World Distributors The 1971 Annual

Published	1970
SBN	7235 0062 2

Starring the third Doctor, Liz Shaw and UNIT

• A Review by Finn Clark

A Review by Finn Clark 8/2/04

This review comes to you with effusive thanks to Paul Trickett, who out of the blue emailed me offering to lend me his copy of the 1971 annual. That's a pretty rare book these days and Paul didn't know me from Adam. There are some great people out there in fandom.

Okay, on with the review.

In brief: fascinating. The 1971 annual isn't the strongest collection of stories, but it's a fat, lavishly illustrated volume that's unique in its vision of Dr Who's Earth exile and the UNIT era. The later Pertwee annuals were distinctive in their own ways, but this is a spin-off from Season Seven. The Letts-Dicks UNIT family is nowhere to be seen. There's no Jo Grant, Mike Yates or even good old Sergeant Benton to make us feel at home. There are a captain and a sergeant in Invaders Invisible, but they're not the usual suspects; instead they're Captain Harvey (who he?) and an anonymous "sergeant of the parade". This is an organisation of hard-nosed professionals, taking their UNIT remit more seriously than their equivalents off the telly. Caught in the Web has Lethbridge-Stewart shutting down an Italian scientist's experiments near Tripoli and then flying Dr Who to the Arctic.

Even the regulars' characterisation can be startling. Dr Who may occasionally seem out of character, but when this book was published the Pertwee UNIT era thus far comprised Spearhead from Space, The Silurians, Ambassadors of Death and Inferno. We even get references to Yeti, Autons and Silurians! This book is practically an alternate Season Eight, continuing Derrick Sherwin's vision of Who with a harder edge than we're used to. The Brigadier (also tellingly referred to as "the soldier") is kinda scary. He intends to have his own Captain Harvey shot on p60, then has a pretty violent reaction to an unauthorised shot from a UNIT soldier on p39. At one point he even seriously considers shooting Dr Who rather than risk letting him be taken over by an alien mind parasite!

Most interestingly of all, when Dr Who and Lethbridge-Stewart are tied up on p59, it's the Brigadier who frees himself with a Korean-learned technique of restricting his muscles like an Indian fakir. This is no cuddly sidekick of a Brigadier, but a strong-minded disciplinarian who's careful about military procedure.

Liz Shaw and Dr Who are more as we remember them, though they're very much a part of the UNIT machine. The only story which actually feels wrong is Caverns of Horror, in which a "sobbing and gibbering" Dr Who turns Schwarzenegger with his laser and ends up telling UNIT to wipe out every living thing it sees. "Liz, for the first time in my long life I'm scared. Let us get out of here, now. These chaps know all about killing; they're trained to it. Let them get on with it. This time I've got to admit how welcome it is to have a few professional killers around."

Oh, and on p83 Dr Who calls the Brigadier "sir". First and last time that ever happened.

As for the stories themselves... well, they're far more realistic than the Troughton annuals' stories. There's an edge to them, over and above their real-world setting. They even do things that Doctor Who never did on television, such as introducing aliens to the world in Soldiers from Zolta and starting the story during the ensuing media frenzy. This makes them genuinely surprising; you never know how Dr Who's latest adventure will turn out. Some of the ideas here are as startling as anything in a Troughton annual, with The Dark Planet being the exact opposite of an alien invasion and A Universe Called Fred giving us another of those World Distributors atom-sized universes. These stories aren't merely rejecting the usual UNIT-era story formulae; they're from a time before those formulae even existed.

Unfortunately their endings aren't always good. Half of these stories trickle out instead of reaching a dramatic climax. Nevertheless I found them so interesting that despite this I felt they were well worth reading. I even laughed at the bit where two policemen see Bessie and express doubt about Dr Who's roadworthiness.

[Oh, and if you're looking for innuendo... p11: Dr Who had "never before been in such danger of penetration", while on p89 he tells Liz that he "couldn't dream of exposing" her.] <>I should also mention the art, which is terrific. People's faces sometimes look a bit chunky, but otherwise this is lovely stuff - fully painted for the most part (unlike the sixties annuals) with dramatic images and vivid pop art colours. There are even little jokes... the alien in The Ghouls of Grestonspey is played by Bernard Bresslaw, while the UNIT helicopter on the front cover has a surprising ID code: "G-AWFL". However most startling are the Soldiers from Zolta, who look as if they were assembled from parts of Cybermen.

Continuity notes: the only mention of Time Lords is in the dice-and-counters game 'Flight from Danger', in which they've sent a mechanical tracker called a Searcher to do him injury or worse. The other dice-and-counters game is even more startling, offering us a hitherto-unknown species of Silurian before the TV series did the same in The Sea Devils. "Dr Who was trying to repair his damaged car when the Silurians stole a vital component. The doctor is tracking them with the aid of a portable materialiser. Follow him on his quest." The Silurian in question can be seen on p35 and also the p3 endpaper. It's not unlike the Creature from the Black Lagoon, with a neck frill like a medieval jester's and a face that just ran into a wall. It has no third eye, but at least it's green.

Even the filler articles are interesting for once. 'The Rose-Red City of Petra' is well worth a read, while 'Did You Know?' has some great snippets of information. This is a big book, the last 96-page Dr Who annual, but it's also a good read. (Apart from anything else, I'm relieved that I didn't have to look ungrateful by bashing Paul Trickett's kind offering!)

[Footnote from a helpful reader: this annual's bizarre Silurians are based on the alien creature from the 1958 SF movie 'It! The Terror From Beyond Space', a film that could reasonably claim to be a prototype for Ridley Scott's 'Alien'. Ridley Scott, of course, before becoming an eminent film director, worked as a BBC designer alongside Raymond Cusick, the Daleks' designer.]

[Further footnote from the same reader: the front cover's helicopter was probably based on the one in The Ambassadors of Death, which had the (real) British aircraft registration: G-AWFL! It was a Sud-Aviation 318C Alouette II, construction number 1997, registered in Ireland and de-registered in 1972 after an accident at Cashel, County Tipperary.]