A Film in Strip Form? by Tim Roll-Pickering 6/9/98
What is about The Tides of Time that has people still talking about it today, over sixteen years after it first saw print? Many writers of the New Adventures cite it as one of their main inspirations, characters from the story are still making appearances in the current DWM strips, and it is almost constantly in discussion on rec.arts.drwho. But why?
The answer, quite simply, is the fact it was the first real epic in the comic strip. Encompassing many locations -- Stockbridge, Gallifrey, a bathroom, a bizarre funfair, Althrace and the centre of the Universe and utilising the limitless budget of the comic strip, The Tides of Time is almost a feature film. Imagine if it was adapted for the big screen -- it would have everyone talking about the series again. Steve Parkhouse and Dave Gibbons have successfully captured the fifth Doctor incredibly successfully in what was his very first strip. All the traits are recognisable -- he doesn’t search for danger but it comes to him anyway; his survival is it’s own salvation; he loses more than he wins and is recognisably human -- together with a likeness that is clear from the outset, remarkable given the limited reference material available to Dave Gibbons when he drew the early parts.
The rest of the cast are equally well depicted, like Sir Justin, a character of true charm, or Melanchius the demon, with clear motives. And the threat the Doctor faces in this story is immense-it threatens Gallifrey and the entire cosmos, but is countered by real mortals.
This story is a true classic, and desperately deserves to be rereleased in a trade paperback. 10/10
A Review by Finn Clark 17/9/04
This is the story that changed everything. DWM's Tom Baker comic strips had basically been breathless adventure... wonderfully crafted examples of that, but never trying to dig particularly deep. Spider-God, The Deal and End of the Line took us somewhere darker for a few months, but even they came and went in the blink of an eye. They're great stories. I love them like brothers. However the only Tom Baker comic strip story even to sniff at painting on an epic canvas was, perhaps, The Iron Legion.
Steve Parkhouse took over as writer from Steve Moore with The Deal (DWM 53) and was apparently itching to expand the strip's scope even as he wrote several more (excellent) short tales along the lines of his predecessors' work. When Davison arrived, Parkhouse switched gears and blew fandom's collective mind with The Tides of Time. In many ways it's the counterpart of his Voyager saga. Both stories are still revered decades later as classics of DWM's comic strip. Both are so weird that at times their narrative becomes almost dreamlike, abandoning conventional storytelling for a world of magic and wonder. Both introduce a new Doctor, respectively the 5th and 6th. Both are masterfully drawn by hugely respected artists from the UK comics scene.
However personally I prefer Voyager. The Tides of Time did it all first, but I've always found it rather lumpy and oddly paced. Voyager feels smoother and more organic, effortlessly drowning you in its insanity. However there's a ton of good stuff in The Tides of Time, more than enough to raise it above the level of a poor man's Voyager.
I'll start with the pacing. Episode one is downright eerie if you take it slowly... almost like an undiscovered episode of Sapphire and Steel, in fact. Episode two returns to the Whoniverse with a bang as it ploughs on with the plot at full speed. The Doctor recruits Sir Justin, visits Gallifrey, enters the Matrix, misses Shayde, hangs out with Rassilon and meets Merlin the Wise from The Neutron Knights in DWM 60. Whew.
But then... from episodes three to six, there's almost no story. Stuff happens, but it's: (a) random weirdness, or (b) nothing to do with our heroes. The Doctor and Justin are lost in Steve Parkhouse's imagination. There's a definite progression, e.g. Shayde's journey from creepy bogeyman to indestructible ally, but the story's so busy being epic that it loses sight of giving its heroes anything to do.
Mind you, anyone in search of that epic quality couldn't do better than this! We see the genesis of the Millennium Wars ("a thousand worlds in conflict for a thousand years") that had been introduced all the way back under Tom Baker. We visit a fantasy hell dimension where the Doctor meets Satan (aka. Melanicus). We visit the Althrace system, which would be the most mind-boggling thing ever in almost any other story but here is almost overwhelmed by all the other wonders. Oh, and the Event Synthesiser must be the most ridiculous idea imaginable... but somehow Parkhouse and Gibbons pull it off. Somehow it's whimsical, absurd and awesomely mythic, all at once. [Now I come to think of it, that's almost a keynote of Steve Parkhouse's work for DWM.]
However after all that, part seven kicks the story back into gear with an extraordinary last episode that takes us on an amazing journey... a shattered post-apocalyptic world, satanic evil, heroic sacrifice, an elegy in a country church and then finally an existential impossibility that once again makes the absurd seem mythic. Does the fate of the universe hinge on a single ball in a game of cricket? When Douglas Adams used this idea in Life, The Universe and Everything, he was writing a comedy. Steve Parkhouse takes it seriously, turning the 5th Doctor's cricket game on a village green into (possibly) the most important event in the universe.
I'm not sure that The Tides of Time hangs together very well as a complete story, but I'm not sure that its last episode isn't the best single comic strip instalment we've yet seen in DWM. It's astonishing! Give these ideas to any other writer and they'd struggle to do them justice in more than twice the page count.
Dave Gibbons gives us some stunning art as usual, though he's clearly struggling to draw the new Doctor. Peter Davison's agent famously wanted to prevent the publication of episode one because he wasn't happy about his client's likeness. (Bah, humbug. Some people don't know when they're well off. Sylvester McCoy's agent must have been asleep on the job some years later when DWM's artists drew the 7th Doctor as an infinite variation of deformed dwarves.) Eventually Davison did a special photosession to provide DWM with reference material, after which Dave Gibbons obviously relaxes. He's no longer straining with every likeness and has the confidence to try drawing the Doctor in smaller headshots. That doesn't mean that Davison's likeness becomes perfect overnight, mind you!
However many of this story's visual moments are stunning... the shattered church in part seven, overhung by a huge Saturn in the sky. The satanic fairground. The visual conceit of Shayde. In fact, just about every single panel in part seven is fantastic for me.
The biggest difference between this and Voyager, of course, involves their villains. Astrolabus is obviously more human... arrogant, frivolous, totally insane and capable of breaking the fourth wall. As an ongoing character he's better-suited to Doctor Who than the straightforward devil-figure of Melanicus, but that doesn't mean that Melanicus doesn't have his moments. It's a powerful scene when he casts aside the Prime Mover, takes control of the Event Synthesiser and swears chaos upon the universe, while part seven is truly apocalyptic. Holy water boils off Melanicus's face, corpses rise from the grave and both Justin and Shayde must put everything they have into defeating him. Raw evil may be simplistic, but it can also be frighteningly powerful.
Parkhouse's portrayal of the Doctor deserves comment too. I've always felt that the comic strip's characterisations of the Doctor are underrated... Tom Baker was strongly portrayed as the character off the telly, even to the point of going through recognisably Williams-era and Bidmead-era phases. The strips' Colin Baker never hit the heights of spikiness of his television equivalent, but he was far more faithful than is usually recognised. Admittedly DWM struggled initially with Sylvester McCoy, but hardly more than the TV production team and of course eventually Andrew Cartmel started writing the strips.
However for my money, if you leave aside the quality of Davison's performance then DWM's 5th Doctor is better than the TV-scripted version. Look at Lunar Lagoon, The Moderator or The Stars Fell on Stockbridge. Notice Steve Parkhouse's gently wicked wit, in its oh-so-Doctorish fashion that Peter Davison was so rarely allowed on TV. (Frontios was one exception.) And to bring this paragraph back on topic, The Tides of Time starts and finishes with the most important cricket game in the universe and gives the Doctor some thoughtful dialogue that outclasses anything from the pen of Eric Saward.
There are some eyebrow-raisers, though. When the Doctor's wondering what caused this temporal chaos in Stockbridge: "Of course, it could be the TARDIS itself. It always did have a mind of its own." It's hard to imagine those lines being spoken, or even imagined in the first place, on TV during the JNT era. One could even read it as deliberate foreshadowing of The Stockbridge Horror. Or alternatively check out the Doctor's following words to Justin: "Welcome to Gallifrey, sir knight! This is my native planet. Some day, when my wanderings are over, I will make my home here." Curiouser and curiouser.
There's no companionless gap between TV stories in which one could slot these comic strips. Perhaps Nyssa took a holiday between Time-Flight and Arc of Infinity? Wherever we are, the Doctor seems to be in an unusual mood. I'll return to this topic when reviewing Parkhouse's later strips...
DWM's editor in 1982, Alan McKenzie, obviously knew he had something special with The Tides of Time. Part six was given a two-page colour spread, while part seven got a ninth page. Apart from The Glorious Dead (DWM 287-296) in 1990, this is still the longest story published in DWM. It's epic. It's ground-breaking. Perhaps it's not quite as good as its reputation, but if not it's bloody close.