Comic Book / Doctor Who (Titan): Twelfth Doctor

The Twelfth Doctor comics were one of Titan's three initial on-going series of Doctor Who comics, and like the other three were published from 2014 to 2018 and divided into three "years" similar to TV seasons. They were written initially by Robbie Morrison, followed by George Mann and then Richard Dinnick, with a variety of artists.

The series can be divided into eras that do not directly correspond with the "year" boundaries. Year One, bookended by multi-part stories about an evil race of sentient stars, features Twelve and Clara Oswald between "The Caretaker" and "Dark Water" (the Skovox Blitzer is referred to in dialogue and Danny Pink is alive) in Issues 1-11 and the Four Doctors crossover event, while Issues 12-15 and the 2015 Christmas one-shot are set between "Last Christmas" and "The Magician's Apprentice". Year Two sets Issues 1-5 between "The Zygon Inversion" and "Face the Raven" (there are two Osgoods again and Clara's alive). Supremacy of the Cybermen, Issues 6-15, and Issues 1-4 of Year Three are set between "Hell Bent" and "The Husbands of River Song", with Twelve either alone or travelling on-and-off with original companion Hattie, a far-future punk rock musician. From Issue 5 onwards, Year Three and the Lost Dimension crossover switches to Series 10's Team TARDIS of Bill Potts and Nardole between "Empress of Mars" and "The Eaters of Light" (Bill recognizes Ice Warriors and Missy's only been out of the Vault once).

Additionally, there was uniquely a stand-alone Twelfth Doctor mini-series, initially digital-only, called Ghost Stories, a sequel to "The Return of Doctor Mysterio" which reunited the Doctor with superhero Grant "The Ghost" Gordon and his family.

The series was the most episodic of all three ongoing comics, with very little in the way of long-term plots.

This series contains the following tropes:

• Air-Vent Passageway: Bill ends up having to use some in "A Confusion of Angels" and sees it coming shortly before.
• Ancient Astronauts: Kali turns out to be an evil alien superbeing who inserted herself into Indian culture.
• Animal Motifs: "Clara Oswald and the School of Death" continues the series' association of Clara with ravens by having the name of the school be Ravenscaur, located on Raven's Isle, Scotland. In the TV series, she wears a raven pendant in "The Bells of Saint John" and "The Woman Who Lived" and has a mother whose maiden name was Ravenwood. All this presages her being Killed Off for Real by a quantum shade in the form of a raven in "Face the Raven".
• Arc Words: In "Terrorformer" and "The Hyperion Empire", "Hyperios rises".
  • "Clara Oswald and the School of Death", set within Series 9 of the show, incorporates that season's Story Arc and primary Arc Word via having the Sea Devils create "hybrids" of their hatchlings and the human students of Ravenscaur.
• Artistic Licence – History: Mostly deliberate in "Terror of the Cabinet Noir". However, Verlock threatens Julie with the guillotine well before it's invented, and when she is nearly executed it's with an axe and block.
• Asshole Victim: The truly repugnant estate agent who is the first victim of the Fractures.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever:
  • "The Swords of Kali" features the Attack of the Giant Alien-Possessed Clara Oswald! In the denouement, Clara admits that it was cool to be a giantess (with an extra two arms to boot) temporarily — had she stayed huge it would have been easier to keep her students in line.
  • "Robo Rampage" in the 2016 Free Comic Book Day anthology features the K2 Robot, a UNIT prototype created from the same living metal that created the K1 Robot. It has predictably — as far as the Doctor's concerned — Gone Horribly Wrong, grown to giant size, and is now tearing apart London.
• Attack Pattern Alpha: In "A Confusion of Angels", "emergency protocol 13-9" means let Missy remote control the TARDIS.
• Bar Brawl: Both Part One and Part Two of "Clara Oswald and the School of Death" have the Doctor getting threatened in bars! He undoes some space mercenaries in the former with the help of his sonic sunglasses, but winds up getting tossed through a window by the patrons of the Slaughtered Whale in the latter.
• Bathtub Scene with Censor Suds: Played for Laughs in Part Two of "Clara Oswald and the School of Death": Clara is enjoying a nice bubble bath when the TARDIS appears right in her bathroom and the Doctor emerges to discuss his recent misadventure at the Slaughtered Whale tavern with her! She handles this intrusion well, apparently amused by his cheery obliviousness to the inappropriateness of the whole business. Hey, humans need to bathe, it's nothing special...
• Becoming the Mask: In "A Confusion of Angels", DI Margaret Jingatheen is still using the Margaret Blaine human appearance of her former self as a Shadow Proclamation member after her Raise Him Right This Time, now apparently some kind of illusion instead of a body-suit, for no comprehensible reason at all. Especially bizarre given that it's the appearance of someone she killed and skinned...
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: The punchline of "Unearthly Things": Charlotte is Charlotte Bronte, and the adventure she has with the Doctor and Clara is the direct inspiration for Jane Eyre. The personalities of the twosome will inform those of Mr. Rochester and Jane, respectively.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Sonny and Val in "Invasion of the Mindmorphs". The Doctor initially suspects it, then rejects it as they finally kiss behind him.
• Big Ball of Violence: In the gag comic, the Master's attempt at a Villain Team-Up with previous incarnations promptly descends into this, whereupon they are blown up by the unhappy viewers of Battle of the Bands Beyond the Stars.
• Bigger on the Inside: The seemingly Haunted House in "Playing House" — because it's actually a dying TARDIS.
• Big "NO!": The dark matter-possessed Cardinal Richelieu gets one upon his comeuppance.
• Bittersweet Ending: The 2015 Christmas special ends with the Doctor stopping the Celestial Toymaker's rampage by taking the Zero Room of his TARDIS and turning it into a Small, Secluded World (separated from the vessel and floating through space) for the villain to "play" in, to spare him from having to deal with the vast, lonely universe now that the barrier between his world and it is fading. Clara realizes that the Doctor identifies with such loneliness all too well.
• Black Eyes of Evil: Those possessed by living dark matter in "Terror of the Cabinet Noir" reveal these when they're ready to move in for the kill.
• Bland-Name Product:
  • The comic books the Doctor and Clara examine in "The Fourth Wall" include The Bat, Amazonia, and the like. In addition, they're shopping at Prohibited Sphere Megastore — a Shout-Out to London's biggest comic book shop, Forbidden Planet Megastore; Prohibited Sphere previously appeared in the Eleventh Doctor title.
  • In "The Great Shopping Bill", Bill and Nardole talk about a supermarket called "Aldoh's", a reference to the real European supermarket chain Aldi.
• Bond One-Liner: In "A Confusion of Angels", Kathryn says "What a blast", after offing a Weeping Angel with an industrial sandblasting machine.
• Book Ends:
  • Year One starts and ends with multi-part stories involving the Hyperions.
  • For the penultimate four part story "The Hyperion Empire". When the Hyperion meteors head towards the International Space Station, one of the people inside, Jamie Weir, tries to communicate back to Earth, requesting them to tell her family that she loves them, but is killed before she can finish her request. When she is transmutated into a Hyperion angel and sides with the Doctor instead, she decides to hold off the Hyperions in the destabilising Hyperion fusion web, requesting the Doctor the exact same failed request. Luckily, the Doctor won't let her sacrifice her own life that easily...
  • The Twelfth Doctor's two encounters with punk rock guitarist Hattie bookend the Year Two/Three stretch of adventures set between "Hell Bent" and "The Husbands of River Song".
• Boarding School of Horrors: Ravenscaur, a gothic castle on a remote Scottish island with absurdly strict rules ("no smiling policy") and a horrible caste system among the kids. It turns out it's all a front for the Sea Devils.
• Brain in a Jar: The Harmony Shoal queen brain's servitors in "Ghost Stories".
• Break Them by Talking: Grant talks down the Smoke in "Ghost Stories" by making him see what a failure he's been as a superhero and what destruction he's caused.
• Breather Episode: Most of the one-issue-long stories.
  • "Unearthly Things" ends with only the villain dead (even then the Doctor tries to save it) ahead of its light punchline; it's sandwiched between the two-issue "Gangland" and four-issue "The Hyperion Empire". The latter was the Year One finale and the longest story the title published up to that point.
  • The 2015 Christmas Special released alongside the "Hyperion Empire" issues features a Continuity Cavalcade and a Bittersweet Ending in which, effectively, the Doctor compassionately gives an old enemy a gift.
  • "The Fourth Wall", which follows "Clara Oswald and the School of Death" and precedes the first post-Series 9 Story Arc, sees the Boneless strike again — this time via comic books, dragging helpless readers (including the Doctor) into them to take their place in the real world and seek out victims. Much playing with the titular wall ensues, and in the end Everybody Lives.
  • Zig-zagged with "The Boy with the Displaced Smile", an "interlude" published between Parts One and Two of "Beneath the Waves". While the story itself fits this trope — it's a one-off adventure with a happy ending and the only regular character is the Doctor — the reason it appears within another story's run is because the Doctor recalling its events helps him figure out how to solve the "Beneath the Waves" crisis.
  • "The Great Shopping Bill" followed both "The Wolves of Winter" and The Twelfth Doctor's one-issue contribution to the Lost Dimension crossover and has the heroes go on a shopping expedition in the universe's biggest "Ubermarket". Matters go awry when Bill is separated from the Doctor and Nardole and encounters a lost little girl.
• Bridal Carry: The way Clara evacuates the Doctor in the end of "The school of death".
• Butch Lesbian: Rani Jhulka in "The Swords of Kali" is a ferocious gay warrior woman who was deeply disappointed to be relegated to the role of harem guard instead of something more aggressive.
• Call-Back:
  • The Doctor uses old-style red/green 3-D glasses to track Void material again.
  • The Doctor gives Kate Stewart a sonic cannon to fight the fractures, which he got in one of the Titan Tenth Doctor stories.
  • In "The Hyperion Empire", the Doctor allows Weir to survive as a psionic entity using the TARDIS's telepathic circuits. He says that he perfected the technique after failing to save someone else that way in the past, probably referring to River.
  • In "Playing House", the Doctor realises that the labyrinthine house is actually a (dying) TARDIS when he stumbles upon a room similar to the "Arch Recon Room" seen in "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS".
  • The container ship Jeden in "A Confusion of Angels" is owned by Max Capricorn from "Voyage of the Damned" and it's revealed that the Doctor named the Titanic while undercover in Capricorn's business.
  • The anti-cyborg bigotry on the planet Sto is referred to again, and the Doctor does something about it.
• Call-Forward:
  • As noted above in Animal Motifs, Clara continues to be associated with ravens in "Clara Oswald and the School of Death", and the Doctor also calls her out for her recklessness in investigating the threat at Ravenscaur; all this presages her being Killed Off For Real in a Senseless Sacrifice in the final stretch of Series 9.
  • "The Great Shopping Bill" calls forward to the final three episodes of Series 10 as the Doctor says he will not allow Missy in the TARDIS again...yet, and later that he's vowed to protect Bill, while — unnoticed by the other characters — Pilot!Heather makes The Cameo in the Ubermarket, just keeping an eye on Bill.
  • At the end of the Twelfth Doctor Year Three comics, Missy warns him that "One day, you'll come across a lost ship drifting in space, that you can't save", with subsequent dialogue also heavily foreshadowing "World Enough and Time"/"The Doctor Falls".
• Celebrity Is Overrated: At the top of "Beneath the Waves", Hattie is struggling with life in the limelight since she last saw the Doctor, and is glad to travel with him again to get away from the nosy press.
• Changed My Jumper: When Clara bugs him to dress up a bit for 1960s Las Vegas, the Doctor wears his regular Series 8 outfit ... with a fedora!
• Character Development: Due to paralleling/arriving in the wake of the unfolding adventures of Twelve on television, his and Clara's character development is reflected in the comics. Series Eight/Year One has him gradually soften from his initial Grumpy Old Man persona into a more compassionate figure, and the opening stretch of Year Two has him firmly in Cool Old Guy territory with Clara as his Distaff Counterpart in the wake of Series Nine. Later, he hugs Hattie at the end of her initial TARDIS tenure without a bit of discomfort.
• Character Name and the Noun Phrase: "Clara Oswald and the School of Death", the first Year Two storyline.
• Christmas Episode:
  • The 2015 Christmas issue sees the Twelfth Doctor and Clara face off with the Celestial Toymaker, an enemy of the First Doctor and the first TV series villain to appear in Twelve's comics, unless one counts the various Masters turning up in the one-page gag comics that fill out certain issues.
  • Ghost Stories was a direct tie-in to the 2016 Christmas Episode, launched the day after it aired, and opens at Christmastime eight years after that story's events. That said, Did I Mention It's Christmas? applies — just like in the special!
• Clear Their Name: The Doctor and Hattie must help Jakob clear his name for the murder of a prominent politician in "The Twist". The culprit is actually... Jakob! The politician knew about the Foxkin but wanted the two societies to live in peace with each other; Jakob killed her in hopes of setting the stage for them to be destroyed instead.
• Clock Roaches:
  • The Fractures claim to be a natural phenomenon that polices interference between alternate universes which risks destabilising the multiverse, but the Doctor is unimpressed with their claims.
  • The Spyrillites in "Playing House" feed off the energy created by time anomalies or dying time travellers.
• Colony Drop: The Scindias plan to sacrifice millions to their goddess by luring people aboard a huge orbiting space station colony and then deliberately crashing it into Mumbai.
• Come with Me If You Want to Live: In "The Twist" the Doctor says exactly that to Jakob, and then "Always wanted to use that line".
• Companion Cube: The Doctor takes on one in "Clara Oswald and the School of Death": A stuffed swordfish, which he made use of and "rescued" in the course of his Bar Brawl at the Slaughtered Whale tavern. He calls it "Sonny" and demands Clara not hurt his (the fish's) feelings by pointing out what he is, giving him a cuddle as he says so. He is heartsbroken when Sonny ends up destroyed in the climactic battle; when Clara reiterates that he was a stuffed fish, he says he was "Stuffed full of courage and nobility."
• Continuity Cavalcade:
  • The 2015 Christmas story has several panels/spreads of these, owing to the story's setup of the Celestial Toymaker creating a party attended by the Doctor's various television companions (including, crucially, his granddaughter Susan) — actually toys of his that quickly undergo Glamour Failure — as a trap for him. Later, the Doctor "summons" an army of playing card soldiers who have the faces of companions and his previous selves (the Jack suit is Captain Jack Harkness, etc.).
  • "Invasion of the Mindmorphs" Part Two opens with a similar extended sequence — first the Doctor's previous three incarnations and many of their companions are seen as a Mindmorph tries to steal his mind; after this many aliens (mostly evil ones) are conjured up by them, including three incarnations of the Master, the Daleks, several varieties of Cybermen, the Zygons, the Menoptera, Scaroth, the Veil, an Ice Warrior, some Silents, the Morbius creature, and the comic-specific Hyperions, to pursue him and his friends. The Doctor is actually happy to see that his old enemies are all the Mindmorphs can summon, because it proves they have Creative Sterility.
  • The opening sequence of "Beneath the Waves" has the Doctor visiting an undersea temple as part of a tour group featuring well-to-do members of such races as the Silurians and Zygons.
• Continuity Nod
  • Clara is serving as the model for the Mona Lisa in her first scene in "The Swords of Kali" Part One.
  • Twelve's cigarette case filled with jellybabies also appears in that issue.
  • Twelve has fought and defeated Robin Hood with a spoon and used a daffodil in a swordfight. In "Clara Oswald and the School of Death" Part Two he fights off baddies with a stuffed swordfish.
  • Later, Twelve recommends the students he and Clara rescue Google him. "I dare you. It'll blow your mind."
  • The gag comic "The Day at the Doctor's" has the sickly Doctor recount various ways he's been forced to regenerate — absorbing huge amounts of radiation (twice!), mortal injuries sustained in a fall, spectrox toxaemia...
  • In "The Twist" Part Two he notes that a computer he's reactivated is purring like a motor and references his beloved car from his third incarnation: "Those were the days, eh, Bessie?"
  • The gag comic "Planet of the Rude" has the Doctor use his Prydonian Academy name "Theta Sigma" as a forum handle.
  • In "Playing House", the Doctor talks about Holly's house growing rooms "like a Krynoid growing tentacles".
  • In the falling action of "Playing House", the Doctor idly examines a toy version of the K1 Robot — or is it the identical-appearing K2 Robot that appeared in "Robo Rampage" a few months prior to this?
  • The Doctor once again produces a cup of tea from his pocket in "Invasion of the Mindmorphs" Part Two.
  • In "Invasion of the Mindmorphs", the Doctor shows once more that he can speak Tyrannosaur, as in "Deep Breath".
  • In "The Wolves of Winter", the Doctor talks about fighting a werewolf with the Koh-i-Noor.
  • The Twelfth Doctor gets mistaken for Odin again.
  • On the Arctic island, the Doctor gives Bill the fur coat that the Second Doctor wore in "The Abominable Snowmen".
  • The Doctor mentions meeting Skaldak.
  • Bill is unhappy about wearing a pressure suit following the events of "Oxygen".
  • "The Great Shopping Bill" starts with the Doctor comparing the events of Back to the Future to his experiences in "Father's Day". Nardole refers to Bill as "baby doll", this time in the real world rather than a simulation. Continuity nods go on to run rampant upon arrival at the Ubermarket: jellybabies, Impossible Souffle Dishes, and carrot juice are among the wares sold, Pilot!Heather has a cameo...
  • The cyborg refugees in "A Confusion of Angels" include some Vinvocci from "The End of Time" and at least one Ogron.
• Continuity Porn: "The Wolves of Winter" is a prequel to "The Curse of Fenric" that also features the Ice Warriors and the Flood from "The Waters of Mars".
  • The next multi-parter, "A Confusion of Angels", features the Weeping Angels and Heavenly Host, plus the Shadow Proclamation as represented by the Judoon and the Slitheen once known as Margaret Blaine.
• Cool Old Guy: Usually the Twelfth Doctor's attempts at coolness come off as endearingly dorky at best, but he ends up regarded as this by the intrigued concertgoers when he takes the stage with Space Pirates in Part Three of "The Twist".
• Cool Teacher: Discussed in "Terrorformer", with Clara insisting that she's this when the Doctor tells her about the unflattering gossip and comments her students are making behind "Miss Oddbod's" back (which he likely heard over the course of "The Caretaker").
• The Corpse Stops Here: In "A Confusion of Angels", Bill is accused of killing Dr. Scend after picking up her goggles.
• Creative Sterility: The Mindmorphs are affected by this, which is why they need to steal the minds of others.
• Curse Cut Short: In "A Confusion of Angels", Nardole is interrupted while talking about "kicking ar...".
• Dark Is Evil: The Cabinet Noir (Black Cabinet) has an evil fate in store for those lured into it, for it contains a being composed of living dark matter.
• Dark Is Not Evil: The Eremites of Andurax in "Ghost Stories" look like cowled skeletons with glowing eyes, but are the crew of a space station with equipment that prevents the universe from being poisoned with excess dark energy.
• A Day in the Limelight: Several stories put this Doctor's TV companions center stage.
  • The Twelfth Doctor story in the 2015 Free Comic Book Day anthology is told from Clara Oswald's point of view as she helps to save the day once again.
  • "Clara Oswald and the School of Death" (Issues 2.1-2.4) was her penultimate appearance in the comic, with the Breather Episode "The Fourth Wall" her last (not counting the gag strips), so she effectively has the Doctor's role for most of the former as she did in the Series 8 episode "Flatline". She sets it in motion by going to investigate her friend's concerns and gets a pair of temporary companions during her adventure. In the meantime, the Doctor provides comic relief until midway through Part 3. And she accomplishes quite a few heroic feats in Part 4, including saving the Doctor.
  • Bill Potts gets this in the Breather Episode "The Great Shopping Bill" as she tries to reunite a lost girl with her parents.
• Deadly Game: Played for Laughs in the Planet Karaoke Story Arc in the gag comics; losers of Battle of the Bands Beyond the Stars are promptly blown up.
• Demonic Possession: Type 2 example, crossed over with Puppeteer Parasite: Powered by the souls of those the Scindias killed in her name, the fourth-dimensional alien who is known as "Kali" on Earth is able to possess the helpless Clara's body and grow into a monstrous physical form. Freeing the trapped souls frees Clara as well.
• Determinator: In "The Swords of Kali", Clara manages to temporarily resist a millenia-old alien superbeing occupying her body. The Doctor, for his part, is not surprised that she can.
• Didn't Think This Through: The Doctor dismantles the K2 Robot in "Robo Rampage" with his sonic screwdriver, and realizes too late that he shouldn't have done that while he was in the robot's clutches. Osgood saves him from falling to his doom by tossing him his old scarf.
• Dirty Coward: Kano Dollar runs away from his failed terraforming product and leaves everyone else to die. (The result is a Karmic Death.)
• Doppelgänger Replacement Love Interest: "Fractures" begins when a scientist for an alternate-universe version of UNIT, whose wife and daughters died in a car crash, breaks through into the main universe, where he died and they survived, so that he can recreate his family.
• Dragon with an Agenda: In "The Wolves of Winter", the Haemovores end up siding with the Doctor when he points out to them that Fenric appears to intend to discard them as his minions in favour of the Flood.
• Electronic Eyes: Jakob in "The Twist" has one which records his murder of Idra Panatar.
• Emotion Eater:
  • Aranox technology is fuelled by draining psychic energy from sentient beings.
  • Pathicols, in "The Great Shopping Bill", feed on the empathy of others. The Reveal is that the child Pathicol was pretending to be lost because she sensed Bill's kindness and was hungry.
• Everybody Lives:
  • In "Fractures" all the characters survive including the people apparently killed and duplicated by the Fractures, who were still alive in the Void.
  • "The Fourth Wall" is implied to have a happy ending for all the prisoners of the Boneless.
  • "Playing House" ends this way unless one counts the dying TARDIS as a character.
  • "The Great Shopping Bill" ends this way, as the aliens pursuing Bill and the lost girl are the latter's parents.
• Everyone Is a Tomato: Happens in "The Twist", in which all the human inhabitants are not the descendants of the original colonists, who all died when their Human Popsicle system failed, but were genetically recreated by the Foxkin.
• Evil All Along: The murderer who's set Jakob on the run in "The Twist" is... actually Jakob, who is lying about his innocence.
• Evil Costume Switch: Once Kali has possessed Clara's body (and in the process destroyed the outfit she was wearing), she is clad in golden armor and ornaments.
• Evil Counterpart: In Ghost Stories, The Ghost encounters The Smoke. He was a business mogul of the future who was inspired by legends of the Ghost to become a superhero himself — via acquiring one of the three sister gems to the one that gave Grant his powers. Unfortunately, the mogul was a more ruthless person, and became a tyrant so powerful that New York City was destroyed not by him, but the military trying to stop him!
• Eyepatch of Power: Spoofed: To pump the patrons of the Slaughtered Whale for information on Ravenscaur and its environs, the Doctor includes an eyepatch in a disguise which an amused Clara calls out as merely a collection of "salty old sailor" costume props: captain's cap, turtleneck jumper with an anchor decoration on the front, etc.
• Face Palm: Clara does this at the end of the gag comic "Planet of the Rude" as the Doctor celebrates his first rude Internet forum post, possibly thinking My God, What Have I Done? at the same time since she gave him the idea.
• Fighting from the Inside:
  • Clara heroically and painfully tries to do this when Kali possesses her body, and — shortly after Kali taunts the Doctor with details of how the poor human is suffering — manages to temporarily reassert herself, though it isn't enough to stop the villain for good.
  • In "A Confusion of Angels", Kathryn's "pet" host Gabriel manages to fight off the Weeping Angel transformation.
• Flashback: Much of Part One of "Terror of the Cabinet Noir" is devoted to an extended flashback as Julie d'Aubigny reflects on her life up to the point the story begins.
• For Doom the Bell Tolls: The chiming of a grandfather clock turns out to be counting down to the potential destruction of Earth by a dying TARDIS in "Playing House".
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You / From Beyond the Fourth Wall: The Boneless's modus operandi in "The Fourth Wall": Comic book readers are being sucked into their books by them so they can wreak havoc in the real world while the prisoners are struggling to break free and pleading with readers for help. It is constantly teased that the story itself is one of these books! In the end, the Doctor calls upon all the readers to concentrate their minds on setting everyone free...The gag comic at the end of the issue also invokes the former trope when the Boneless drain the color and detail from the Doctor and Clara and they leap out at the reader.
• Giant Woman: Clara grows to tower over the Doctor when she's possessed by Kali.
• Gilligan Cut: At the beginning of "A Confusion of Angels", the Doctor says that the crew of the ship must be scared and desperate. Turn over the page to... a birthday party.
• Glamour Failure
  • The "guests" at the Christmas party trap the Celestial Toymaker sets for the Doctor resemble his various companions but quickly undergo this; they are actually giant nutcracker versions of said characters.
  • Getting the Sea Devils wet in "Clara Oswald and the School of Death" causes this with regards to their human disguises.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Kali has these; when Clara is temporarily able to reassert herself, they change back to her own brown eyes.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: Ordered by a greedy government to look into the potential of Professor Kettlewell's living metal years after they were entrusted by its formula by the Fourth Doctor, UNIT tried to create a new and improved, controllable, more powerful version of the K1 Robot. Oops! The Twelfth Doctor is disgusted with the sheer stupidity of this scheme.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Intentionally invoked throughout "Fractures", where Clara's reactions to the plot-driving deaths of characters in a car accident are used to anticipate the later death of Danny in a road accident in the TV series (broadcast before the comic was written and published).
  • The Call-Forward to the events of "Face the Raven" via Animal Motifs and the Doctor worrying about Clara's reckless heroics in "Clara Oswald and the School of Death" also intentionally invokes this trope, making its happy ending — with Clara declaring the TARDIS is her true home — extremely poignant. Even the Doctor mourning the demise of Sonny the stuffed swordfish gets a melancholy twist when the television episode's events are taken into account...
• Haunted House: The Doctor and Hattie investigate what seems to be one of these in 21st century England in "Playing House". But its ghosts are actually creatures that feed on time-travel energy residue, and the house is, as revealed in the Cliffhanger of Part One, a dying, malfunctioning TARDIS.
• Have We Met Yet?: In his introductory scene in "Clara Oswald and the School of Death", Twelve confronts a Space Pirate called Lucifer Van Volk, who has a grudge against him after being defeated at a previous (for Van Volk) meeting. Twelve doesn't recognise him, implying that this is going on.
• He Who Fights Monsters: In "The Swords of Kali", the Twelfth Doctor paraphrases the trope-naming quote to warn Rani Jhulka about the dangers of seeking revenge...and then adds "Should never have given that quote away [to Nietzsche]. Could've dined out on it all across the universe."
• Heroic Sacrifice: In "The Wolves of Winter", the Lamprey Haemovore and Torkal sacrifice themselves respectively to destroy the Flood and to help the Doctor escape.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: At the end of "The Hyperion Empire" after he finds a way for Weir to survive after a fashion, Clara notes that the Doctor is showing his softer side. He tells her not to let that get out, because he has a reputation as a Grumpy Old Man to uphold.
• Historical Domain Character
  • Leonardo da Vinci has a cameo in "The Swords of Kali".
  • Charlotte Bronte in "Unearthly Things".
  • "Terror of the Cabinet Noir" has opera singer Julie d'Aubigny on the Doctor's side, though not by choice. Part One includes a post-story text piece that discusses the real d'Aubigny's colorful, scandalous life.
• Historical Villain Upgrade:
  • The Scindia family were and are the actual royal house of Gwalior, and were not and are not mass-murdering werebat vampires.
  • Cardinal Richelieu summoned the "Terror of the Cabinet Noir" into this dimension and became the first victim of the Puppeteer Parasite. On the bright side, it allowed him to live decades after the historical record the Doctor knows says he died. King Louis XIV also falls to this parasite as well.
• History Repeats: The sad trend of crises involving Prime Ministers post-Harriet Jones in the Whoniverse (previously seen in Series 3 and Torchwood: Children of Earth) continues with Mr Claremont in "Clara Oswald and the School of Death".
• Hope Spot: In the Cliffhanger of Part Two of "Terror of the Cabinet Noir", the Doctor and Julie reach King Louis XIV to warn him to cancel the sun festival that will be used to finalize a Puppeteer Parasite's hold on Earth. Alas, he's already under the control of said parasite.
• Horny Vikings: In "The Wolves of Winter". The Doctor explains to Bill not to expect horned helmets.
• Info Dump:
  • The Doctor summarises the previous stories involving the Sea Devils in Part Three of "Clara Oswald and the School of Death".
  • For readers who may only be familiar with the contemporary TV series, "Robo Rampage" gives a few panels over to this as Osgood summarizes 'Robot' (the Fourth Doctor's first adventure) by way of delivering the origins of the K2 Robot.
  • "The Wolves of Winter" has a whole page explaining the events of "The Curse of Fenric", although this still doesn't stop the story from being almost incomprehensible for readers who aren't familiar with the latter.
  • Towards the end of "A Confusion of Angels", the Doctor gives Bill a two-page recap of his interactions with Blon Slitheen in Series 1.
• In Medias Res
  • "The Swords of Kali" begins with Rani meeting the Doctor in nineteenth-century India and then flashes back to how he got there.
  • "The Fourth Wall" starts with the Doctor telling the reader of the comic book he's trapped in not to turn the page and continue reading, but she does and winds up another prisoner of the Boneless. From there, the action flashes back one hour to show how the Doctor got trapped.
• Insult Backfire: See You're Insane! below.
• I Surrender, Suckers: The Doctor gives up the final sword of Kali to the false goddess...and then reveals that he's actually tied his sonic screwdriver to its blade, just as it is about to transmit a sound perfectly pitched to shatter the prison that holds the souls of the dead...
• I Was Quite a Fashion Victim: The Twelfth Doctor again expresses embarrassment over the fashion senses of his previous selves, specifically Eleven's fondness for fezzes and insistence that Bowties Are Cool, in "Terrorformer". Why, Twelve wouldn't even use the word "cool" anyway!
• It Is Dehumanising: In "A Confusion of Angels", the Doctor upbraids Bill not to refer to any possibly-sentient being as "it"... except mummies.
• Killed to Uphold the Masquerade: The Twelfth Doctor and his friends are faced with this trope or becoming prisoners of the Foxkin, with Jakob pointing out that they probably invoked the trope with Idra, the woman he's accused of murdering. Luckily, a third option is made available soon enough: beyond just escaping, there are Foxkin who want to break the masquerade anyway and volunteer to help; also, Jakob is lying, as he killed Idra.
• Kneel Before Zod: "Bow before Kali!" is a frequent demand of hers. Her servants obey; the Doctor and his allies, not so much.
• The Lad-ette: Julie D'Aubigny in "Terror of the Cabinet Noir" is a boozy, bisexual, duel-loving rake.
• Lame Pun Reaction: The Doctor cries "Evening, Wood-Shock!" to the crowd during the impromptu concert in "The Twist". ("See what I did there? Power trees...? Anybody?")
• Lamprey Mouth: One of the Haemovores in "The Wolves of Winter" has a head that has no facial features except a huge Lamprey Mouth.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: "The Great Shopping Bill" has several for Series 10 from "Extremis", the season's midpoint, onward. It's Missy in the Vault, and Pilot!Heather is still keeping track of Bill's whereabouts after the events of "The Pilot".
• Leeroy Jenkins: Grant repeatedly attacks enemies unthinkingly in "Ghost Stories", with unfortunate results.
• Life Drinker: The Scindia family in "The Swords of Kali".
• Look Both Ways: A Fracture is hit and temporarily incapacitated by a bus, before possessing the driver.
• Magic Feather: At the end of "Ghost Stories", where Grant finds that he no longer needs the gem to be superhuman (although this was only true at that point in the story, because of the effects on him of holding the gem for such a long time).
• Magic Pants: Averted in "The Swords of Kali". Clara's clothes are seen to be tearing away when Kali possesses her body in the Cliffhanger of Part Two. When Kali next appears in her "final" form, she is clad in golden armor and ornaments; when she is defeated and Clara is returned to normal, the outfit appears to be loosely hanging off of her, so the Doctor gives her his Crombie coat to wear to preserve her modesty.
• Make Wrong What Once Went Right: In "The Wolves of Winter", Fenric is trying to do this to prevent its defeat in "The Curse of Fenric", taking advantage of the Doctor's unwillingness to cause a paradox.
• Mama Bear: Holly in "Playing House" kicks a door that the Doctor can't open down to rescue her two kids.
• Masquerade: The Wainscot Society of the Foxkin exists alongside that of the humans on "The Twist" but very, very few of the humans know about it because the Foxkin know they will not be accepted...even though The Reveal in Part Two is that the Foxkin are the reason any humans exist at all, having evolved to the point that they figured out how to clone the long-dead human colonists. In Part Three this becomes The Unmasqued World.
• Medium Awareness: Most of the "The Fourth Wall" has the Twelfth Doctor addressing in-universe comic book readers (both trapped and free), but constantly suggests The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You / From Beyond the Fourth Wall at the same time. But at the very end, the Doctor notices and addresses Real Life readers of this particular comic...leaving Clara asking who he's talking to.
• Mineral MacGuffin: The four gems in "Ghost Stories".
• Minor Injury Overreaction: The central joke/punchline of the gag comic "The Day at the Doctor's" is that the Doctor is having this to what Clara recognizes as a common cold, feeling like he's going to have to regenerate and insisting he be looked at by a physician on the legendary medical planet Hippocrates.
• Mona Lisa Smile: "The Swords of Kali" reveals that Clara was the model for The Mona Lisa, during one of the Doctor's various visits to Leonardo. (This would make her the "dreadful woman who wouldn't hold still" that Four spoke of back in "City of Death". If he only knew!)
• Monster Clown: Parodied. The time-looped Doctor wears a very evil-looking clown mask as a disguise in "A Confusion of Angels", and claims that he had no idea anyone would be scared by it.
• Monumental Damage:
  • The battle-scarred Westminster Abbey that the TARDIS materialises in at the start of "The Hyperion Empire".
  • The K2 Robot tears apart the London Eye in "Robo Rampage".
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: When Kali takes over Clara's body, the first visible sign of her physical transformation is an extra two arms — there's a reason "The Swords of Kali" number four.
• Mustache Vandalism: In Part Four of "Clara Oswald and the School of Death", it's revealed that the image that appears on the Doctor's cell phone whenever Kate Stewart calls is a photo of her...with a mustache added to it by the Doctor himself, playfully reflecting their prickly professional relationship. Clara warns him that if Kate ever finds out about this, she'll kill him!
• Mythology Gag: When Missy remote-controls the TARDIS in "A Confusion of Angels", she announces "trip of a lifetime!", the tagline of early trailers for the first season of the revived Doctor Who TV series.
• Nasty Party: In "Unearthly Things", the possessed Lord Marlborough throws a party intending to feed the guests to the Aranox.
• Negated Moment of Awesome: Spoofed in the climax of the gag comics' Planet Kareoke arc: The Doctor's about to unleash an epic guitar solo to win Battle of the Bands Beyond the Stars and save his skin when Clara just pulls a plug and shuts the whole show down, which allows them to escape.
• Never Heard That One Before: Sam, a firefighter in "The Hyperion Empire", constantly has to deal with Fireman Sam jokes coming to the minds of those he meets — including Clara. He is glad to learn that the Doctor is not familiar with that show and thus doesn't see anything "funny" about the combination of his name and profession.
• "Nighthawks" Shot: Tulpa ends with the man going into a cafe and the final panel is from this angle.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: The "Wolf Pack" in "Gangland", who are clearly the Rat Pack (specifically Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr.) with slightly different names. (The closing gag of the story has the Doctor quote Sinatra's song "My Way", though.) In the same story, Sonny Lawson is based on the real-world mob-connected African-American boxer Sonny Liston (whose story ended much less happily).
• Non-Malicious Monster: The alien entity in "Beneath the Waves" is simply trying to alert the humans to its distress instead of attacking them.
• Not Me This Time: In "A Confusion of Angels", the Doctor, Bill and Nardole arrive on a troubled space freighter owned by Max Capricorn with a large number of Host included in the cargo. In fact, Max doesn't appear to have anything to do with the problems, and the Host are perfectly helpful until they start getting transformed into Weeping Angels.
• Octopoid Aliens: The Cybock Imperium are sentient octopi in mechanical exoskeletons.
• Odd Name Out / Rule of Three: In "Robo Rampage", Osgood boasts to the K2 Robot that the Doctor is "The Bringer of Darkness. The Oncoming Storm. The Roaring Wind of Righteousness." The Doctor is taken aback by the last one, which she admits she came up with, as he finds it "A little too flatulent."
• Oh, No... Not Again!
  • Kate Stewart is not happy to learn that another crisis involving a Prime Minister being revealed as an alien villain has arrived in Part Three of "Clara Oswald and the School of Death".
  • In the gag comic "Surfshock" (2.6), the Doctor and Clara have arrived on a beach planet and are ready for fun in the sun when a Silurian and Sea Devil ask them to leave because they were there first. The Doctor has this reaction and launches into a speech about how everyone must compromise and live peacefully...before they can explain that they only mean that particular spot on the beach; they've already laid down their towel. (The embarrassed Doctor responds to this by taking Clara back in time with him to the planet's rather less beachy prehistory. "This'll show 'em.")
• One-Steve Limit: Averted in "The Swords of Kali", which introduces yet another significant Whoniverse character called "Rani". (The classic series has The Rani, a villainous outlaw Time Lady scientist. The Sarah Jane Adventures has Rani, one of Sarah Jane's allies.)
• Other Me Annoys Me: The Doctor feels this way about the comic book character he's inspired in-universe, "Time Surgeon". He decides to visit its creators to give them some pointers on making it more accurate to his adventures in "Invasion of the Mindmorphs".
• Our Dark Matter Is Mysterious: "Terror of the Cabinet Noir" features sentient dark matter that can possess people and is plotting to blot out the sun.
• Our Gargoyles Rock: "Terror of the Cabinet Noir" has automaton henchmen that appear to be living gargoyles.
• Our Prime Ministers Are Different: Mr Claremont, the PM in the Ravenscaur storyline is actually a Sea Devil, so he's also Prime Minister Evil. The name and other features make him come across as a caricature of the Prime Minister at the time of writing David Cameron.
• Parody Names: All of Colin Bell's gag comics have titles that play on those of Doctor Who television serials/episodes: "The Five Masters", "One! Two! Three! Four! to Doomsday", "Epilogopolis", "Surfshock", etc.
• Phlebotinum Rebel: Colonel Weir, who was turned by the Hyperions into a Fusion Angel, uses her fire powers to fight them after the Doctor debrainwashes her.
• Phony Veteran: In "The School of Death", the PE teacher Mr. Beck very unconvincingly boasts about having been in the SAS. (Note that he's trying to impress Clara, who knew an actual soldier who went on to become a teacher — Danny Pink. He didn't teach PE though, no matter what the Doctor said.)
• Plot Coupon:
  • The titular "Swords of Kali". The Doctor and his allies are forced to retrieve the last one lest Clara be killed, but while they are doing so, the Scindias use her as the unwilling human host for Kali.
  • Ghost Stories has the Doctor enlisting The Ghost to help him track down the three sister gems to the one that gave Grant Gordon his superpowers.
• Plot Parallel: In "A Confusion of Angels", the unexpected presence of the Slitheen once known as Margaret Blaine on the side of good parallels Missy taking another step forward towards a Heel-Face Turn by not turning this crisis to her advantage despite having every chance to. Both situations are only happening because of encounters with the Doctor in their respective pasts.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: The Sea Devils in "The School of Death" sneer at Clara's "companions" of the story for being respectively black and nouveau riche. Presumably pretending to be a public school for a century rubbed off on them!
• Portal to the Past: The four-dimensional room in the Scindias' palace.
• The Power of Rock:
  • The Twelfth Doctor reconstructs this trope into a more realistic form in "The Twist", drawing upon the long history of popular musicians using their work and/or media presence as a platform to advocate for socio-political causes. When the human authorities reach the edges of the Wainscot Society of the Foxkin, he organizes an impromptu concert there to take advantage of the resultant media presence. A crowd of humans gathers to rock out, bringing in even more media attention. With that, he publicly reveals the truth about the Foxkin, thus allowing The Unmasqued World to begin.
  • In "Beneath The Waves", the Doctor and Hattie power up the stranded alien's spaceship with rock music to allow it to leave Earth.
• Puppeteer Parasite:
  • Kali combines this trope with Type 2 Demonic Possession, as she cannot take over a host body without being powered by the souls of humans killed in her name.
  • "Clara Oswald and The School of Death" reveals that juvenile Sea Devils are capable of acting as this, initially as a defence against predators, although it came in useful when they became civilised.
  • The living black matter of "Terror of the Cabinet Noir" does this to humans, starting with its summoner, Cardinal Richelieu.
  • The Harmony Shoal from "The Return of Doctor Mysterio" reappear in the second section of "Ghost Stories".
• The Quincy Punk:
  • Subverted in "The Twist", as the punk rockers and their followers have the aesthetics of this trope and can be quite tough, but are not depicted as villainous at all. The characters that are causing trouble in both the human and Foxkin societies represent the establishment, whereas this trope played straight traditionally portrays the "old guard" as heroic and the punks as villainous. This subversion fits in with the traditional portrayal of the Doctor as an anti-establishment figure who often sympathizes with outcast/oppressed societies, as well as the Actor Allusion of this particular Doctor's interest in rock/punk (Peter Capaldi was a punk musician in the early 1980s).
  • Time Surgeon is also a subversion — imagine the Twelfth Doctor gone totally punk, tattoos and all!
• The Quisling: Martyn Grove in "The Hyperion Empire" wants to be one, but the Hyperions aren't interested.
• Reality Bleed: The Kar-Yn attack on Earth in "Tulpa" seeks to over-write it with their own reality.
• Really 700 Years Old: All of the Scindias, thanks to Kali's powers.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: In "The Wolves of Winter", both the Viking leader Sundvik and the Ice Warrior Grand Marshall Sskoll are sensible and unprejudiced, and even manage to get their followers under control and remain allies when a brief skirmish breaks out.
• Red Herring: In "A Confusion of Angels" Ojei and Scend act very shiftily, but they're actually the crewmembers who are involved in the time-looped Doctor's Underground Railroad.
• Remember the New Guy?: Tiger Maratha in "The Swords of Kali" is a previously unknown companion of the Fourth Doctor who reappears just to be killed off.
• Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain: How Rani kills a Scindia:
  The Doctor: When in doubt, decapitate.
• Russian Roulette: The Gallifreyan version is called Rassillon's Roulette and is played with a "time gun". Loser gets Ret-Gone.
• Sadist Teacher: The Sea Devil headmistress of Ravenscaur, Miss Mariner. Also the PE teacher Mr. Beck, even before he gets possessed.
• Sadly Mythtaken: "The Swords Of Kali" falls into the usual misconception that Kali is "the Hindu God of Evil".
• Save the Villain: The Doctor tries to save the Aranox from being destroyed by fire in the climax of "Unearthly Things", but Clara and the others get him away.
• Ship Tease: With regards to Twelve and Clara, numerous covers have been shippy in nature (most notably Vol. 1 No. 13 — yes, this was the newsstand cover, not an alternate). This ends after 2.5, Clara's last story as a regular; two covers for 2.15 feature her with Twelve, but are not shippy.
  • Vol. 2, No. 3 ("Clara Oswald and the School of Death"), the first Titan story set in the Series 9 continuity, features a sequence where the Doctor visits Clara while she's taking a bath, and she doesn't actually mind at all.
  • "The Hyperion Empire" teases a possible romance between Clara and Sam the firefighter, but he is suddenly killed by a giant fireball, just as he is about to make a Heroic Sacrifice.
  • There is some apparent mutual interest between Bill and Kathryn in "A Confusion of Angels", but nothing comes of it before Team TARDIS departs. It's worth noting that both this and the Clara/Sam tease not working out were more or less foregone conclusions, as they were published alongside or after events in the televised continuity that confirmed the regulars wouldn't be able to revisit those relationships.
• Shout-Out:
  • The via points on the destination blind of the bus the Fractures attack include "Fenn St", a reference to the British school-set sitcom Please Sir!, set at Fenn Street school, and Hob's End, a reference to both the TV and film versions of Quatermass and the Pit.
  • In "Gangland" the two gangsters who see the Cybock spaceship land discuss Them!.
  • In "The Hyperion Empire", UNIT helicopters use "Bigglesworth (Number)" as call signs.
  • Also in "The Hyperion Empire", the Doctor summarises the Hyperions' plan to destroy the Sun with "Winter is coming".
  • Another one in "The Hyperion Empire" - the Doctor describes Roald Dahl as one of the few people with a sense of humour as dark as his.
  • And the Doctor describes the heat-protective suits he gives the others to fight the Hyperions as being made from "smart but unstable molecules".
  • The Doctor claims to have given Ernest Hemingway the phrase "grace under pressure".
  • At one point a Hyperion responds to a superior's order with "By your command".
  • In "Clara Oswald and the School of Death" Part One, the Doctor notes to the leader of the space pirates threatening him at a bar that he once knew a Van Dyne who you needed a magnifying glass to see and a Von Doom who like said leader was "a real tin-pot".
  • The Doctor is enjoying a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster at the time of the above conversation. Much later in "Terror of the Cabinet Noir" Part Two, he has a quip about trying to sound coherent after a few "Pan-Galactic Gargoyle Blasters" as he and Julie consider the gargoyle automatons.
  • The luxury starliner that the aforementioned bar is on is owned by the Onedin Interstellar Line.
  • The pub in "The School of Death" is named "The Slaughtered Whale", probably a reference to "The Slaughtered Lamb" in An American Werewolf in London.
  • The gag comic "Planet of the Rude" (2.7) sees the Doctor discover the joys of anonymously being rude to others on the Internet. His first forum post? "WORST EPISODE EVER."
  • Part One of "Terror of the Cabinet Noir" has the Doctor noting that the earbuds he's wearing are "turned up to eleven", referencing This is Spın̈al Tap.
  • In "Terror of the Cabinet Noir", the Doctor lends Julie what looks very much like a Star Wars lightsaber.
  • In "Invasion of the Mindmorphs", Sonny expresses fear of fans pestering him in the toilet at a convention — a reference to the notorious actual incident that led Alan Moore to end all fan interaction.
  • The entities Sonny and Val create to attack the Mindmorphs include Lawyer-Friendly Cameo versions of Asterix and Obelix, King Kong, and Godzilla.
  • In the opening of "Beneath The Waves" the Doctor alludes to Raiders of the Lost Quark.
  • The setting of "The Boy with the Displaced Smile", Sweet Haven, appears to be named after Popeye the Sailor Man's stomping ground of Sweethaven.
  • The covers for "Ghost Stories" include one paying homage to the iconic cover of Batman #9, with Grant and the Doctor replacing Batman and Robin in the spotlight, and another in the style of Jim Steranko's famous work for Nick Fury: Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D..
  • In "The Wolves of Winter", Bill refers to the Ancient Haemovore as "the Creature from the Blue Lagoon".
  • Bill jokes about Bond villains in volcanoes.
  • "The Great Shopping Bill" opens with the Doctor, having just watched Back to the Future for the first time at Bill's urging, complaining about the recklessness of the leads with regard to time travel. He also mistakenly refers to Marty as Morty, and Bill quietly notes that's "a whole different thing..." Later, the Doctor exclaims "Great Scott!" and goes on to quote the original Star Wars ("Boring conversation anyway"), much to Bill's amusement.
    • Later in "A Confusion of Angels" the Back to the Future bit is revisited with Missy in the Vault, who doesn't understand the title.
  • In "A Confusion of Angels", Bill and Nardole react to the discover that the ship they're on is called the Jeden by making "Jedi" puns.
  • Captain Brew has a costume highly reminiscent of Mal Reynolds. He even bears a mild facial resemblance to Nathan Fillion.
  • Bill suggests that a bandage might have instead been toilet paper left by a puppy, a reference to a famous and very long-running series of British TV adverts for Andrex toilet paper featuring cute labrador puppies playing with the product.
  • When Bill telephones Missy, Missy pretends to be an answering message quoting the chorus of "Hello, This is Joannie", a Teenage Death Song by Paul Evans.
  • When the time-looped Doctor protests against anti-cyborg prejudice on Sto, he is holding a placard reading "Not in my name", a common slogan of protestors against the 2003 USA-led invasion of Iraq.
  • During her Air-Vent Passageway hunt for Angels, Bill makes repeated references to the similar scene in Alien.
  • In "Tulpa", the Kar-Yn's host is wearing a Kate Bush T-shirt.
• The Slow Path: In "A Confusion of Angels", the Doctor is sent a century back in time by the Angels, and has to find his way back to the Jeden. He keeps himself busy on the way.
• The Snack Is More Interesting: The Doctor is gulping his drink while Van Volk is threatening him.
• Something Only They Would Say: "Would you like a jellybaby?" Priyanka met the Fourth Doctor as a child, and realizes that Twelve is who he claims to be when he makes her this offer as well.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Rani and Khair-Un-Nissa Kapoor in "The Swords of Kali".
• Story Arc:
  • The gag comic has the Planet Karaoke storyline stretch over several issues.
  • Twelve's post-"Hell Bent"/pre-"Husbands of River Song" adventures with original companions are bookended by a mini-arc involving Hattie and her fortunes as a musician.
• Straight Gay: Priyanka Maratha in "The Swords of Kali".
• Sword Fight:
  • The Doctor engages in one with Kali, but even with his skill he can't last too long against an opponent who towers over him and wields three swords at once. Finally he gives up that last sword to her...and she gets a nasty surprise.
  • The Doctor is challenged to this by Julie d'Aubigny, but their duel is cut short — as dueling has been outlawed in Paris this gets both of them in trouble with Cardinal Richelieu's men. At the end of this storyline they pick up where they left off, leading to a cheeky use of The End... Or Is It?
• Take That!: In "The Hyperion Empire", the evil would-be Quisling Martyn Groves tells Clara to "Calm down, dear" — a notorious putdown once directed by David Cameron to a female shadow minister during a Parliamentary debate. His name and appearance also make him come across as a caricature of prominent Conservative politician Michael Gove.
• Tempting Fate: In both "Invasion of the Mindmorphs" Part One and the second adventure of Ghost Stories, the Doctor discusses how a planet he and his companions are about to visit is a beautiful, advanced civilization...only to find it has have been invaded and conquered by an evil race (the Mindmorphs in the former, the Shoal of Winter Harmony in the latter).
• Terraform: The story "Terrorformer", as the title suggests, describes a terraforming project gone badly wrong.
• Terrifying Rescuer: In "The Hyperion Empire", Clara first meets Sam as a masked axe-wielding figure in a filthy fire service uniform, and assumes that he's a monster of some kind.
• The End... Or Is It?: "Terror of the Cabinet Noir" ends with the Doctor and Julie about to have that Sword Fight, so it ends on the text "The End?"
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Julie does this to rescue the Doctor's sonic screwdriver from being destroyed by the Puppeteer Parasite of "Terror of the Cabinet Noir". It slices off its tendril neatly. Julie's thoughts reveal that her father told her to "never, never, ever, ever throw away your blade in a sword-fight. I now officially have no more rules to break."
  • The Doctor himself does this with Sonny the stuffed swordfish.
• Thrown Out the Airlock: Happens to Sonam Scindia at the hands of Priyanka.
• Total Eclipse of the Plot: The dark matter entities in "Terror of the Cabinet Noir" intend to use a total eclipse of the sun to possess everyone in Paris.
• Underground Railroad: The time-looped Doctor sets one up to help people escape anti-cyborg persecution in "A Confusion of Angels".
• Uplifted Animal: The Foxkin evolved from actual foxes over centuries and eventually gained enough intelligence to clone the long-dead colonists of the Twist, meaning they are responsible for humans existing there in the first place.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Kraxnor escapes in a fighter ship before the Sycorax mothership explodes in "Ghost Stories".
• Villain Team-Up: Played for Laughs and played with: In the Planet Karaoke gag comic story arc, several different lives of the Master team up to beat the Doctor and Clara on Battle of the Bands Beyond the Stars. This promptly falls apart because unlike the various lives of the Doctor, they can't get along with each other at all.
• Villain with Good Publicity: The Scindia family in "The Swords of Kali" are a family of philanthropists and celebrities who are actually ancient servants of an alien evil and plotting mass murder.
• The Virus:
  • The dark matter entity in "Terror of the Cabinet Noir".
  • In "A Confusion of Angels", Margaret tries to trap the Weeping Angel posing as a Host by ordering them all to look at each other, not aware of the Angels' creepy assimilation power if you look at one for too long.
• Viva Las Vegas!: "Gangland", which takes the Doctor and Clara to 1960s Las Vegas and its gangsters, celebrities, etc.
• Voice of the Legion: Kali has this, though as with her Glowing Eyes of Doom, when Clara is temporarily able to reassert herself it is her own voice that speaks instead.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: A surprising on-panel example in "Ghost Stories", when the Doctor spins the armed robbers in a revolving door.
• Who Would Want to Watch Us?: In "The Fourth Wall", the Doctor and Clara discover the comic book Time Surgeon, which is clearly inspired by them — he blames the Internet for spreading stories about their adventures. As far as he's concerned Time Surgeon lacks all the timeless class and elegance of reality (Time Surgeon travels in a wardrobe). In the final Year Two storyline, he visits the creators of the comic to give them some fresh, and more accurate, artistic inspiration. This story opens with scenes from the latest Time Surgeon adventure, which reveals that its world is a mix-and-match of various Doctors' eras.
• Whole-Plot Reference: The gems in "Ghost Stories" are clearly inspired by the Marvel Universe's Infinity Stones.
• World-Healing Wave: When the villains of "Gangland" are rendered Ret-Gone, all of the damage they did to Las Vegas is instantly undone.
• The X of Y: "The Swords of Kali", "Terror of the Cabinet Noir", and "Invasion of the Mindmorphs" — which for bonus points opens with an excerpt from the Time Surgeon comic story "Day of the Deathroids!"
• Yin-Yang Clash: In "Ghost Stories", the Shoal's gem is the opposite one to Grant's, causing him to become temporarily depowered when close to it.
• You Are Not Alone: In "The Fourth Wall", the Doctor tells comic book readers (both trapped and free) that they might each think they're alone in the world, but in fact they are part of a spiritual family with all others who love and are inspired by the stories they read. With that in mind, he tells them to unite in thought to free themselves from the Boneless' trap.
• You're Insane!:
  • One of the students cries "You're bonkers!" to the Doctor as he takes control of the situation and reveals he's President of Earth in Part Three of "Clara Oswald and the School of Death". Cue the Insult Backfire: "Cheers! Nicest thing anyone's said to me in ages."
  • Four issues later in "The Twist", Jakob declares "You must be mad!" as the Doctor leads them further into the domain of the Foxkin. His reply? "Quite possibly. But you're on the run for murder, so I think that makes us even."
• Zerg Rush: Clara is attacked by a horde of "skunkeys" under Hyperion control in "Terrorformer".
• Zombie Apocalypse: The result of the Saprophyte's attack on Sweethaven.

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