A Review by Phil Fenerty 5/3/04
A strip in the style, both art and content, of the early TV Comic strips. Doctor Who (clearly the McGann version) and his grandchildren (as seen in the Hartnell/ Troughton strips) arrive on Darbodia. All is grey and the inhabitants placid and lifeless. Doctor Who pulls fireworks from his attache case to liven things up, this brings a few Darbodians round. It also attracts the attention of the planet's ruler, who sends cylindrical flying robots to put a stop to things. After Gillian is kidnapped, Doctor Who and John follow the robots to discover the cause of Darbodia's problems.
The whole Darbodia scenario is wrapped up in six pages. The storytelling is very simplistic, with obvious TV Comic-isms included in the plot - flying robots, evil geniuses, simple traps to foil the villain with. The artwork is wonderfully rendered, and Neville Main would have been proud to produce it. The story is true to its era and never descends into pastiche.
The last page, where the art is more in keeping with the present style, is beautifully evocative. Fitting in with the issue's 40th anniversary theme, it recalls times and places past where eager 10-year-olds would flick through TV Comic until they found the latest adventure featuring Doctor Who. The whole strip (and the last few panels especially) is a wonderful invocation of how things were, in a gentler era.
This is one of the few cases in Doctor Who history where the story is a triumph of atmosphere over substance. If you ever read the TV Comic take on Doctor Who, you must read this.
Overall: utterly charming.
A Review by Finn Clark 19/5/04
Absolutely fantastic! I loved every moment of this story. The Neville Main pastiche had me rolling on the floor and the TV Comic a-like scripting was a delight. (If DWM ever does another story like this, how about inviting Bill Mevin back for a reprise? He returned to paint a few DWCC covers in the nineties and his stories may have been dumb nonsense even by TV Comic standards but they looked beautiful.) The Land of Happy Endings is something special.
I'm also going to sing the praises of John & Gillian. They're ignored because they starred in childish comics that ran alongside Popeye and Ken Dodd's Diddymen, but these two companions lasted throughout the show's first half-decade! Even halfway through Troughton's era, they'd been there from the start. They outlived Hartnell and all of his other companions. Altogether they've appeared in 62 comic strip stories comprising 483 pages - more than some Doctors. We saw them grow from children into adults, eventually leaving the TARDIS to go to university. What's more, John Canning drew Gillian as bloody good looking!
As an aside, after writing out Izzy in Oblivion (DWM 323-328) the comic strip went through a phase of harking back to other companions. Frobisher starred in Where Nobody Knows Your Name (DWM 329), John and Gillian appeared here and Destrii was just around the corner in Bad Blood (DWM 338-342), if you think she counts.
Visually it's a dead-on imitation of Neville Main's art, though its colouring is weaker than Main's. (His weekly strips were black-and-white, but he painted a four-page colour story for the 1966 TV Comic annual.) Scriptwise it's also specifically mid-sixties Who rather than anything from Troughton's era or the seventies. TV Comic could always soar off into lands of lunacy, but only in the Hartnell era could the Doctor meet Santa Claus or the Pied Piper of Hamelyn. This DWM homage nails it all, down to the daft dialogue and whimsical plot elements. Those "figments" are utterly TV Comic-ish and rather charming, for instance. The result is a story that feels much more imaginative than usual in modern Who! TV Comic wasn't bound by the usual rules of SF (or storytelling, or realism) and so could really surprise you.
And then, after nearly taking the piss for six pages, the last page has a realistically drawn 8th Doctor waking up in the TARDIS and musing on why he loves his grandchildren's world. I'm a little grinchy at this arm's-length approach to TV Comic canonicity, but in terms of tone it's the perfect ending. It's informed and respectful, not blind to the faults but also extolling the virtues.
DWM's multi-episode stories can be hit-or-miss, but their one-parters
have long been among the most imaginative, whimsical and bizarre Doctor
Who stories you'll find. If you don't believe me, reread Happy
Deathday, TV Action! and
A Review by Richard Radcliffe
21/6/05
This is a very fine homage to the original Doctor Who strips of
Neville Main. Scott Gray tells the story, and the artwork is split between
Martin Geraghty, David Roach (who do the final page), and F Choudhury (who
probably is the main influence on the first 6 pages).
The 40th Anniversary was celebrated in a variety of ways, by all the
different Doctor Who storytellers. For my money it was Terrance
Dicks who got it just about right with the second part of Deadly Reunion. Zagreus was
too rambling, that's for sure. Legend was too big
and messy. Story of Doctor Who was alright, but nothing new. DWM
went right back to the beginning of the comic strip - a vast legacy of
Who in its own right.
Whilst being a very fine nod to the earlier comic strips though, it
can't help but be rather superficial and rubbish! Thanks to the Classic
Comics I was able to experience some of these earlier strips, and they are
much too silly and childish for even my diverse tastes. So whilst getting
the feel of the stories right (in artwork and storyline) I don't really
want a recap of this not very good aspect of Who. All the same, you
have to admire the effort, and it's a quaint idea.
It's all set up just like the 60s strips, the aliens, the robots, the
utterances of the Doctor, John and Gillian. The whole tone is totally in
keeping with that era. Slap it alongside those old strips - it's
nostalgic for those of you who were there then, and read them as children
(I wasn't born till 1968).
I can't help but like the intention, even though I dislike the subject
matter. Brilliant, but bad. Tough one to review and rate really.
6/10