From Doctor Who Magazine #130-133
A Review by Finn Clark 7/12/04
A Cold Day in Hell isn't actually bad, but it's formulaic and uninspiring. The Doctor meets the Ice Warriors! Yes, but what else? No, that's the whole story. Frobisher gets written out, but even that's done ponderously. In fairness it's not thrown in as an afterthought; from the first page you can see the story building up towards it. Unfortunately it's done to the sound of grinding gears as predictable and dull motivations are churned out. This should have been so much better. I love Frobisher, but DWM fumbled every major turning point for the character: his departure, the monomorphia...
The references to Peri are curious. Of course in real life 'twas simply an attempt to deal with the changeover from last month's issue of DWM starring the 6th Doctor, Peri and Frobisher. Unable to show the departure of either Colin or Nicola (though ironically the TV show didn't show us a proper goodbye for those characters either), a few lines of dialogue is the best Simon Furman could do:
"But a holiday won't help me forget about Peri overnight."However bearing in mind The Age of Chaos, it seems clear that the 6th Doctor and Frobisher stayed in touch with Peri and her family on Krontep after Trial of a Time Lord. Clearly Peri and Frobisher were close, but perhaps the 7th Doctor didn't feel comfortable returning to see her in his new body? One wonders how many friends he must forget whenever he regenerates..."I can see that, Frobisher. The same goes for me. But Peri is happy with Ycarnos, and she wouldn't want us to be sad."
The script is clumsy and fannish. There's too much talking, too much continuity and an entire B-plot (Frobisher and his new friends) that doesn't go anywhere because the Doctor solved the problem first. Admittedly this is a factor in Frobisher's decision to stay behind, but I'd be feeling more charitable about that if Frobisher's departure had been allowed any emotional resonance in the first place. What's more, too much happens between episodes, to be implied or told to us later in flashback.
(For more information on What Frobisher Did Next, check out Where Nobody Knows Your Name (DWM 329). He's married and running a pub. For what it's worth, Peladon continuity references mean that we know fairly closely the year in which he settled down.)
It looks great, of course. This was John Ridgway's last story as regular DWM artist, again with Tim Perkins on inks, though he would return later for one-off stories. (He ended up doing 143 pages of Sylvester McCoy comic strip, which is more McCoy pages than anyone except Lee Sullivan.) Look for Ridgway's signature on the final page. He enjoyed working for DWM and we're lucky to have had him. He also contributes the one "wow, cool!" moment in this story: a terrifying image of Olla the heat vampire (aka. a Dreilyn) flash-frying an Ice Warrior's brain.
Oh yes, Olla. As Frobisher left, Olla arrived... though her tenure would be considerably shorter than his. To learn more, read Redemption! (DWM 134), the one-parter that came next. I actually think Olla had potential and could have been fun if she'd been allowed to stay longer, though obviously everything about the strip suffered when the quality of the artwork nosedived after Ridgway's departure.
I've been harsh on this story, but it's not unenjoyable. It's 32 pages of Ice Warrior action. The story's structural flaws are less glaring if you whisk through in fifteen minutes, rather than taking it piecemeal in eight-page chunks in four monthly instalments. It looks nice and it's "good enough". However I'm becoming increasingly hostile to mindlessly churned-out Who that doesn't pull its weight and is merely "good enough".
A Vampire and a Penguin by Noe Geric 5/9/19
After the Sixth Doctor left the Dr Who Magazine strip, it was time for the Seventh Doctor to have his first adventure. For some odd reason, he's still travelling with Frobisher, and Peri is mentioned for most of the story (what about Mel?). A Cold Day in Hell sees the two travellers arrive on a paradise world controlled by the Ice Warriors, and that's technically Frobisher's last adventure. But is it worth it?
In 1987, the strip was weaker than before. The stories were uninspiring, and even John Ridgway excellent artwork let it down. A Cold Day is just the beginning of the weakest run of the DWM strip. Nobody seems to know what the strip is about, and even the Doctor is wrong. In A Cold Day, we see the Seventh Doctor act exactly like the Second, in a story that seems to be made for the Third. Only in the last episode does the Doctor act like the Seventh, just before he begins to talk again like Troughton. Ridgway completely fails at drawing him. He looks like a little goblin and not really like McCoy.
Frobisher is here too and never stops talking about Peri. His little sub-plot is useless and he doesn't contribute to the story in any way. At the end, he even claims he's ''redundant'', and that's not a good sign when a character comments on the quality of strip itself. Olla the heat vampire is introduced and is now apparently the new travelling companion (not for long, she'll be gone in the next strip). Her character is blank and seems to have super powers. As a recuring character, she couldn't have been really interesting, and she doesn't really contribute to the story (except to the useless attempt to sabotage the enemy's machine).
And at last we've got the Ice Warriors. They're perfectly depicted, Ridgway managed to draw them perfectly. But their incessant ''sssssss'' is ridiculous in comic form. They don't have any real characterization, and their plan isn't original at all. The other characters are a bunch of people who survived the Ice Warrior attack on the planet and try to get free of the Warriors' menace. None of them are characterized at all, and they seem to change from one page to another. I never understood who was dead and who wasn't. Frobisher's departure concludes this mess. His reasons to depart are dull, and the scene isn't the tearful moment it should've been.
Conclusion: nothing's good about that strip. Frobisher is wasted in his last story, and the introduction of the Seventh Doctor is a missed opportunity. We've got a poor attempt to follow the Peladon's adventures and a plot that doesn't get really far. A wasted opportunity: 3/10