Firelight (Once Upon A Time Lord)

Comic  Once Upon a Time Lord is the first in what's to be comics a-lister Dan Slott's annual Doctor Who story, on loan from MARVEL, where he usually writes for the Spider-Man and She-Hulk lines.  He's been a fan of the show for years and says that when crafting this graphic novel, he wanted to write it as though it might the only time he'll get the chance so he's included everything, all the monsters and importantly for our purposes the Doctors.  

The story opens with ten frame collage in which each incarnation of the Doctor up to the Tenth (not including War) is show explaining the modus operandi of the main villian, the Pyromeths, creatures who "feed on the precise psychic energy that's released whenever we create imaginary worlds, characters, and conflicts" a little bit like the birds in The Scarlet Empress or Akhaten in The Rings of Akhaten.  Like Big Finish, they love stories.

The Eighth Doctor appears in a single panel in his Dark Eyes leathers talking to Molly because we're in deep cut territory (the Sixth Doctor's chatting with Frobisher) standing next to the TV Movie console on the opposite corner to the visually similar Secondary TARDIS Console Room from the Hinchcliffe years.  He's the one who directly references Scheherazade, the storyteller from 1001 Nights (which I had to look up because I didn't know her name).

There's nothing more to it than that.  Why Eighth and Molly?  I've asked Mr Slott on the socials but don't really expect a reply, he's far to busy.  There's no mention of it in the interviews I've tracked down either.  It's notable that Big Finish doesn't have a credit and neither does DWM for Frobisher which is odd considering all of the notices for the Daleks and Cybermen.  Perhaps there's some kind of shared domain business.

Placement: The TARDIS Wiki places it between The White Room and Time's Horizon.  Let's go with that.


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