From TV Comic #705-709
Published: 1965
A Review by Finn Clark 28/2/05
Where the hell did this come from? We expect TV Comic to be weird, but someone had to do it first... and that someone was Neville Main. Challenge of the Piper is more boundary-busting than The Tides of Time or The Scarlet Empress. This tale doesn't just steal the content of a traditional fairy tale (specifically the Pied Piper of Hamelin), but it swipes the storytelling form too. The Doctor's bottomless haversack is so absurd that it can only be interpreted as an updated magical bag from old English folk tales. You certainly can't take it literally.
It's easy to imagine modern fans reading this tale with disbelief and condescension, but to my mind the strangest thing about this story is the idea that someone thought of it in the first place. Admittedly the TV show would later create The Celestial Toymaker and The Mind Robber, but there's no sci-fi sheen over the fairy tales here. The TARDIS has literally landed in the land of the Brothers Grimm... and that's only the start of it.
"Many years ago, Hamelin town was overrun with rats, and as everyone knows, the mayor of that town promised to pay a pied piper one thousand guilders to get rid of them."Dr Who speculates that they're in the Middle Ages, but any hope of treating this as a straight historical goes the way of the dodo once we've met a dragon (yes, the big fire-breathing beastie) and seen the Pied Piper's magical powers. Paradoxically this really helps the mood. Challenge of the Piper is Neville Main's most sinister story, with a child-stealing opponent who plays by the rules of fairy tales rather than science fiction. Even the art manages a few spooky moments. It's still basically Neville Main's potato-faced cartoonishness, but there's definite atmosphere in his silhouettes and ghostly mists. The Piper himself looks a little frightening too.
The plot is also lifted from fairy tales, so in other words it's arbitrary and ridiculous. Instead of giving us Neville Main's usual plot twists, it's a completely linear quest structure in which Dr Who's magical bag (ahem, haversack) produces a never-ending stream of marvels to save the day. There's a fire extinguisher, an echo-sounder, a small stove, enough food to make hot breakfasts for three people, a radar, a parachute, a tape recorder... and that's just what we see him take out! I can only think that the haversack was dimensionally transcendental.
After the Piper's three tests have been completed (and note that the rules of fairy tales dictate precisely three), Dr Who returns the children to Hamelin for a satisfying confrontation with the mayor.
"You are not the Pied Piper who took our children away!"The ending is a perfect fit with everything else in this extraordinary tale. This story may look like childish nonsense... hell, it is childish nonsense, but it also demonstrates the unpredictable versatility of TV Comic's Doctor Who comic strip under Neville Main. The story before was a villain-less fable with an unintentionally ambiguous ending, then before that we had a continuity-wank sequel to The Web Planet! See DWCC 20 to read this tale for yourself - and I swear you'll never read anything else like it. In its own childish way, this is something else."No! I'm Doctor Who and I've brought them back!" Hehehehe, goes the reader, but Dr Who hasn't finished yet. "And I shall probably take them away again unless you hand over the one thousand guilders in gold that you promised the Pied Piper for ridding this town of rats!"