World Distributors The 1984 Annual

Published	1983
ISBN	7235 6685 2

Starring the fifth Doctor, Tegan, Turlough, UNIT, the Brigadier and the Master

• A Review by Finn Clark

A Review by Finn Clark 12/4/04

Classic stuff! The Doctor Who annuals may be heading to an end, but that can't stop World Distributors giving us what we want! It's an approach they honed to perfection over the decades... hire a writer who can't write, force-feed him Class A drugs until he's climbing the walls and for God's sake don't let him watch the TV programme! Brilliant! Encore!

You think I'm joking? The Volcanis Deal is classic sixties gibberish, albeit with a cool last line. Even the 1967 stories were less incoherent. Winter on Mesique, The Creation of Camelot, Fungus and The Nemertines ramble on about various subjects but forget to include... what was it again? Oh yes. A plot. The Nemertines and Fungus are methodical scientific investigations, to the point of including a textbook diagram to explain the scientific principles of osmosis! The menace in each story is little wriggling things that don't threaten our heroes. (The Nemertines brings back UNIT and the Brigadier, but not to do anything but only to follow the Doctor's orders. Dip 'em in salt. Hey, it works! The end.)

Those two entertained me in their own strange way, but The Creation of Camelot is boring. It's a King Arthur story that gets so wrapped up in its Camelot fanwank that it forgets to tell a story. The Master is unmasked as Merlin, by the way, but 'Merlin' appears to be a title rather than a name. He inherited the title after the death of Blaise, the previous holder of the post.

However to make up for that the fourth plotless story, Winter on Mesique, is lovely. There are no bad guys and no diabolical schemes for universal destruction, but instead some sensible, level-headed analysis of a humanitarian problem. It's a charming tale that makes you wish everyone could be this nice.

So of the seven stories in this annual, one is random gibberish and four have no plot. Believe it or not, the other two are even better! Class 4 Renegade stars a man with three heads, four legs and five arms. (He was three separate people before the crash, but the surgeons had never seen a human being before and thought the craft had been a one-seater.) How cool is that? However nothing could ever beat The Oxaqua Incident, which stars Ghum. Ghum rocks. Ghum is... well, imagine a cross between a walking carrot and a garden gnome. With a bazooka. Who's bright green, has eyes on stalks and can drill through walls with his head. THIS is why we read Doctor Who annuals!

This annual's creators usually seem acquainted with the show (e.g. the artist, who draws some superb likenesses), but check out the quiz on p14. It's called Questions of Who... "The first Doctor had a young girl companion. Can you name her?" "The second Doctor had two companions, a boy and a girl. Can you name them?" Well, I'm stumped. What's more, this year's The Volcanis Deal is the only time the annuals contradict the TV series. Apparently mankind never explored beyond the solar system for the first few centuries of space travel. Ahem. Well, maybe that's true if you start the clock in the 19th century with Imperial Moon.

The regulars are fine. We see the Doctor with Tegan, Turlough or sometimes both of 'em, depending on whether the current story warrants one or two companions. (Turlough is cool in The Oxaqua Incident, by the way.) The non-fiction articles aren't up to last year's standard, with One Doctor - Five Men being an introduction for novices and The Designers being a six-page interview with two costume designers. It's okay, but I had more fun looking at the original design sketches accompanying the article.

The 1984 annual has a few familiar faces (the Master, the Brigadier, UNIT) but at heart it's as loopy as the best of World Distributors. Fungus even revives that old sixties standby, aliens who hate loud noises! Fantastic! Who said the golden age had passed?