A Review by Richard Radcliffe 10/6/03
A harder edge is in evidence in this section of the strip's history. The 7th Doctor reflects the no-show of the TV show, Ace joins Peri as the only TV Companion to appear as a regular in the strip. Writers and artists came and went from story to story. Andrew Cartmel, Gary Russell and Paul Cornell (famous names from the past and future) all contributed words at this time. Timeframe: Winter 1989 to Spring 1992.
Hunger from the Ends of Time (157-158)
Dan Abnett's second contribution to the strip benefits from the dark, detailed panels that John Ridgway's art gives it. Ridgway is right back on form on his return, and the 10 pages of this are well stocked with marvelous artwork, and a simple but effective idea.
Catalog is another of these library worlds. The difference is it's a time library, the information being stored in energy form. Some information is in the past, some in the present, some in the future. Trouble is a bug has got into the system, and needs purging.
The FHD team (from Abnett and Ridgway's Echoes of Mogor) help the Doctor get rid of the bugs, and restore the library files. The only trouble is they have to bring everything to the present to do so - making this a librarian's dream job by the end.
The reduction of the strip to 5 pages, for both issues make this quite a short story. But there's plenty enough story to work with. The library world has been done before and since, but never like this - it's still a brilliant idea in whatever format the library is in. The Doctor and TARDIS are very involved in producing a resolution, and the FHD team are more interesting soldiers than the usual types.
The final panel of all the books strewn everywhere is excellent. I would love to be part of that sort-out crew! Hunger From the Ends of Time is a nice little 2-part strip with the 7th Doctor very good. It's rather an apt title too, and very 7th Doctor-ish! 7/10
Train-Flight (159-161)
How you like crossing Doctors and companions is very much a personal thing. Some hate the way it screws about with canon, and makes listing things in order a total nightmare. Some believe companions are Doctor-centric, and should only be used with THEIR Doctor. Some couldn't care less, and are just glad to see the novelty of having mismatched characters on show. Whatever your take on it, crossing Doctors and companions can produce some surprising good results. Train-Flight is such a story.
The Doctor in question is the 7th. He's been on his own for a few years now in the strip - Ace so far nowhere to be seen - he goes to see Sarah-Jane. The house looks very similar to the one seen in Five Doctors - semi-detached suburbia. I love this idea. The Doctor, free for a little while, goes off and looks up an old companion. The 7th has often been displayed as manipulative and uncaring, but the strip takes that convention and turns it around. It's a very good 7th Doctor story, and his human compassionate side is on show, not his mysterious one.
Sarah-Jane is my personal favourite companion. I don't care which Doctor she is with, I just want her to be in lots of books, audios, TV, strips whatever! The combination of the 7th Dr and Sarah-Jane works pretty well in the context of the story - and so the continuity hounds are happy too. This is a fascinating side-step, with a reasonable story to back it up.
The best part is undoubtedly when the Doctor apologizes to Sarah-Jane for leaving her in Hand of Fear. But the whole interplay between the 2 favourites is excellent. The first few pages set in Sarah's house, and on the Train are wonderfully REAL - making the later trip to the stars that much more unreal.
The story by Andrew Donkin and Graham Brand is a good one. Using the human race as food is hardly the most original idea, but thanks to some excellent artwork from John Ridgway, the aliens are convincing and different from the norm. The insides of the alien spaceship are excellent, and very unusual. As I say the contrast with reality is stark.
The artwork is wonderful too for its depiction of the British Transport system. Underground trains, London buses - both are here in all their glory. For the first time in a strip I was transported back to my childhood, and specifically old colouring books. I always preferred the pictures of trains and buses. Cars and planes, my brother could spoil them, but trains and buses were my thing - and I would colour them precisely. I really did want to colour these trains and buses in - but there's so many strips to read I just haven't the time!
Train-Flight is a nice side-step for the comic strip. The pairing of 7th Dr and Sarah-Jane works very well, and the presentation (both in story and artwork) is very good. 9/10
Doctor Conkeror (162)
In the early 90s somebody decided to put together some DW Comic strips from DWM, colour them, and release them in graphic novel format. Graphic novels tend to be massive affairs, between 50 and 100 pages long. Thus a few strips were collated together to produce a substantial enough graphic novel for the price. The strips published within were all 7th Doctor stories from 1990. There's the 3-part Sarah-Jane guest appearance - Train-Flight, the 3 part horror - Fellow Travellers, the 6-part sequel - Mark of Mandragora, and the bit of a laugh 1-parter - Doctor Conkeror.
Doctor Conkeror is lightweight. Maybe realizing that the other entries into the graphic collection were quite solemn or epic, it provides the interval fluffy entertainment. The Doctor is on his own, off to collect Ace. He is something of a conker collector is our Time's Champion, and he stops off in Viking England to stock up on the fallen seedlings. There he saves a boy from the nasty Vikings (burning a longboat in the process! - so much for non-involvement) and goes on his merry way. Turns out the Doctor has invented conkers, as he shows the boy his favourite game.
I hate conkers. I hated it at school, I hate it equally now. Never saw the point to it, never roamed the woods looking for little brown things. I went walking plenty of times, and enjoyed the great British woodlands - but it was never to collect conkers. I find it quite quaint though that the Doctor does so. He has a time machine at his disposal, and he chooses to go and collect conkers! Brilliant!
It's lightweight, it's there to be treated as such, but it's a lot of fun too. The art is pretty good by Mike Collins, the story simple by Ian Rimmer. Let's go and get a choc ice shall we! 6/10
Fellow Travellers (164-166)
The last TV script editer for DW pens this horrific tale, drawn expertly (and very different from the norm) by Arthur Ranson. It features in the Mark of Mandragora graphic novel along with other DWM strips from 1990. Such collections are a great idea, even if there are not that many published. The DWM strips deserve greater recognition, especially when the stories are as good as this.
I bought the Mandragora graphic novel because it coincided with some strips which I had never possessed. I stopped getting DWM around 1987, to restart again in 1994. I have since got many in between, but DWM around this time was not that good really - the comic strip being one of the best parts.
But to Fellow Travellers. What strikes the reader at first is the wonderful artwork by Arthur Ranson. He didn't draw that many DW strips, and he should have done, because this is superb. The story is full of atmosphere, full of dark lanes and old country houses. Ranson visualizes these for us brilliantly - and there are many panels that would make splendid posters. The detail is stronger, but the artist also features panels that are quite basic - showing off the unknown superbly well. The depictions of McCoy and Aldred are also superb.
The story is excellent. Cartmel knows the mysterious 7th Doctor better than most, and he captures his personality very well. Ace too is interesting - this is the TV Ace, before the shambles she became in the NA's . The story is of an alien aggressor coming to a sleepy Country House - the Doctor's house. Before the New Adventures gave the Doctor an English house, the Comics had done it first - and it's a great idea. Living in the cottage in the grounds (also owned by the Doctor we presume) is a family. Grandmother Lacy lives with daughter in Law Ella, and Granddaughter Lizzie.
As the Doctor, Ace and the family strive to escape the horrific Hitchers (beings from the Void) so prejudices within the family run rife. Ella isn't white, and it is the Grandmother who has the problem with that. With such subject matter the Comic continues the excellent adult approach that Seasons 25 and 26 started. It also forms the style of much of the New Adventure run that was to come later.
The beauty of Fellow Travellers is that it is better than virtually all of the New Adventures. It set the tone for what was to come, but is in fact brilliant in its own right. It is one of the greatest Comic Strips that DWM ever produced, and totally justifies the extra circulation that the Mandragora Graphic Novel gave it. 10/10
The Mark of Mandragora (167-172)
The TV series was no more. It had been a year since Ace and the 7th Doctor wandered over the park at Perivale talking of dreaming rivers and smoky people. The strip had resisted putting Ace with the Doctor until the recent Fellow Travellers - but now she was here to stay. It marked an upturn in the quality of the strip. There was also more consistency too with writers. Andrew Cartmel and Dan Abnett would pen the bulk of the strips over the coming few years, with guest appearances by the likes of Paul Cornell and Gary Russell. There was a stability on the strip that hadn't been seen since the 6th Doctor days. Artists came and went, but in Lee Sullivan they had unearthed a real talent - he's the artist (helped by Mark Farmer) here.
Mark of Mandragora was deemed successful enough that 2 years later, in 1993, they reproduced it - fully coloured - for a graphic novel. It was a good choice because it's one of the best strips we had seen.
DWM set Mark of Mandragora up brilliantly. 3 page mini-strips graced issues 167 and 168. The first featured a frightened UNIT soldier being terrorized by an unknown alien. The fearful thoughts of this soldier told of the horror to come. The second featured the 7th Doctor and Ace. The Doctor realizes that the Mandragora Helix lives, and that will have grave repercussions for the Earth. These teasers prepare the way for the adventure to come. This monster is huge, and the whole world is at stake. As the action switches from TARDIS to a London nightclub, so the Doctor realizes that the Mandragora Helix is using the TARDIS as a conduit to enlarge its power. Humans are becoming slaves of the Helix, as they take the Mandrake drug.
The representation of the Helix is excellent. Sullivan and Farmer create a real horrific new monster. You just know this is something that the Doctor is almost powerless to do anything about. Dan Abnett gives the 7th Doctor a doom-laden personae here. He spends the latter half of the story, with head down, depressed at what he has unwittingly unleased on the world. And when the TARDIS is apparently destroyed his solemnity increases tenfold.
We're moving into New Adventures 7th Doctor by this stage of the strip. That dark, mysterious Doctor is very evident - but here he has lost complete control of the situation. It is the TARDIS that saves the day. There's a rather out of place smiley ending though to the whole thing, as the TARDIS is seen to be okay after all. It's a pity too that the Brigadier just had a few panels, and none of them with the Doctor. The future of UNIT is also mapped out by Abnett, connecting it with his own creation of previous strips - the Foreign Hazard Duty.
But these are just minor quibbles. The bulk of Mark of Mandragora is excellent. It's superbly drawn, and nicely plotted, this was one of the best strips of the early 1990s. 8/10
Party Animals (173)
It has been a running gag over the comic strips for the last few years. The 7th Doctor has been trying to get to Maruthea, to the birthday party of Bonjaxx. Well, he's finally made it, and I really wish he hadn't.
At the party the Doctor bumps into lots of old enemies, characters from other TV shows, a future incarnation, past incarnations. You get the idea. This is cartoon DW, and Mike Collins and Steve Pini get to draw lots of characters from all over the place, in the hope that the reader will play spot the monster, celebrity, Doctor.
Trouble is the whole thing doesn't make a great deal of sense. There's no apparent reason why all these characters are together. There's plenty of daft things like 2 Daleks in love. It's all very slapdash, with little structure to it at all. Let's put Worf in there, that'll be fun! Sapphire and Steel - what a good idea!
Bonjaxx seems to be a Daemon - that's a bit weird too. The future Doctor is the same one the 8th masquerading as in the much later The Final Chapter. It's Nick Briggs, and what's with that toothbrush in his pocket?
All I can see this comic strip was for was a Spot the Faces exercise. Trouble is the art's not that great either, and much of it is unrecognizable. Roger Langridge was to do this sort of thing much better later on. Why DWM feels it has to do this sort of thing every now and again is beyond me. One to skip over, and pretend never happened! 4/10
The Chameleon Factor (174)
I couldn't figure out what the hell was happening in the first few pages of this strip. And it's only 5 pages long too!
The 7th Doctor and Ace are stuck in a tree. There's a magpie carrying the 1st Doctors ring. Sutekh appears, Ace falls off the tree. Turns out the ring was stuck in the chameleon circuits, and all this was the TARDIS messing about.
Paul Cornell can certainly tell off the wall stories. This is another one, but I prefered his last Stairway to Heaven, much better. It's another one of those stories where you finish, and then return to the beginning to see where everything fits together. Bemusing the reader for the bulk of the story is uncomfortable. But I get it now, having it read it through again!
Nice to see the 2nd Doctor in there, these blasts from the past are good when done originally and well. The new console room looks terrific - looks like the strip will be the best carrier of the flame of new Who again. Lee Sullivan's art continues to impress aswell.
Short, confusing, another weird trip from the mind of Paul Cornell! 6/10
The Good Soldier (175-178)
The strip had entered a new phase with Fellow Travellers, a year before this (Good Soldier appeared June 1991). Ace was aboard finally, and Cartmel was keen to pursue his 7th Doctor, mysterious and dark, masterplan. He'd been getting there with the TV series, especially Season 26, but I would argue that the ultimate expression of it appeared in the comic strip - in Cartmel's own strips between 1990 and 1992.
In this period Cartmel was responsible for 4 stories:- Fellow Travellers, The Good Soldier, Evening's Empire and Ravens. Evening's Empire was to be finished in Classic Comics, but the other 3 are in DWM. These 4 stories give us the Cartmel image of the 7th Doctor and Ace, and are arguably the deepest and most adult of any strips to ever appear in DWM.
All four strips are written in the style of the comic renaissance of this time. With Dark Knight Returns redefining the comic medium, this is DW's reaction - and the 7th Doctor is ideally suited. The emphasis is on mood. Dark comic strip panels emphasize the violence. Musings of the main characters show the trauma experienced. Words are kept to a minimum, with only the odd monologue to describe the emotion.
The art, of necessity, has to be exceptional in such a story. The images tell the story far more than the words. This places The Good Soldier further down than the other 3 strips in this group therefore. The art is good, but it's not brilliant (like Fellow Travellers and Evening's Empire were). Nonetheless this is a notable strip for its atmosphere.
The story concerns the early Cybermen. The 7th Doctor and Ace are driving through Nevada in 1954 (seems the TARDIS is back in chameleon mode). They stop at a service station, American soldiers are there expecting unknown visitors. Turns out a whole chunk of the Nevada desert has been taken up into space to a Cyber warship. The Cybermen capture the lead soldier, Colonel Rhodes, and turn him into a horrific crossbreed of Cyberman and human. The Doctor and Ace escape by tapping into the control system and pinching a shuttle.
As all Cartmel strips, there's a relatively simple story at the heart of it. It's the atmosphere, and mood that fills the story out. This is a 4 part story - it could probably have been less. The Good Soldier is definitely an adult comic strip - the violence is quite graphic at times - the subject matter deep and solemn. As a Cyber story, the emphasis is on change - the change from biological to mechanical. That's where the horror lies, the change that comes upon Colonel Rhodes being the crux of the whole story.
The mysterious, dark 7th Doctor, continues to excel in the hands of Cartmel. Not sure about the TARDIS/Car thing, but overall a pretty good strip. 7/10
This little ditty is part of a DWM Holiday Special 1991, complete with
Ace (in Swimsuit) on the front cover. The subject of the DWM Special was
locations - something largely bettered by other publications since. So I
doubt this Special will be widely sought after, other than by collectors.
Within its pages is Seaside Rendezvous - a strip that ties in
with the location theme of the magazine, by putting the 7th Doctor and Ace
on a beach. They are on holiday present day, but the Doctor seems to
waiting for something. Many years before, 1826 to be precise, a ship
carrying a large block of stone that seems to be possessed, has to chuck
its rock from hell into the sea. The block of stone turns out to be an
Ogri, from Stones of Blood, which comes ashore just
in time for Ace and the Doctor to help destroy it.
That's it really, but at 5 pages what more can you expect. An old
monster
that has never been used before is a good addition. Ace in swimsuit is
also a good idea. Gary Frank and Stephen Baskerville, never to be heard of
again, provide good artwork. Paul Cornell gives us an adequate little
piece, just perfect for the Special. 7/10
A Glitch in Time (179)
John Freeman (script) and Richard Whittaker (art) combine with this
strip to produce a forgettable 7 pages about Nexus Points. It features the
7th Doctor and Ace, building on the success of their partnership of the
final years of the TV programme.
Doctor Who really should have devoted more storylines to these
fascinating T-Junctions in history. Where would history have gone if? But
then I suppose the show would have been Sliders, and whilst that show was
okay, it's not in the same league as DW. The comic strip seeks to
redress the balance, but a 1-issue story isn't the way to do it. There is
just not enough time to devote to such a fascinating occurrence.
Thus the Glitch here is seen and solved as soon as you can blink.
There's one of those incredibly dull teams of soldiers the strip seems to
like, there's a load of dinosaurs. Do we laugh out loud when the would be
dino-assassins are killed by dino-wielding Stormtroopers from the future?
The irony is there for sure, but I was a little confused as to what all
this meant. The Doctor just observed, and there really wasn't that much to
see.
The way it's all presented isn't too great either. The artwork is poor.
The Doctor and Ace are mere caricatures of their usual selves - and it all
results in a poor comic strip. 4/10
The Man in the Ion Mask (Winter Special '91)
Appearing as it did in the Winter Special of 1991, I expected a
complete UNIT story here. What in fact we get is a 3rd Doctor/Master
story, with UNIT only on the sidelines. I suppose it is quite
representative of the main UNIT era though, so that's fine.
The story is set directly after The Daemons. The
Master is incarcerated in prison, he ask for the Doctor to come to visit
him. The Master has decided to change his ways, and the Doctor is
attentive, if a little sceptical. Turns out the Master is using a
holographic image projector (using the ions of the title). The Doctor has
his own projector though, and the Master remains in jail.
Dan Abnett has captured the personalities of Jon Pertwees Doctor and
Roger Delgado's Master perfectly. Speech inflections are spot on. The art
by Brian Williamson is a little sketchy, but the likenesses (whilst being
not that detailed) are still good.
This strip was presented well before DWM started its run of Past Doctor
stories (the 2 years preceding the Film). It shows
how past Doctors can be equally as effective as the 7th and 8th. These
blasts from the past, nostalgia driven, are great to see. Variety has
always been the spice of DW - and this strip is effective as
result.
A well-written and drawn comic strip, ideal for this Special (despite
lack of UNIT focus!). 7/10
The Grief (185-187)
After the confusion surrounding Evening's
Empire, The Grief seemed a fitting name for the next strip -
which was in itself delayed as well! It's not that memorable either,
which rather goes against the "Good things come to those that wait" maxim!
Drawn by Vincent Danks, with Inks by Buylla and Riggs, it doesn't look
that impressive either. The likenesses are okay, but the material wasn't
the best to work with. The story, by Dan Abnett, is a depressing one. The
7th Doctor and Ace arrive at Shorsha, a people who wiped themselves out to
save the universe from the ultimate aggressors - the Lom. There's an
exploration team on Shorsha, and predictably the Lom get resurrected.
Great effort has been made to give the Lom a real nasty look. Making
them look quite like like the Hammer Teacher in Pink Floyd's Another Brick
in the Wall video, was not perhaps the best move though. The story then
becomes an Alien clone as the creature tours the base killing the
exploration team personnel.
Trouble is no tension is built up. The Doctor and Ace grasp the
enormity of the situation, but their actions against the Lom seem
haphazard and halfhearted. The exploration team, racked with guilt at the
Lom revival, are a depressing bunch. This is a depressing story with
depressing characters in it. I only read it last week, and can't remember
any of their names!
There's some attempt to tie the whole thing in with the New Adventure
continuity - but like so many of that range, it just wasn't worth the
effort. It looks like the 7th Doctor in the strips is flagging.
5/10