From Doctor Who Magazine #108-110
A Review by Finn Clark 10/11/04
I've never liked this story. Its first episode is one big TARDIS scene, then it degenerates into cliche before falling apart completely in one of the messiest conclusions you'll see. What's more, apparently the version as originally scripted by Alan McKenzie was even worse!
Incidentally, like The Stories (DWM 104-107), this is another tale with only episode titles and no umbrella title for the overall three-parter. For lack of anything better I believe people tend to call it Exodus-Revelation!-Genesis!, but if anyone has a better suggestion I'm all ears.
Exodus (DWM 108) is the most interesting of these three episodes, partly because it's merely a prologue for the other two and doesn't get involved with their (hackneyed) plot. It's also evidence against the theory that the comic strips' 6th Doctor was watered down. Admittedly he was generally less unlikeable than the TV version, but these eight pages are all about the Doctor being a bastard, pissing off Frobisher and being a selfish git until Peri chews him out. An alien refugee family has got aboard the TARDIS and the Doctor wants them back in space immediately.
The result is a character-based vignette about the Doctor's compassion (or lack of, in Peri's opinion), which is commendable but let down by the fact that it's basically one long TARDIS scene. TARDIS scenes tend to be boring, especially in the comic strip. I suspect it's a visual thing as much as anything else. Still, at least it's more interesting than an SF murder mystery in a castle. We'll get to that in a moment.
Revelation! (DWM 109) feels slender. It does nothing obviously wrong, but it doesn't particularly grab your attention either. Apart from anything else, it has only five pages' worth of story stretched out to eight pages by cunning use of dead air in the script and splash pages.
However Genesis! (DWM 110) is where the story really falls apart. The Cybermen are mindless goons, with the real villain being this laughable joker who can't even wire his equipment correctly. That's right, the bad guy blows himself up. Convenient. This deus ex machina lurches out of nowhere, but it's not the only thing to do so. Frobisher gets monomorphia. How? What? Where? Buggered if I know. I only know that it has nothing to do with anything else whatsoever. Couldn't it have been the result of getting injured trying to break Peri and himself out of the prison cell or something? There was heavy-duty electric stuff about; that could have worked. (Besides, the monomorphia only lasted one story before Frobisher was shapeshifting again in Time Bomb and Changes.)
Yet, amazingly, the original script was supposedly worse. Genesis! has "adapted by John Ridgway" on the credits under the usual "Script: Alan McKenzie". Firstly, Sheila Cranna (DWM's editor) had paid good money for the rights to use the Cybermen in the comic strip and was unhappy with the original script's less-than-impressive complete roster of half a Cyberman. Secondly John Ridgway eliminated a couple of coincidences, one of which being an electrical storm which killed the bad guy and his Cybermen... despite the fact that Sylvaniar was suffering drought so severe that its peasants were fleeing into space rather than stay and starve.
Incidentally this is one of the few appearances of ,a href=eart.htm>Earthshock Cybermen in the comics. Strangely they're unknown even to educated scientists on a world capable of interstellar travel, so one might speculate that this story is set long after the fall of their empire. The 30th century, perhaps?
I've said harsh things about this three-parter, but it's been reprinted a fair bit. See Classic Comics 16 and the first Golden Wonder mini-comic (though the latter didn't include Exodus). It also remains true that a weak script in the hands of John Ridgway will produce a better comic than a passable script in the hands of many other artists. It may have bad Cybermen, but at least it has Cybermen. Exodus is an interesting episode and the next two parts are reasonable time-wasters, if nothing else. If you read it, you'll probably enjoy it.