Doctor Who buff sleep together a good crossover voter . Multi - Doctor report are vast events — particularly on boob tube , where they ’re phenomenally hard to pull - off — but what about in the region of strip , where the budget is limitless and the actors never age ? Turns out , it ’s just as strong .
Over the retiring few years , Titan ’s billet of Doctor Who comics has branched out into big , serial publication - spanning crossover event , bringing the originative teams from its various Doctor of the Church Who titles together for months - recollective stories that unite both Doctors and companions alike . The most late , The Lost Dimension , come to a conclusion last November , with the first half of the saga being collected in hardback by and by this calendar month . io9 recently verbalise to the three writer behind it — Nick Abadzis , Cavan Scott , and George Mann — to find out a bit more about what craft a story with so many Dr. , and so many fellow traveler , is really like .
“ Cav and George had worked together before , and they were very gracious and generous in welcoming me into their established piece of writing partnership , ” Abadzis told us . “ We all have different approaches to writing , but our intentions and goals are very similar , so it gelled easily . ”
Abadzis started by sketching out a monumental brainstorm of ideas about how to unify not just the four “ modern ” doc that Titan ’s books normally follow , but every incarnation of the Time Lord we ’ve met so far . “ I ’m a cartoonist as much as a writer , so I tend to map things out visually , doodle all sort of factor , be they secret plan progressions or character and rearrange them along a optic timeline to try and get the best pacing and emotional turning points into a story . I post Cav and George a expectant map of some of the ideas we were all put into the mix early on — I think they thought I was nuts ! We had a dear laugh about it . Some of those things made it into the overall final plot line . ”
According to Mann , even though this is the first fourth dimension all three of them had worked together on a Who book , the cognitive operation went swimmingly . “ It was a adorable omnium-gatherum of ideas , from three hoary old Doctor Who fan still very much in love with the show . It was majuscule that we were all capable to desire each other so cursorily , and all feel very much at ease throwing in ideas ( some of which were very freaky ) . That melting pot formed the groundwork of a really potent narrative , I think , and it ’s great that we all give idea that made it right through to the end . It ’s very much a team try . ”
Although the process behind the former day of The Lost Dimension go swimmingly , the team did have one slim job , albeit geographical rather than originative — two - thirds of The Lost Dimension team were base in Doctor Who ’s ancestral home , while Abadzis was a literal ocean away in New York . “ Cav and George both live in the UK , ” Abadzis continue . “ So after everyone had match on the basic element , they then took all our rough ideas and hammer them into a embodiment we could all work with . ”
Scott and Mann would go through their ideas for the serial publication in person . “ I shot up the throughway to stay with George for a few days and we basically locked ourselves away to go through all the indirect request - lists , ” Scott differentiate us . “ [ We ’d ] see what elements could be used and which had to end up on the cutting room storey . Once that was done , we could start piecing everything together , helped by numerous cups of tea and many , many slices of cake . ”
“ The cake was a central component . decidedly , ” Mann added . “ We had a duet of very intense daytime , involve lots of lour and staring at notecards with all the different elements on . By the end of it we had an outline . We wrote it up , pressed send , and then sat back think ‘ no one ’s ever going to lease us do that ’ … ”
Some other ideas for the series did n’t pan off out . Lovecraftian icon Cthulhu was one early contender for the serial ’ swelled badness . Another , the ancient Time Lord villain Omega ( a recurring foeman who previously unify the first three doctor for Who ’s first ever anniversary special , “ The Three doc , ” in 1973 ) , was scuppered because due to a comprehend want of familiarity with the character for fans of the modern serial . The final version of the team ’s plan for The Lost Dimension would see the Doctors unify to confront a mysterious cosmic entity experience as the Void , an empty hollow tear its way through time and space , consuming hoi polloi and planets likewise .
Although the Ninth , Tenth , Eleventh , and Twelfth Doctors ( the latter three of which all otherwise asterisk in on-going serial publication of their own , outside of Lost Dimension ) would form the anchor of the storyline with their companions — in the case of the Eleventh and Tenth Doctors , that would mean theircomics - original allies , Alice , Gabby , and Cindy — the story would also bestow back a character fans have spent nearly a decade waiting to see return to the series : Jenny , the clone girl of the Doctor make for the 2008 episode “ The Doctor ’s Daughter . ” Russell T. Davies , Doctor Who ’s showrunner at the time , has long said that the original plan for the serial would have seen Jenny shoot down off at the goal of “ The Doctor ’s girl , ” but the character was at long last saved thanks toan treatment by Steven Moffat , and place off on adventures of her own … adventures that have occurred offscreen and unwritten , until her grand return for The Lost Dimension .
“ It was a substantial joy , ” Mann said of convey Jenny back . “ She ’s such a enceinte graphic symbol , and so bed , even after such a abbreviated appearance on the show . And we had a pile of fun with her , having her react to the different incarnations of her ‘ dad , ’ having the Ninth Doctor wondering what was blend in on , and cause a scene where she interact with the Fifth Doctor , and he does n’t quite trip up her calling him ‘ Dad ’ … ”
Jenny ’s return also included a design update . Gone were the olive green t - shirt and black combat trousers she wore on TV , replaced by a much fancier piece of geared wheel . “ One of my favorite things about Jenny ’s counter was see Rachael Stott ’s incredible design for her Modern costume , ” Scott told us . “ In the script , we only described it as a ‘ Gallifreyan flight of steps suit , ’ and Rachael came back with the most beautiful suit of armour . And best of all , fan are already cosplaying as the new armoured Jenny . That ’s fantastical . ”
Jenny was n’t the only throwback from Who ’s well-nigh 55 - class story that the team got to dally around with for The Lost Dimension . The Eleventh Doctor and Alice ’s arc in the story saw the duet flung into Gallifrey ’s ancient history , in a time before the swell culture unlock the keys to clip travel . “ I kept intimate that we visit ancient Gallifrey somehow , Time Lock be damned , ” Abadzis severalise us , which head to a plotline where the Eleventh Doctor and Alice discovered a prototype TARDIS , in the fashion of the grey thermionic vacuum tube shown in “ The Name of the Doctor . ”
“ [ George and Cavan ] work in the plot of land element of the epitome TARDIS . I then took that , and run with it . That was a infernal region of a lot of fun to write . I consider it was important to give the story as a whole a mother wit of the mythic , of the widest canvas possible , as all multi - Doctor stories should . ” That mythic element of Doctor Who ’s immense history , Scott tote up , is what elevated The Lost Dimension for the team . “ Doctor Who already has its own racy mythology , so we did n’t really like the idea of transplant on someone else ’s . ”
“ I think this is one of the central things that sets Doctor Who aside from other TV shows — that monumental mythology and history that ’s been build up in layers over the 50 - remaining years of the show ’s existence , ” Mann reason . “ It was significant to us to endeavor to encapsulate some of that in this series . For me , if you ’re go to make an event serial feel exceptional , it has to be about more than just throwing some Doctor together on a distinctive adventure . It has to have world- or universe of discourse - shatter consequences , and the best path to do that is to delve back into the established mythology of the show and create something from the wealth you receive in there . That ’s what makes it feel as such Doctor Who , I think . ”
Doctor of the Church Who : The Lost Dimension Book One hits shelvesFebruary 20 .
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