines will help her people win, being immune to psychic attack.
Morjanus moves to shoot him but finds the gun empty, the Doctor removed the ammunition in the TARDIS as he didn't want to walk into the gasworks with the threat of a mind-controlled girl. She sends a Pyrodine to attack him instead but Jack appears and fights it off with his bare hands. Morjanus attacks the Doctor and he throws her from the roof. She manages a foothold and climbs back up, giving chase as she does so.
The Doctor uses a crowbar with the gun ammunition attached to break the casing of the lifeform. As it explodes, the Pyrodines disappear. In a last ditch attack, Morjanus lunges at the Doctor, but Jack hits her from behind with his psychic attack and she falls down.
Morjanus awakes and wonders where she is. The Doctor realises it is in fact Penny, with Morjanus' mind wiped by Jack. The Doctor thanks Jack and offers him a lift home, but he declines. With no home left, he wants to stay in London where he is needed. The Doctor advises Penny to move to the country, telling her London is a very dangerous place, even with its own guardian demon.
== Characters ==
* Eighth Doctor
* Penny Chapman
* Spring-heeled Jack
* Arnold Porter
* Bates
== Worldbuilding ==
=== Foods and beverages from the real world ===
* The Doctor eats a walnut muffin.
=== Entertainment ===
* The Doctor hopes to see Les Huguenots.
=== London locations ===
* Penny likens the bigger-on-the-inside quality of the TARDIS to keeping Southwark Cathedral in a cupboard.
* Penny works at the Blackthorne Gasworks on Fentiman's Road, Lambeth.
* Penny lives at 29 Latham Lane.
* Jack searches for Morjanus at Covent Garden.
== Notes ==
* The Curious Tale of Spring-Heeled Jack was re-released in The Flood graphic novel.
* In an early draft of the story, the Doctor would have inspired a penny dreadful story published under the title "Dr Mysterio".
* This story is notable for a single mind-reading panel utilising a couple prose concepts, a unique case in which the Eighth Doctor's strips used material outside the ongoing magazine strip and television stories.
** The Eighth Doctor Adventures novel duology Interference is implicitly referenced with a line about Gallifrey being stuck in a bottle the Doctor "couldn't wait to break."
** Also alluded to is Susan's true name of Arkytior, Gallifreyan for rose, as revealed in the Brief Encounter story Roses, with Spring-heeled Jack calling her a "precious little flower."
== Continuity ==
* While walking her home, the Doctor tells Penny about his adventure in Egypt and comments that the wildlife "wasn't too friendly". (COMIC: The Power of Thoueris!)
* Jack enters the Doctor's mind and sees Susan, whom he Doctor misses deeply. (TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth)
Category:Eighth Doctor DWM comic stories
Category:Stories set in London
Category:Stories set in 1840
Category:2003 comic stories
Category:Three part comics