ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Whilst the televisual version of the Second Doctor was being menaced by the bonkers Professor Zaroff, his TV Comic counterpart was up against the even-more-bonkers Extortioner, whose overly complex Get-Rich-Quick scheme seems highly ill-conceived (in fact, had he not built a base in a volcano and equipped it with enough warheads to point at every city in the universe he could have lived a life of luxury). Canning’s artwork is as we’ve come to expect, and his second Doctor never really looks like Troughton, but does capture some of his character. which is more than the script does - did you know that the laser in the Doctor’s lighter has saved him on more than one occasion?

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 784 - 787
COVER DATES: 24 December 1966 - 14 January 1967
ON TV: The Highlanders - The Underwater Menace (Season 4)
REPRINTS: Doctor Who Classic Comics, Issue 3, February 1993.

Leaving John and Gillian in the TARDIS, the Doctor explores a volcano, but is soon captured by the villainous Extortioner, whose secret base is hidden in the volcano’s heart. The Extortioner plans to hold the governments of the universe to ransom as he has missiles aimed at every city. He demands that all of Earth’s valuables be sent into orbit for collection by transporter rocket or he will destroy the universe. Doctor Who is imprisoned in the volcanic caves, but uses the laser beam in his lighter to escape, and drops the warheads into the volcano’s core, triggering an eruption. However, the Extortioner is far from dead and pursues the Doctor in a mechanical mole - at least until the Doctor lures him and his machine to a crack in the earth and plunges him down into an abyss where his mole explodes.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 788 - 791
COVER DATES: 21 January 1967 - 11 February 1967
ON TV: The Underwater Menace - The Moonbase (Season 4)
REPRINTS: Doctor Who Classic Comics, Issue 8, June 1993.

Doctor Who travels to Trodos to sign a peace treaty with the Trods, but when he gets there, he finds the Trods apparently destroyed by the Daleks who also plan to exterminate him and his grandchildren. Luckily, the ground gives way beneath the time travellers and they are plunged into one of the Trods’ underground cities. Here they encounter Trod survivors and join forces, but the Daleks soon find a way into the city. When they are unable to find either the time travellers or the Trod survivors, they send a lone Dalek into the city to act as bait. When Doctor Who destroys it using only his hat and his recorder, the Daleks are able to pinpoint his position. He is saved by the Trods who then lead him and his grandchildren back to the TARDIS, but the Daleks are soon following intent on exterminating their foe.

IMAGINARY FRIENDS - JOHN AND GILLIAN (Part Two)

Having joined the travels aboard TARDIS with their mysterious grandfather way back at the inception of the TV Comic strip in 1964, John (almost always in his blue denim combo) and his sister Gillian (in black skirt and hideous daffodil yellow polo neck) are still running around after Doctor Who generally doing precious little except stating the obvious, begging him to be careful or disappearing for whole pages (or even whole strips) at a time when there’s no stating or begging to be done. Gillian does take a rifle and kill a mad scientist during The Monsters from the Past, thus saving her grandfather’s life, both she and John attack Arborge Quince and his robots, again to save the Doctor’s life, in Space War Two, and John again saves his grandfather’s life during The Witches! by pretending

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
The return of the Trods and the first comic strip encounter between the Doctor and the Daleks lends this strip a sense of the epic - at least for a few panels. After that it becomes little more than an extended runaround, though the Daleks are at least ruthless and cunning. The Doctor shows no concern for the fate of the Trods who are presumably all exterminated outside the TARDIS having helped him and his grandchildren to escape. Canning generally draws the Daleks with great and surprising accuracy, though he is clearly working from reference photos from their first television story as the Daleks lack the slats of their contemporary TV counterparts. You have to feel sorry for the Trods, ousted from the strip as their superior TV counterparts join the party. The cut-throat world of comics, eh?

 John and Gillian make a surprise appearance in the strip The Land of Happy Endings, commemorating forty years of the Doctor’s adventures, though this is a younger, Neville Main-inspired duo, who are, in reality, only part of the Eighth Doctor’s dream.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 792 - 795
COVER DATES: 18 February 1967 - 11 March 1967
ON TV: The Moonbase - The Macra Terror (Season 4)
REPRINTS: Doctor Who Classic Comics, Issue 11, September 1993.

The Doctor makes a Dalek casing, then, materialising in the year 2135 AD at the height of the Dalek Empire when they had military garrisons on almost every planet, he uses his disguise to infiltrate a Dalek outpost.

Listening in to a Dalek conference, the Doctor learns that the Dalek Supreme is on his way to supervise the production of thousands of Daleks as the planet is rich in the materials the Daleks need to reproduce. In his Dalek disguise, the Doctor goes to the Dalek mine workings, intent on sabotage, but is spotted as he attempts to slip out of his disguise.

The Doctor eludes the Daleks and soon a massive search is underway, during which he doubles back to the outpost. Panicked, the Daleks have started destroying each other in an attempt to eliminate the intruder. The Dalek  Supreme, still on his way to the planet, orders the destruction to stop, but the Doctor then impersonates him and orders the total destruction of all Daleks. Enraged, the Dalek Supreme swears revenge, but the Doctor makes it back to the TARDIS and departs.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
The Daleks destroying each other echoes similar events in TV Century 21 strips such as Plague of Death and - most recently - Shadow of Humanity - but also nicely foreshadows events in The Evil of the Daleks (still two months away from transmission) where the Doctor effectively engineers the fall of the Dalek race. Here it is just one garrison that could create 10,000 new Daleks to enslave the free worlds, so the TV Comic Doctor is unusually justified and motivated in his actions. This is a pretty good strip of the time with some pleasing artwork.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 796 - 798
COVER DATES: 18 March 1967 - 1 April 1967
ON TV: The Macra Terror (Season 4)
REPRINTS: Doctor Who Classic Comics, Issue 17, March 1994.

The TARDIS only half materialises and the Doctor is forced to administer some all-purpose oil to complete the landing. However, once outside in 1969 London, he finds the people hypnotised into human robots by the Zagbors, humanoid alien invaders.

The Zagbors pursue the Doctor, but he makes it back to the TARDIS, certain they cannot gain entry. However, when the Zagbors physically move the ship into their spacecraft and attempt to cut it in half with high-powered ray cutters, the

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
The Second Doctor’s infamous battle cry of ‘Die, hideous creature... die!’ comes from this strip, though it is at least possible that it is supposed to be John saying this. This strip is just a series of skirmishes with giant spiders given a semblance of coherence by the Master’s bizarre and unmotivated desire to kill all intruders. Quite why he has an aversion to trespassers, or why he developed his metal spider to control the real spiders is never explained. Best guess would be that he developed the metal spider and his spider control to see off intruders so that he can continue developing his metal spider and spider control. Not very sensible, I know, but this strip doesn’t adhere to sense. It is oddly rather fun, though. Am I allowed to say that?

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 803 - 806
COVER DATES: 6 May 1967 - 27 May 1967
ON TV: The Faceless Ones - The Evil of the Daleks (Season 4)
REPRINTS: Doctor Who Classic Comics, Issue 20, May 1994.

Materialising behind a rock on an alien world, the Doctor and his grandchildren see a huge space-age train hurtle past. They follow the train to the station to see hundreds of Daleks disembark. Further investigation reveals that the Daleks have built a huge exterminator which they plan to use to destroy Earth in a single blast.

The Doctor listens in to the Daleks and discovers that a highly trained exterminator crew will soon be arriving by train. With John’s help, he spectacularly derails the train.

Exploring the wreckage, Gillian finds the firing instructions for the exterminator, but the Daleks from the station send squads to the wreck and discover the empty TARDIS. Leaving his grandchildren in hiding, Doctor Who sneaks back to the station and swots up on the firing instructions. However, it looks like the Dalek squads will soon find John and Gillian’s hiding place.

Luckily, the Daleks are called away as the Doctor has been spotted close to the exterminator. Destroying the two Dalek guards with a metal bar, the Doctor fires the exterminator and blasts the approaching Daleks then obliterates the approaching Dalek saucers. Earth is safe once more.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Some rather nice artwork is coupled with a fairly exciting story that even manages to find a little something for John and Gillian to do.

It isn’t sophisticated stuff, this strip, but it does provide plenty of danger, excitement and spectacle (particularly the train derailing at 200 mph) to fill its pages and keep the reader engaged. Having Earth as the target of the Daleks’ plan was a shrewd move that helps to focus the narrative and make the danger feel more pertinent, though quite why the Daleks would devise a weapon that is so fiendishly complicated to operate that only a few highly trained Daleks can do so does push credibility just a little.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: Patrick Williams

COVER DATE: Summer 1967
ON TV: The Evil of the Daleks (Season 4)

Doctor Who invents a robot called Barnabus to do the menial chores around the TARDIS. Landing on a planet, they take Barnabus with them to investigate, but a local gun crew think they are invaders who have brought robots with them. Doctor Who sends Barnabus to disable the gun crew then they go back to the ship for tea.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
TV Comic is aimed at a young audience, but this strip seems geared to a younger audience still, being simplistic in the extreme. Patrick Williams’ artwork is acceptable but nothing special. I assume, as nothing bad happens to Barnabus, he’s still aboard the TARDIS somewhere - a sort of early incarnation of Kamellion.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: Patrick Williams

COVER DATE: Summer 1967
ON TV: The Evil of the Daleks (Season 4)

Whilst testing his latest invention - an exploration truck - in a space jungle on a distant world, the Doctor discovers metal roads being laid by the Daleks. The Daleks destroy the exploration truck, but the Doctor, John and Gillian escape by swinging from jungle vines. They make it back to the TARDIS, and the Doctor uses the TARDIS’ power supply to send high current through the metal roads, destroying all of the Daleks.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Brief and breezy, but not quite as dumb as Barnabus, this strip does at least manage to tell an exciting story in two breathless pages.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 807 - 811
COVER DATES: 3 June 1967 - 1 July 1967
ON TV: The Evil of the Daleks (Season 4)
REPRINTS: Doctor Who Classic Comics, Issue 22, July 1994.

The TARDIS lands in the Grand Museum in New York, sometime during the 1960s, in a junk room filled with life-size models of dinosaurs. While the Doctor hires a car to show John and Gillian around New York, a mad scientist brings the dinosaurs to life, intent on liberating all imprisoned animals.

The Doctor evades the rampaging monsters and puts a call through to the military. He directs their attack, but the creatures are immune to shell fire. As ferocious animals take to the streets, the Doctor goes to the zoo to discover who is releasing them and there finds the mad scientist administering an obedience drug to the animals. When the Doctor tries to intervene, the scientist sets a panther on him.

The Doctor scares the panther away with acid, but the mad scientist escapes from his laboratory on a brontosaurus, leaving the Doctor to concoct an antidote to the scientist’s Life Drug. However, as he prepares to return to the military with his drug, the scientist and his dinosaurs attack the building.

The Doctor escapes and is reunited with John and Gillian at a military shelter where he loads his drug into syringes. The military, meanwhile, devise a way to fire the syringes at the monsters using catapults. They turn one monster back into a museum model, but the other three are all approaching together. If they miss one of them, they will be doomed...

The military take out two of the three dinosaurs, but the one ridden by the mad scientist is unharmed. It attacks the Doctor and knocks him unconscious and it is left to Gillian to shoot the scientist which makes the dinosaur revert to plastic. New York is saved.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 812 - 815
COVER DATES: 8 July 1967 - 29 July 1967
REPRINTS: Doctor Who Classic Comics, Issue 24, September 1994.

Surrounded by enemies, a South American tribe asks their god - the great Madar - for forgiveness, but Madar’s idol is toppled by the arrival of the TARDIS, and Doctor Who and his grandchildren immediately become the new objects of worship. The Doctor sets his mind to helping the Indians defend themselves, by using gunpowder to make fireworks.

His gunpowder plot works, driving away the attacking tribes. Doctor Who follows the retreating armies back to their village. He hears their witch doctor reveal the secret of his gunpowder deterrent. The next attack will need something more than simple trickery to drive the tribes away.

The Doctor gets his tribe to build concealed man-traps around the village, one of them containing a man-eating jaguar. They prepare for the attack of a thousand warriors...

Doctor Who’s plan works, driving the attacking warriors back. Having taught the tribe to defend itself, Doctor Who and his grandchildren depart.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Quite why Doctor Who decides to help one feeble tribe against all the others is anyone’s guess, but then even his television persona sometimes jumps in to save people who could, for all he knows, be guilty of terrible crimes (Vengeance on Varos springs to mind). What follows isn’t too bad, a sort of historical battle of wits, though I can’t imagine the TV Doctor making a lethal trap with a man-eating jaguar (though, again, Vengeance on Varos comes close). One of the tribesmen sports a very fetching lion head dress, which is rather strange given that there are no lions in South America.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
The rather wonderfully titled Arborge Quince becomes the first character in a Second Doctor strip to actually get a real name. He has motivation too, being bitter about his exile from Earth, but that’s really where the sophistication ends. The Doctor’s solution to the problem is crude and out of character for the Second Doctor. Still, this is a fun strip.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 816 - 819
COVER DATES: 5 August 1967 - 26 August 1967
REPRINTS: Doctor Who Classic Comics, Issue 25, October 1994.

In the Thirtieth Century, a fierce war raged between the robots of Verno and the rocket patrols of Earth, with victory ultimately going to Earth. However, banished Earthman Arborge Quince survived the devastation and is eager to exact revenge on Earth. The TARDIS lands on Verno and the Doctor soon discovers Quince below ground building a new robot army to attack the Earth.

Sending John and Gillian back to the surface, the Doctor confronts Quince, but he is too late - Quince already has robots completed, and three of them attack the Doctor.

John and Gillian come to the Doctor’s rescue by knocking Quince unconscious and smashing the control panel. They get the Doctor to the surface via Quince’s lift and he runs on ahead to radio Earth from the TARDIS while John and Gillian disable the lift. However, Quince sends four robots to the surface, cutting the Doctor off from his grandchildren.

The Doctor fights back with a 1983 power-blast grenade, which he throws down the lift shaft, blowing up Quince and his robot production line. The four remaining robots, now with nobody to give them orders, destroy each other and Earth is saved again.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
This is rather loosely based on actual history, which would culminate in the battle of Khartoum in 1898. The Mahadi in the strip is Mahadi (or Mahdi) Muhammad Ahmad. It’s also loosely based on Doctor Who, and here our hero gains his trusty utility belt, claims to be British, knocks out (or possibly kills) an Arab by smacking him over the head with a large rock, and goes out of his way to save the British troops from the greedy, superstitious Arabs without even considering who might be in the right.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 824 - 827
COVER DATES: 30 September 1967 - 21 October 1967.
ON TV: The Abominable Snowmen (Season 5)
REPRINTS: Doctor Who Classic Comics, Issue 26, November 1994.

Landing on the uninhabited planet of Minot, the Doctor soon finds a crashed spaceship. Leaving John and Gillian hiding behind some rocks, he goes to investigate, but the crew of Cybermen return and he is forced to hide aboard as the ship is repaired and blasts off.

Aboard the ship, the Doctor discovers a flying bomb that the Cybermen intend to use to destroy Earth. Intending to escape in a Cyber patrol ship, the Doctor sets the bomb to go off in twenty minutes, but the Cybermen discover him and open fire.

The Doctor evades the Cybermen, but is unable to reach the patrol ships. As they continue to search for him, he is forced to hide inside the bomb casing. However, when he wants to get out again, he finds it sealed - and with only ten minutes to go before the bomb explodes.

With a savage kick, the Doctor is free. He returns to the patrol ship and grapples mercilessly with a Cyberman, then climbs aboard a patrol ship and flies out into space. The Cybermen attempt to shoot him down, but are unable to do so before their craft explodes. The Doctor returns to Minot to the relief of John and Gillian.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
The Cybermen arrive to replace the Daleks as the Doctor’s recurring enemy, and just one week after The Tomb of the Cybermen has finished broadcast. A foaming Cyberman recalls that story, but not much else, as the Cybermen still resemble their Tenth Planet incarnation and behave more or less like any other TV Comic bad guys. Having said that, this story has plenty of excitement and narrow escapes for the Doctor and works fairly well for what it is. In the second part of this strip, the Doctor says he has set the bomb to explode in twenty minutes, but this time changes in the next instalment to twenty-five minutes.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 828 - 831
COVER DATES: 28 October 1967 - 18 November 1967.
ON TV: The Abominable Snowmen - The Ice Warriors (Season 5)

The TARDIS lands in the Arizona desert in 1988 where they immediately witness a new American jet bomber lose control and crash. The rescue team are soon on the scene and the Doctor convinces the authorities of his credentials. He is soon in the flight seat of another of the advanced planes, but is warned that the last four tests all ended in disaster. Equipped with his own ejection system, the Doctor takes off but is soon drawn into a death dive.

The Doctor ejects using his faithful rocket pack. He realises that the planes all crashed in one small area of the desert and goes out armed with a magnetism detector. Soon enough he finds a powerful magnetic source beneath the sand. However, before he can report back to John, Gillian and the American base he is knocked unconscious by enemy agents and taken below ground to their control room. Unable to contact their grandfather, John and Gillian begin to panic.

In a secret base concealed in a network of caves beneath the surface of the desert, the Doctor learns from the enemy agents of their evil scheme to wreck the tests on the American planes. When they decide to shoot him, he activates his rocket pack and blasts off into the caves. However, he is soon lost. He radios John and orders him to get the Americans to launch an old jet packed with explosives over the test area. The enemy agents will crash it and blow themselves sky high, but unless the Doctor can find a way out of the tunnels, he will become a victim of his own plan.

The radio-controlled jet packed with explosives crashes into the enemy base, destroying it and all the foreign agents. The Doctor survives and escapes, again using his rocket pack, through a crack blown in the roof of the cave where he is reunited with John and Gillian.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
This strip is okay, but not really very Doctor Who - I mean, enemy agents crashing American test planes out of pure meanness is surely more the stuff of The Avengers (in one of its more serious episodes) or any other spy series you care to name. Now if the unspecified foreign agents had come from Venus and were cannibalising the crashed planes to repair their spaceship, that would be rather more in the right vein. Still, what we have is fairly exciting if a little thin.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 832 - 836
COVER DATES: 25 November 1967 - 23 December 1967.
ON TV: The Ice Warriors - The Enemy of the World (Season 5)
REPRINTS: Doctor Who Magazine, Issue 307, August 2001.

Landing in a strange meadow filled with moths and butterflies, the Doctor, John and Gillian are soon approached by a huge wasp - which turns out to be a flying machine piloted by Professor Gnat. The Doctor’s party joins him in his search for rare species, but the Doctor discovers something else - a dead Cybermat in a patch of flowers. Gnat ignores his warnings and is soon captured by the Cybermen.

With no weapons to help them rescue the Professor, the Doctor realises that the scent of the flowers killed the Cybermat and they can use these flowers against the Cybermen. They overpower one group of Cybermen with the flowers and make it into the Cyberman base in the mountain, but their luck runs out when they pass through an electric warning beam - the Cybermen will win by sheer force of numbers.

Hiding and picking off the Cybermen a few at a time, the Doctor, John and Gillian are able to get to Gnat’s cell, but the zany professor has discovered a rare flying spider in his cell and refuses to leave, even though the Cybermen are closing in.

Gnat is dragged away from his specimen, but the Cybermen have devised face masks to avoid the power of the flowers. Using a ray gun from a dead Cyberman, the Doctor widens a narrow air shaft to allow them to escape to the surface, but the Cybermen are close behind.

The shaft starts to cave in and the Cybermen believe the intruders have been crushed, but the Doctor is able to blast his way to the surface. Heading for the TARDIS, they are spotted by the Cybermen who give chase. They make it back with not a second to spare, drag Gnat aboard, and dematerialise.

SCRIPT: Either Kevin McGarry, J.L. Morrissey, J.H. Pavey, M. Broadley, J.W. Elliott or Colin Newstead
ART: Either Walter Howarth, David Brian, Susan Aspey or Peter Limbert

Landing on a lush, tropical world, Doctor Who, Ben and Polly are greeted by Tonga and his highly advanced people. Tonga believes Ben and Polly are the Doctor’s slaves, because this is the planet of the black-haired people and fair-haired people are slaves. He takes them all to the caves where an advanced city has been built and the Doctor meets the black-haired masters and argues against slavery. The black-haired leaders, though, say that the slaves are treated well; they are physically inferior because they cannot pass the tests of Trefus, which involve swimming across a crocodile-infested lake and then engaging the black-haired people in a tug-o’-war. A fair-haired man named Saul volunteers to take the test, and the Doctor is determined that he will succeed. First, he concusses the crocodiles with a depth charge, then he gets all his men to wear special belts which, when activated by a note from the Doctor’s flute, become magnetised towards TARDIS, thus allowing the fair-haired people to win the tug-o’-war. They are freed from slavery and the TARDIS crew depart.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
This starts off quite thoughtful, but quickly deteriorates. It’s a great shame the Doctor frees the slaves using deception rather than showing the black-haired people the error of their ways in a more intelligent manner. On the artwork front, Colin Howarth manages a fairly decent likeness of Troughton, but Ben and Polly (making the comic strip debut of any television companion) are unrecognisable and the rest of the art is average to say the least.

SCRIPT: Either Kevin McGarry, J.L. Morrissey, J.H. Pavey, M. Broadley, J.W. Elliott or Colin Newstead
ART: Either Walter Howarth, David Brian, Susan Aspey or Peter Limbert

After a long journey, the Doctor, Ben and Polly land in a brightly sunlit arena surrounded by hundreds of people. There they see flying men, who initially believe the Doctor has been sent by the ancients to observe their festival, where each group demonstrates new skills they have learned. Their host takes them to the ancients. Igor, their leader, explains that the travellers were expected but that they feared they would not arrive in time. The Planet of Light is usually lit by three suns in perpetual daylight. However, there is soon to be a solar eclipse with all three suns in a line and then the world will be plunged into darkness, the inhabitants will go mad with fear and civilisation will end, as it does every three hundred years. It is too late to do anything about it this time, but Igor charges the Doctor with returning to the planet to teach the next civilisation how to overcome their fear. The Doctor agrees.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
The idea that a planet of perpetual day would need no artificial light is somewhat flawed, unless of course the inhabitants build all their buildings out of glass, have never ever ventured below ground and never developed a sewage system. It is also unlikely that they could rebuild an advanced civilisation again in just three hundred years. This story takes so long explaining its premise that there’s no room for plot, so the whole feels rather ponderous and like the set up for something better. It is one of the stronger annual strips, though...

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Just for a change, Gillian wears a blue sweater and... er... that’s about the most noteworthy thing about this awful strip. The idea that the Daleks could be destroyed with a few well-thrown rocks is laughable and the artwork is frankly horrible. This strip is dumber than a box of hair.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: Patrick Williams

Landing on a rocky world, the Doctor decides to test his latest invention - the pedal-copter, from which they can tour the planet by air. However, when one of the blades breaks, the pedal-copter crashes, depositing the Doctor, John and Gillian on a rocky outcrop just above a squad of Daleks. The Daleks fire, shattering the rocks, so the Doctor’s party bung rocks at the Daleks, destroying several of them and forcing the others to retreat into a cave. They then seal the Daleks in the cave and steal their flying saucer to continue their tour of the planet by air.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: Patrick Williams

The Doctor discovers that the TARDIS is being pursued through time and space by the Trods. He lands in Stone Age Britian and, with no sign of their pursuers, guesses that the enemy craft may be off course. They meet a herd of mammoths which the Doctor tames by playing his recorder. However, when John and Gillian ride off on the mammoths, the Doctor soon discovers the Trods who capture him and take him into their ship. There they tie him to a conveyor belt in the path of an atomiser, but his recorder playing summons the mammoths who destroy the conveyor. The Doctor then uses the mammoths to destroy the Trods’ static power generator which renders them immobile.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
It’s like The Chase and the first Dalek story mixed in with some wooly mammoths, then with a touch of James Bond thrown in for good measure. Utterly barking and thoroughly brainless, but oddly enjoyable in a guilty sort of way.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 837 - 841
COVER DATES: 30 December 1967 - 27 January 1968.
ON TV: The Enemy of the World (Season 5)
REPRINTS: Doctor Who Magazine, Issues 308 - 312, September 2001 - January 2002.

On the planet Vargo, the annual reunion of witches has begun. Just as the Grand Witch turns a tree to granite to demonstrate her powers, the TARDIS materialises. Despite warnings from John and Gillian, Doctor Who straps on his utility belt and goes outside to convince the witches that he is the famous Wizard of Omega. But the Grand Witch calls his bluff and summons a huge monster.

The Doctor destroys the monster with his disintegrating ray and this display of strength is enough to frighten off all but the Grand Witch and two of her disciples, who spy on the Doctor and quickly realise his deception. The Grand Witch summons a giant crab which goes to the TARDIS to grab the Doctor.

The crab delivers the Doctor to the witches who take him to their cave lair. There he is strapped to a slowly rotating wheel that will dunk him in a pool of boiling lead. John and Gillian are following, intent on a rescue, but it looks like they have left it too late...

John pretends to be the All Powerful Voice of Witchcraft, and even though the witches have never heard of it, they decide it is better to obey and release the Doctor, who immediately heads for the TARDIS. But the Grand Witch gives herself x-ray vision and sees the Doctor’s helpers. As he and his grandchildren approach the TARDIS, the witches conjure an indestructible net over the time machine.

As the witches close on the TARDIS, the Doctor, John and Gillian hide in a shrub then double back to the witches’ lair. Examining their spell book, the Doctor happens on a spell that will turn witches to dust, and he uses it on the three witches when they return. It works and Vargo is finally free of the witches.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
What was the writer smoking when he came up with this story? Pitting the Doctor against witches is a great idea (The Shakespeare Code does the same, and they look quite similar too) and there’s some fun to be had in the Doctor’s technological solutions to the witches’ supernatural powers, but the whole thing is entirely lacking in anything approaching credibility or logic, the Doctor clearly believes in magic just as much as the witches, and his ability to dissolve them at the end with one of their own spells is just so far outside what Doctor Who the television series is about that you begin to wonder if the writer had ever seen a single episode of the show upon which this strip is so loosely based.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 842 - 845
COVER DATES: 3 February 1968 - 24 February 1968.
ON TV: The Web of Fear (Season 5)

Earth, 1970, and a rocket lands in a patch of woodland not far from London. Aboard are the Cybermen. Discarding and destroying the outer casing of the rocket, reveals it to contain a boring device and, by the time the authorities arrive, the mole has tunnelled deep underground. However, when Doctor Who arrives, he finds a small piece of a very special metal and deduces that the Cybermen are underground.

The Doctor keeps watch on the bore-hole all night, Meanwhile, the Cybermen bore through into the Earth’s secret weapons store and capture the doomsday bomb with which they plan to threaten the Earth, something the Doctor discovers in the morning when he buys a newspaper.

The Doctor, John and Gillian speed to the Ministry of Defence where they learn that the Cybermen have called for the destruction of all weapons and disbanding of all armies within five days. Then the Cybermen will be able to invade without losing a single Cyberman. The Doctor proposes leading a small commando force into the tunnel armed with anti-Cybermen ray guns. Stumped for another solution, the military agree.

The Doctor, John and their commando force find the mole and the Doctor knocks on the door. When the Cybermen answer, the force attacks, wiping out the Cybermen with their ray guns. The Doctor then pilots the mole back to the weapons chamber and hands the doomsday bomb back into the safe hands of the Earth scientists.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
This strip really is about as dumb as they come - why would the Cybermen have to steal Earth’s ultimate weapon rather than simply using one of their own? And why, when someone knocks on the door of their deeply-buried Cyber-mole do they just open it like they expect it to be the milkman rather than checking their video screens?

ART: Unknown

ISSUE: 59
COVER DATE: 24 February 1968.
ON TV: The Web of Fear (Season 5)

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
No need to get too excited as this glorious cover merely accompanies an article so small it is easy to miss. The illustration appears to be taken from an image of Patrick Troughton playing Salamander from the recently broadcast The Enemy of the World, but the likeness is a good one - in fact probably the best likeness so far achieved of the actor.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Plot logic again takes a holiday as the insanity that is The Sabre Toothed Gorillas takes a firm grip. Why is the professor developing squidge on such a remote and dangerous world? What is the ultimate purpose of squidge (apart from for pummelling gorillas)? How can Gillian twist her ankle one minute and be sprinting for the TARDIS a short while later? How come they don’t kill themselves catapulting themselves into trees? Why have I wasted whole moments of my life reading this bilge? Mummy, mummy, make it stop! Please make it stop!

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 846 - 849
COVER DATES: 2 March 1968 - 23 March 1968.
ON TV: The Web of Fear - Fury from the Deep (Season 5)

Exploring a planet of fantastic scenery that looks a little like Canada, the Doctor, John and Gillian soon discover huge sabre toothed gorillas living in a cave. They observe the creatures from behind a bush, but John stands on a dry twig and they are pursued by the ferocious beasts. They run into a canyon, where a man appears and urges them to enter a narrow crevice. Unfortunately, when they are only just in the crevice and still in danger, Gillian twists her ankle.

John and the strange man run on to a hidden laboratory to fetch weapons. It looks like Gillian and the Doctor are gorilla food when the duo return armed with squidge clubs and beat off the gorillas. In his laboratory, the strange professor demonstrates the properties of squidge, which he has been developing for many years. Apparently, squidge bounces ten times higher than rubber and you can do anything with it. So caught up in the wonders of squidge are the travellers, they forget about the gorillas now converging on the laboratory.

The gorillas attack. The professor holds them off with squidge clubs while the Doctor, John and Gillian escape, taking a rope of squidge with them. When the professor is also forced to flee, he finds the space travellers have built a squidge catapult which successfully repels many of the gorillas. Unfortunately, they are soon surrounded, seriously outnumbered and clearly doomed.

The Doctor catapults himself, John, Gillian and the professor over the heads of the gorillas to land in the trees. They scramble to the ground and run for the TARDIS, making it inside with not a second to spare. They will drop the professor off on a safe planet so he can continue working on squidge.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 850 - 853
COVER DATES: 30 March 1968 - 20 April 1968.
ON TV: Fury from the Deep (Season 5)

The Cyber Empire is at its height and the Controller is having a city built in his honour, complete with a huge statue. The TARDIS materialises in the building site and the Doctor decides he must free the slaves. But a Cyberman in a small hover-chariot lands close by and comes to investigate the TARDIS. The travellers are done for!

But the Doctor has a plan - he smacks the Cyberman with a length of piping then paints the cockpit of the hover-chariot black so he, John and Gillian won’t be seen as they fly about the city. They do a recce and discover three ray gun posts watching over the slaves plus a rocket base watched over by a guard house. Returning to the TARDIS, the Doctor disguises himself as a slave then sets off to join the workers armed only with his trusty utility belt...

The Doctor infiltrates and organises the slave workers. He plants a mini-bomb on the Cyber-statue. The huge statue falling is the signal for the slaves to seize the ray gun posts. But can unarmed slaves overcome the terrible Cybermen?

Armed with ray guns from fallen Cybermen, the Doctor, John and Gillian destroy the Cybermen in the ray gun posts as the slaves climb the stairs and take control of the weapons. Soon the battle is won and the Doctor destroys the last of the Cybermen in the guard house so that the slaves can use the rocket ships to return to Earth.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
The idea of the Cybermen building giant golden statues in honour of their leader is, of course, ludicrous, as is the fact that their leader wears a natty purple cloak, but this is actually probably one of the better Second Doctor Cyberman stories, albeit somewhat simplistic in its development and featuring a ray gun-toting, lead pipe-wielding Second Doctor who carries high explosives in his Batman-style utility belt. Perhaps not quite the character we’d come to know and love from the television series...

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
It seems odd that the Doctor, rather than just taking all the school boys to safety in the TARDIS, which would have been a lot less dicey and a lot less difficult to achieve, decides instead to wipe out an entire species. He could equally have attempted to repair their crashed ship and taught them to pilot it, but wiping out hideous creatures is obviously a lot more fun, even if they do absolutely nothing to deserve it.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 854 - 858
COVER DATES: 27 April 1968 - 25 May 1968.
ON TV: The Wheel in Space (Season 5)

Landing on a volcano planet, the Doctor, John and Gillian are soon riding on the bikes of two young boys - one of whom is called Kim - who are fleeing from the Dyrons - the most hideous creatures in the universe. Heading for the safety of the volcano, the tyres of their bikes are slashed by rocks and they are forced to hide as the Dyrons - grotesque man-eating land squids - close in.

The Dyrons pass by and the Doctor’s party follows them at a distance, learning that the two boys are members of a school party that crashed here, killing the pilot and their teacher. The other boys are hiding in a cave, but the Doctor has barely been introduced before the Dyrons attack.

The Dyrons are afraid of the dark, and Doctor Who and the children use this to their advantage until the Cyron retreats. But the Doctor has a plan to rid the planet of the Dyrons forever and, as dusk comes, he and Kim venture to the swamp where the Dyrons go at night.

Retrieving a bomb from the TARDIS, the Doctor plans to use it to trigger a series of quakes that will destroy the Dyrons. When he detonates the bomb, it also triggers a larger eruption that threatens all their lives.

The tremor destroys many of the Dyrons, but the Doctor has to use his ray gun to keep the quakes going long enough to finish them all off. However, the quakes have attracted the attention of a rescue ship who are searching for the missing school party. Kim and his friends are saved.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 859 - 863
COVER DATES: 1 June 1968 - 29 June 1968.
ON TV: The Wheel in Space (Season 5), The Evil of the Daleks (repeat)

The Doctor offers his services to Zarcus, leader of the peace loving planet of Neon. Ships carrying Neon's food supplies from the neighbouring planet of Barran are being attacked and boarded by space pirates. The Doctor offers to take a ship and collect the food from Barran. However, on the return journey, the Doctor and his companions are attacked and captured by the pirates and sentenced to walk the plank by Captain Burglass.

They are saved by the intervention of the space police, but the pirates soon see off the authorities in a space duel, and the time travellers are once again forced to walk the plank.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: Patrick Williams

Landing on a swampy planet of bubbling mud surrounded by jungle, the Doctor tests his latest invention, a small vehicle he calls the Bug. But as the Doctor submerges into the swamp, John and Gillian spot the Witches, on their way to a meeting with the Grand Witch. When the Doctor emerges, John and Gillian tell him the news and they follow the witches and watch in horror as the Grand Witch creates a host of man-eating bats capable of crossing space and savaging Earth. The Doctor goes back under the swamp in the Bug and calls to the witches claiming to be  swamp demon that will rise up and destroy them unless the Grand Witch undoes her spell. Terrified, she obeys, and then the witches fly off.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Well, it’s the second time the Doctor’s tried dressing up as one of his enemies. Do you think he does it deliberately to scare John and Gillian? Do you think there are untold stories where he bursts into the console room disguised as a Voord, a Chumblie, a Macra or a Mechanoid? It’s lovely how the Cybermen label their small outpost ‘Cyber Out-post’ in large letters, just so’s everyone knows. This is a very simple strip but quite good mindless fun.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 864 - 867
COVER DATES: 6 July 1968 - 27 July 1968.
ON TV: The Evil of the Daleks (repeat)

The TARDIS materialises on a racetrack during the 1989 Interplanetary Motor Racing Meeting on the planet Velon and causes a crash. The Doctor saves the driver and makes amends by building an indestructible car out of the same material as the TARDIS is constructed from. But a sinister man in black intends to steal the car for his own evil purposes.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 868 - 871
COVER DATES: 3 August 1968 - 24 August 1968.
ON TV: The Evil of the Daleks (repeat), The Dominators (Season 6)

Landing on the planet Comedy, the Doctor, John and Gillian are set upon by four evil gnomes, who delight in deadly games, first elevating the travellers to a great height in the hope that they’ll fall to their doom, then startling them with a paper snake containing a real viper, then wrapping them in string that slowly begins to strangle them.

The gnomes neutralise the string to continue their games - tennis with a ball that, if dropped, will wipe out everything in a half-mile radius. But the Doctor, suspecting the creatures don’t want to die, bats the ball hard in their direction. Yet the gnomes do nothing as the ball plummets towards the ground...

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 872 - 876
COVER DATES: 30 August 1968 - 28 September 1968.
ON TV: The Dominators - The Mind Robber (Season 6)

Doctor Who, John and Gillian are on the planet Zebadee, a place ‘selected by the supreme intellectuals and wizards to compare notes’. While John and Gillian go to meet some of the young friends they’ve made at the university, the Doctor visits a fortune teller named Madam Rosa who informs him that he will soon encounter deadly robots. The Doctor realises, if his next adventure will take him to the edge of death, he must leave John and Gillian on Zebadee. He talks to the children and eventually convinces them to enrol at the University of Zebadee before travelling on alone. The TARDIS lands in the cellar of an old castle in Scotland where the Doctor sees a flying saucer land in the castle courtyard - piloted by Quarks, who have a reputation for unparalleled destruction. But the Doctor is spotted and the Quarks are soon in pursuit.

Pursued by the Quarks, the Doctor stumbles down a flight of stairs and knocks himself out. But just as the Quark takes aim to finish him off, he is saved by his old friend Jamie McCrimmon. However, the damaged Quark’s cries brings a whole squad after them.

Once again eluding the Quarks, the Doctor and Jamie hide in the castle’s torture chamber, where Jamie explains that he had called to see Professor Quantril at a tracking station about half a mile from the castle who spotted the Quark ship on the radar. Just as the professor was about to warn Earth’s defences, the Quarks destroyed the station. Jamie was the only survivor and saw the Quark ship land inside the castle, so went there intent on finding out how large an invasion force they were up against. Their reunion is short-lived as a Quark enters the chamber.

The Quark is called back to the courtyard as the main invasion force will soon be landing. With little time to act, the Doctor and Jamie seize the Quark ship and take off. Once in flight, the Doctor flies straight into the approaching fleet and opens fire. The Quarks attempt to retaliate, but not knowing which ship is firing causes chaos.

The Doctor’s ship is hit but he still has limited control. As the two remaining Quark ships destroy each other, the Doctor pilots the ship back to Claw Castle and Jamie blasts it to pieces, destroying the Quarks stationed there with their own weapon. Landing, the Doctor and Jamie board the TARDIS, but they are observed by Quark leaders in another galaxy who order all Quarks to search for and destroy the two Earthlings.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
With The Dominators still being broadcast on television and the arrival of Jamie, TV Comic must  suddenly have felt extremely current and exciting. It’s a great shame the Quarks are, in fact, a bit rubbish, and that their reinterpretation in the comic strip as an autonomous force of deadly, conquering robots has little to do with the TV version and frankly takes quite a bit of believing. Canning draws them and Jamie well and the strip is at least fairly exciting, even if it is largely little more than an extended chase around a  castle. Jamie’s arrival definitely provides a boost, though, and does make it feel more like the Doctor Who we know and love.

IMAGINARY FRIENDS - James Robert McCrimmon

Perhaps in recognition of his long stint on the show, Fraser Hines’ Jamie McCrimmon becomes the first television companion to appear in the regular comic strip, albeit a year and seven months after his TV version joined the TARDIS crew. It seems the Doctor and Jamie are old friends and that Jamie has travelled previously in the TARDIS (which is presumably how he came to be in modern Scotland), though why he might be visiting a tracking station is unexplained (perhaps he was working for UNIT). Jamie proves immediately more useful than either John or Gillian, saving the Doctor’s life, suggesting a means of escape and destroying the castle, all in his first adventure. After that he becomes more a generic companion, but still better characterised than either of his predecessors. His speech, for instance, is characterised with lots of ‘Och’ and ‘Aye’ but, unlike his television persona, he has a habit of calling the Doctor ‘Doc’, which is strangely true of both his TV Comic appearances and his annual appearances.

Following his adventure in New York, with the Quarks battling Martha the Mechanical Housemaid, the character vanishes from the regular strip, a run of just six stories, which would have coincided quite neatly with Fraser Hines’ announcement of his departure from the television series. We may assume that Jamie stayed in America, perhaps living off profits generated by sales of the robot maid!

However, Jamie’s comic strip days were not entirely over as he would return to comic strip form for the 1970 Doctor Who annual to utter such immortal lines as ‘Holy smoke! A robot! Where’s Zoe? Help!’ and, much later pop up in three strips in Doctor Who Magazine. The first of these, The World Shapers, is arguably the most interesting and contentious for the character as it shows the Sixth Doctor visiting an aged Jamie, who is a ridiculed hermit living alone in Scotland, in search of information about the Cybermen and Planet 14. The Doctor takes Jamie to Marinus where Jamie sacrifices his life to stop a device called the Worldshaper. Apparently contradicting this, Doctor Who Adventures suggests that Jamie had descendants, one of whom Heather McCrimmon, became the Doctor’s travelling comapanion.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 877 - 880
COVER DATES: 5 October 1968 - 26 October 1968.
ON TV: The Mind Robber (Season 6)

The Quarks plan their revenge - breeding giant wasps, which they send after the Doctor and Jamie when they land on the nearby planet of Gano. The time travellers attempt to hide, but the wasps have already spotted them.

The Doctor and Jamie fight off the wasps using an old, abandoned mortar gun, but the wasps are highly intelligent and prepare to attack again. The Doctor spots a crack in the rocks leading down to a hidden underground city and he and Jamie descend. However, their are Quarks in the city waiting to obliterate them.

The Doctor and Jamie are in a scooter factory, so they make their escape on scooters, but unfortunately head down a dead end. Just as the Quarks move in for the kill, the giant wasps arrive, attacking the first thing they see, which is the Quarks.

The battle between Quarks and wasps continues until only one wasp remains. The Doctor and Jamie slip away, but as they are climbing out of the city, the wasp spots them and attacks. However, when it drives its sting into the metal girder they are climbing, it then dies, allowing the Doctor and Jamie to get back to the TARDIS. But once more they are observed by the vengeful Quarks.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
In the final panel of this strip, the Quark leader says that they will have to develop something more deadly than giant wasps, and it would be hard to disagree with him; they attack anything that moves, including Quarks, and seem significantly better at finishing off the robots than they do the Doctor and Jamie, which makes them more a liability than a weapon, plus, as plans go, it’s completely insane. There’s some fun to be had in this strip, but once again it feels like little more than an extended chase.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Talking of runarounds... Actually, as runarounds go this is quite fun and inventive, and the jungle setting is used well to give the story some atmosphere and additional danger. I’m not sure about the Doctor catapulting a leopard into the path of the advancing Quarks, which they presumably blasted into atoms, but his plan to destroy the Quarks with a jungle stampede of elephants, rhinos, zebras and antelopes is certainly novel. Death by antelope must be a terrible way to die...

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 885 - 889
COVER DATES: 30 November 1968 - 28 December 1968.
ON TV: The Invasion - The Krotons (Season 6)

The TARDIS lands beneath a rocky overhang on the edge of a jungle. The Quarks see the ship’s vulnerable position and launch a missile to bury the TARDIS in rocks, leaving the Doctor and Jamie stranded in the jungle. Soon they are being pursued by a squad of Quarks armed with deadly ray guns.

The Doctor and Jamie, unable to outrun the Quarks, are forced to hide, but they choose a tree that is already housing a leopard. The Doctor topples the leopard down onto the Quarks and, while they are dealing with it, he and Jamie slip away. They come to a site where workmen are clearing the jungle and, having told the men to run for their lives, the Doctor and Jamie decide to take a stand against their enemies using the bulldozers as weapons.

The bulldozers initially have the upper hand, but then the Quarks blast the scoop from Jamie’s vehicle and he is forced to join the Doctor on the other machine. The Doctor finishes off the rest of the squad, but must pass close to the Quark saucer to get back to the TARDIS. However, on their way through the jungle they are attacked by natives, unwilling human agents of the Quarks, armed with spears.

The Doctor uses the bulldozer to escape the spear attack, but the natives warn the Quarks. The Doctor puts some distance between the bulldozer and the Quarks and then makes some modifications to the machine, removing its silencer. When he starts the engine, the noise starts a stampede.

The stampeding animals destroy the Quarks, and almost the Doctor too, but he manages to scramble to safety. He then refits the silencer and uses the bulldozer to clear the rubble around the TARDIS.

SCRIPT: Unknown
ART: Unknown

The Doctor, Jamie and Polly land in an alien jungle and soon discover an abandoned village. They also discover the reason, as a man-eating plant attacks Polly. Deeper into the jungle, they meet some natives and learn that the plants are called Kraals and that the planet has no winter.

The Doctor realises that, as the natives have never been cold and eat only a vegetarian diet, they have never discovered fire, and it is this that he intends to use to combat the Kraals. He leads the natives against the plants and manages to destroy all of the ones round the village, then he teaches the natives how to make fire of their own. But once back in the TARDIS, the Doctor wonders if he has done the right thing; when Earthmen discovered the secret of fire they discovered with it how to wage bitter wars.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Pure hippy philosophy with a touch of probably drug-induced mind bending thrown in for good measure. This strip is definitely a product of its time. It’s biggest mistake is that it comes across as somewhat preachy and a little bit dull. Here the female companion, who looks exactly the same as in the previous strip right down to her outfit, is called Victoria.

SCRIPT: Unknown
ART: Unknown

The Doctor shrinks the TARDIS until it fits within an atom, then materialises on the nucleus of an atom, which resembles a strange mountainous world. He, Jamie and Victoria find an odd tree hanging with silver teardrops, and inside one of the teardrops is a face. The face welcomes them and explains that they are on an atom-planet in the Uranium Universe, but that it is a sad time. Other planets in the universe have been suddenly blown apart, destroying whole civilisations while the people of this world found a way to warp both space and time and place them inside the silver teardrops, which are indestructible. The Doctor explains that the people of Earth have just discovered atomic power and that uranium is used in this process. However, they are forced to leave before the atom-planet explodes. Victoria argues that they must tell the people of Earth to stop using atomic power, but the Doctor knows no one will listen. Besides, he argues, our own universe may be just an atom in an even larger universe and the same thing could happen us.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

When the TARDIS materialises beside a road in the year 2208 it causes pop group The Electrodes to crash their tour bus. The Doctor, John and Gillian rush to help them and find none of them seriously hurt, but how can they get to their gig to perform for thousands of their fans in just an hour’s time? The Doctor has the answer and equips them all with rocket packs. They are so impressed they hire him as their manager. They make the gig in time.

Between shows the Doctor learns that they did have a manager before, but he tried to trick them out of their money and threatened their lives when they sacked him. The Doctor, John and Gillian observe the crowd at the final gig and, when the Doctor sees an extra wire leading into the group’s speakers, he realises their ex-manager plans to blow them up on stage. He, John and Gillian swoop down using the rocket packs and lift the band to safety just as their evil ex-manager detonates the speakers. The Doctor then apprehends the villain. After seeing the Electrodes successfully complete a planet-wide tour, the Doctor and his companions depart in the TARDIS. The Electrodes are capable of managing themselves.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
There must be more unlikely scenarios into which Doctor Who could be placed but I’m hard pressed to think of one off the top of my head. This strip seems badly conceived and so unlike Doctor Who that it might as well not be. Lovely though it is to see John and Gillian back (that’s sarcasm for you) only Gillian gets to say anything during the whole adventure - ‘They’re great!’ And that’s it. Sadly this strip isn’t great.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

Landing on an alien planet, the Doctor, John and Gillian find their way through the ruins into a time museum. Here they discover a Cyberman as one of the exhibits, but as they pass it comes to life and tries to spring its deadly trap on them by shooting at them. Boarding a mini rocket from 2150, the time travellers elude the Cybermen for a while, but are soon brought crashing down to Earth when a ray strikes the stabilising gear. The Doctor shoots the remaining Cyberman with a crossbow, but the creature summons reinforcements. The Doctor and his companions evade capture a second time by hiding inside model Trods, then running for the TARDIS when the Cybermen have passed.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
So it’s another chase, constantly eluding death rays, and with a crossbow-wielding Doctor, but it’s bright and breezy fun and the appearance of the Trods (their final appearance in TV Comic) is a nice touch.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 890 - 893
COVER DATES: 4 January 1969 - 25 January 1969.
ON TV: The Krotons - The Seeds of Death (Season 6)

The TARDIS lands beside a giant grandfather clock in the Time Temple, and the Doctor and Jamie soon meet Father Time. But the old man is aghast to learn that they travel through time and decrees that they must be punished. He triggers a giant alarm clock, the ringing of which renders Jamie and the Doctor unconscious and when they awaken the Doctor finds himself strapped to a huge pendulum suspended over a vat of boiling oil - each pendulum swing will bring him closer to the oil. Jamie, meanwhile, is trapped in an oversized hourglass. The sands will eventually bury him.

Father Time has no wish to observe the terrible deaths he has devised and, once he has gone, the Doctor comes up with a plan. The bolt from which the pendulum swings has worked loose, so he makes the pendulum swing even harder until the bolt flies off. The pendulum shatters the hourglass. But Father Time hears the sound of breaking glass and prepares to throw the hour hand of a clock at them like a spear.

The Doctor avoids impalement by grabbing a giant cuckoo as it leaps from its cuckoo clock, and is taken inside. But Father Time is prepared to wait an hour and is now armed with a crossbow. He has forgotten about Jamie, though, and when the cuckoo reappears, Jamie jumps Father Time from behind. However, the Doctor lands awkwardly and twists his ankle. Father Time has them now...

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Nutty as a fruitcake, obviously, but not without a certain surrealist charm - it’s like The Mind Robber with a clock obsession high on LSD. The resolutions to some of the cliffhangers are quite ingenious, and, as TV Comic strips go this is definitely above average and a lot of fun.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 894 - 898
COVER DATES: 1 February 1969 - 1 March 1969.
ON TV: The Seeds of Death (Season 6)

The Doctor invents a mechanical housemaid called Martha and, landing in Central Park in New York, 1971, goes along to a company called Inventions International who are interested in modern inventions. There Doctor Who and Jamie meet American tycoon      Mr C. G. Slattery who promises them that a million homes will have Martha’s installed within a few weeks. The pair have hit the big time.

The Doctor appears on television to promote Martha and, within a few weeks, hundreds of thousands of Marthas have been sold. But the Quarks are watching and plan to override the frequency on which the robots operate, so gaining control. Once the robots have wreaked havoc, the Quarks will move in and take over. The signal is sent and the Marthas go berserk, turning on their human masters.

Impervious to bullets, the robot reign of terror continues. The Doctor guesses what has happened to his invention and also guesses that the Quarks are behind it. Returning to Central Park, he plans to boost his own signal and thus regain control of the Marthas, but already the Quark fleet is moving in towards America.

The Doctor boosts his signal and reclaims control of the Marthas. Meanwhile, a Quark ship touches down on a farm close to New York. Other ships land close to all major cities. The Quark invasion begins, but the Doctor has a plan and sends a special command to the Marthas ordering them to attack Quarks on sight.

The battle between Marthas and Quarks rages all across the United States, assisted by the armed forces wherever they can help. Badly beaten, the surviving Quarks are forced to retreat to their saucer and return to their home planet, once again swearing revenge against the Doctor. Doctor Who, meanwhile, is hailed as a national hero and once again appears on television, though this time they want to elect him as president.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
It has often been said that the Second Doctor’s adventures revolve around him inventing one ill-fated contraption after another, but this isn’t really the case. True, in the Summer Specials he creates Barnabus, an exploration truck, the pedal-copter and the Bug, but in the main TV Comic strip he invents only a ray gun, a rocket pack, an indestructible car and Martha, and Martha is far from ill-fated as it saves the day. The first couple of episodes of this strip feel hugely out of character for the Doctor, but they do set up conditions necessary for the Quark invasion to begin. What follows is a huge improvement filled with incident and excitement with a genuine sense of scale. Having had their metal butts whooped by cleaning robots, you’d think the Quarks would give up, wouldn’t you? But no... they’ll keep on coming.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
This strip is something of an oddity in the TV Comic run of second Doctor strips. It has a surprisingly dark atmosphere and creates some genuine tension, features a Doctor unaccompanied for the first time in the strip’s run, gives names to two characters and even broadly characterises them, features the Quarks but only as a secondary threat, and sees the Doctor going out of his way to spare the hateful humans - almost as though someone had been watching the television series. I really like this strip, insane though it is.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 899 - 902
COVER DATES: 8 March 1969 - 29 March 1969.
ON TV: The Space Pirates (Season 6)
REPRINTS: Reprinted in TV Comic Issues 1386-1389, with Canning replacing the Second Doctor with the Fourth (see here).

In 2044, a group of English gentlemen colonised Hekton and set up a society of Regency gentry. Unfortunately, they became fond of duelling and cruel sports - such as pursuing a hapless manservant on horseback with a pack of dogs, which is what Richard and Clive are doing when the TARDIS materialises, startling the horses. Doctor Who finds himself threatened and taken to their mansion for their amusement. Richard sets the first test: the Doctor must snatch three ball bearings from a table before Clive brings an axe down on his hand. The Doctor cheats by using a magnet, which the gentlemen applaud, but the real test will be to face Clive in a duel with pistols at dawn. However, as the duel is about to begin, the Quarks are watching and waiting to kill the Doctor if Clive fails.

The duel goes ahead. Clive fires and misses. The Doctor shoots but only to disarm his opponent. The Quarks then open fire, but Doctor Who evades their shots too, hiding in the woods. With the regency rogues and the Quarks at each others throats, the Doctor sneaks back to the TARDIS, but a Quark is waiting for him. His death is but a moment away.

The Doctor’s death is delayed by the intervention of Richard and Clive, who capture both him and the Quark and return them to the mansion. There they are forced to fight with whips on a board above a fire. They claim the winner will go free, but the Doctor has his doubts. The Doctor unbalances but does not destroy the Quark and Richard decides to finish them both off with his pistol, but the Doctor uses the whip to disarm him and then to swing himself out of the mansion through a window. The manhunt is on!

The Doctor eludes his hunters for a while, but soon has a skirmish with Richard. He knocks the man to the ground and steals his horse. When he comes across the Quark ship he realises he can use it to find the TARDIS in the dark, but the gentry are waiting for him outside the ship. The Doctor fires all the engines and the noise causes the horses to stampede. The Doctor lands and slips away in the TARDIS.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 903 - 906
COVER DATES: 5 April 1969 - 26 April 1969.
ON TV: The Space Pirates - The War Games (Season 6)

Landing on a planet with conditions similar to the Polar region on Earth, the Doctor takes some exercise with a makeshift pair of skis. However, when he happens across a Cyberpatrol, he realises he must get back to the safety of the TARDIS at once. In his haste he slips, alerting the Cyberpatrol and pitching himself into a crevasse. The  Cybermen, on spotting the TARDIS, realise it is the Doctor who has fallen and rejoice.

The Cybermen return to base to broadcast news of Doctor Who’s death throughout the Cyber Empire, but the Doctor has clung to the edge of the precipice and is rescued by Eskimo Joe and his robotic flying gull. Joe explains that his people have been killed or driven into hiding by the Cybermen, but he is planning to fight back with his robot gulls and egg bombs. However, the Cybermen have located Joe’s robotic control signal and are closing in.

Joe and the Doctor escape the Cybermen using the gulls and egg bombs and make for the Cybermen’s base, but Joe is almost out of eggs.

The Doctor uses the last of the bombs to cause an avalanche that buries the Cybermen’s base. Joe’s people are free of the threat of the Cybermen at last

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Faced with an invasion force of Cybermen, who but a TV Comic character would even entertain the idea of trying to defeat them with some robot seagulls and, just to keep up the nice bird theme, bombs disguised as eggs? Utterly bizarre in conception and only a little better in execution, the Doctor’s solution to the problem at least shows a little ingenuity, but the whole feels rather slapdash and not a little  hurried. The artwork too is unusually shoddy and looks hastily drawn, with some frames so scrappy it is difficult to work out exactly what is going on.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
If the TV Comic strip sometimes runs a little low on invention and plot logic (and, frankly, who wouldn’t when you have to churn this stuff out fifty-two weeks a year), at least the settings always remain remarkably varied. The opening of this story is almost like a lesson in diving, but as soon as the giant squid appears we are safely back in the realm of underwater cliché. And the Doctor falls back on his ray gun again too. He does get very trigger-happy whenever there are tentacles around. How can a spaceship run out of air? Presumably they had to breathe something while they were in space too! And how, when the Captain claims their air has almost run out, do they then plan to make a half-hour trip through space to pick up more supplies?

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 911 - 915
COVER DATES: 31 May 1969 - 28 June 1969.
ON TV: The War Games (Season 6)

Twenty-year-old Jason Wurlitzer, son of Kurt Wurlitzer, one of the universe’s wealthiest property tycoons, is flying his rocket-plane over a weird jungle on a planet close to Quotron when he is attacked by missiles from deep within the jungle. The missiles release a foam that forms a bubble around the plane. As the bubble floats down into a jungle clearing, Jason is captured by hideous dwarfs. The TARDIS materialises nearby and the Doctor sees Jason imprisoned by the dwarves and, when night fall, speaks to the boy. It seems the dwarves are holding him to ransom, but Doctor Who is observed.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: Patrick Williams

The TARDIS is caught in a giant web, and the Doctor is escorted into a wrestling ring by ape-like creatures. The web catches time travellers so that the people of this planet have interesting contestants in their wrestling matches. The Doctor’s first opponent is their reigning champion, a native called Grok, but the Doctor beats him easily. However, his next opponent is a Cyberman, but the Doctor gets the upper hand by knotting his foe’s head in the ropes. Rarely have the people of this world been so entertained, and they grant Doctor Who his freedom.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
It’s sad that the people of this world have rarely been so entertained. They must lead very dull lives as this strip is shallow, meaningless space filler and not even momentarily exciting. The art is undramatic too, which, when depicting a pivotal wrestling match, is very bad news.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: Patrick Williams

The Doctor lands in the grounds of a magnificent palace and soon meets its owner, Heinrich Karl, the wealthiest man in the universe. However, for all his money, he is bored and hasn’t laughed in ten years. The Doctor changes all that by evading Karl’s deadly traps and, just as it looks like the Doctor’s number is up, Karl tells him he can go free as he has been thoroughly entertained.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Oh boy. Not quite as bad as its predecessor, but not up there with anything even half decent either. Patrick Williams’ art is acceptable, and actually rather good on the opening panel, but the whole thing is lacking in drama and excitement.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 916 - 920
COVER DATES: 5 July 1969 - 2 August 1969.

The Doctor is exiled to Earth by the Time Lords and sets up base at a swanky London hotel. There he has a fine meal and retires to his room, but is disturbed by noise from the next suite. Peering through the keyhole of an adjoining door, the Doctor sees three brothers kicking up merry hell -  at least until their guardian Mr Fitz-Walker arrives and reprimands them. However, when he and the manservant depart, they boys plan to steal his private plane and the Doctor realises he must intervene. Bursting into the room, the terrible trio knock him unconscious.

The boys escape the hotel in a taxi and, when the Doctor recovers, he is greeted by Fitz-Walker. He tells the sinister man everything, but Fitz-Walker has his own reason for wanting to stop the boys - his henchmen are stealing secrets from a nuclear arsenal close to the airfield and plan to use his plane to make their getaway. While Fitz-Walker travels to the airfield by car, the Doctor takes a motorbike and soon catches up with the boys’ taxi, but they throw their luggage at him and topple hi from the bike. By the time he reaches the airfield, the plane is already airborne.

The Doctor gets after the boys in a twin-engine plane. After losing them in the smoke from a burning building below, he finds the plane wrecked and the boys parachuting to safety. But the wind is carrying the boys towards the flames.

Trying to escape the Doctor, the boys run into the building, which is the nuclear arsenal being raided by Fitz-Walker’s henchmen. However, when the henchmen seize the three brats they soon realise that their escape route - the plane - has been destroyed.

The Doctor attempts to save the boys, but fails, until he spots some balls of plastic explosive, which apparently bounce like rubber but only explode when detonated. He and the boys use them like footballs to subdue the thugs. Meanwhile, Fitz-Walker arrives but is immediately apprehended by the police along with his badly beaten henchmen. From now on, the boys will be looked after by their Uncle Tom, who’s a marvellous fellow... much like Doctor Who.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
He can sort out a garrison of Cybermen in two pages, but it takes him ten pages to deal with three brats. This is actually quite tightly plotted, the main problem is it’s just not a Doctor Who story and has no sense of danger for the Doctor. However, the idea of starting the Doctor’s exile early is an excellent one. The so-called Season 6B starts here.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
After the rubbish of three tearaways, this is pretty sophisticated stuff, even if Cartright changes his name from Rowan to Martin between the first and third instalments (or is this a clever reference to Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In which was being aired on UK TV at the time?) and even if the teaser of the penultimate episode asks us if the Doctor will survive even though it’s him recounting the story, and even if the Doctor’s famous laser ring has never been heard of before! Having the Doctor recount a story is a clever way of circumventing the exile and that he does it to save someone’s life adds necessary tension.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 921 - 924
COVER DATES: 9 August 1969 - 30 August 1969.

Reading about Doctor Who’s residency in the West End of London in the Daily Record, Doctor Rowan Cartright rings him at the Carlton Grange Hotel asking to study the effects of time and space travel on a human. The Doctor agrees, even though he stresses he isn’t human, but as Cartright bares the Doctor’s chest, he sees the Mark of Blenhim on the Doctor’s skin and collapses into a coma after shrieking about the Mark of Terror. The Doctor explains that the Blenhim were a master race who wreaked a reign of terror in their solar system. Some refugees were thought to have fled to Earth in the Eighteenth  Century, and Cartright could be a descendant, the mark now a race memory. With the aid of thought-transference equipment, the Doctor must try to erase the horror of the Blenhim from his mind.

The Doctor recounts how he landed in the underground car park of a stadium and, disguising himself like the hooded figures he saw there, attended a rally given by the Blenhim leader who was launching missiles against all the planets that would not accept slavery. The Doctor’s story terrifies Cartright. He is reaching a crucial stage.

The Doctor continues his story, telling of how the Blenhim viciously assaulted every world they came across creating millions of refugees who fled for their lives. He knew he had to do something and so, at the rally, he challenged the leader’s authority.

A contest between the Doctor and the Blenhim leader begins. The leader burns the symbol of the Blenhim on the Doctor’s chest with his eyes. The Doctor betters this by atomising a monument using the power of his famous laser ring, taken from the Cybermen in a previous encounter. The Blenhim bow down before a new leader and the Doctor gives his first order: all Blenhim will take their craft and fly due East. They will keep going until he gives another command. But he does not give another command and all the Blenhim fly into the sun as the Doctor anticipated. Knowing how the Blenhim were defeated is enough to shake Cartright from his coma.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 925 - 928
COVER DATES: 6 September 1969 - 27 September 1969.

A learned Professor implores Doctor Who to lecture at London University on the subject of advanced engineering, and the time traveller agrees. The lecture is attended by a young man named Carlos, a member of the Brotherhood. The brotherhood seeks to gain control of all the world’s protection rackets and had planned to do so through a massive robbery, with all its pitfalls, but Carlos has a better idea. An Aztec village at the time of the Conquistadors hurled their treasure into a Mexican lake to stop the Spaniards stealing it, where it has remained ever since. However, when the lake was drained in 1965, the treasure was found to have sunk into the mud, and the sun baked the mud harder than concrete. But Carlos believes Doctor Who can retrieve it for them.

Doctor Who is kidnapped from the roof terrace of the Carlton Grange Hotel. Later he is told what he must do to survive and the Doctor agrees. He is given a laboratory to perfect an explosive then flown to Mexico where the charges are laid.

The explosion opens up the lake bed. As the Doctor’s party explores, finding Aztec treasures that will fund a criminal reign of terror over the world, the party is suddenly set upon by a gigantic earthworm. The Doctor believes the strange side effect of his explosive might have been to resurrect prehistoric creatures. He tells them all to climb for their lives.

The leader of the brotherhood threatens the Doctor: go back down to recover the treasure or die on the surface by his hand. However, a gigantic earthworm emerges from a cavity and carries the leader away. The Doctor seizes the man’s fallen weapon and rounds up the Brotherhood’s men. Mexican police are soon on the scene and the Doctor says he will return to extract the treasure when the earthworms have been destroyed, providing the money it raises goes to charity.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
The planet Quotron was visited by the Doctor in the adventure Operation Wurlitzer, though there were never any aliens like these ones in evidence in that story. It is refreshing to meet aliens who aren’t dedicated to destroying the Earth and who are acting solely out of moral responsibility. In any other strip, the Quotrons would be described as hideous and have Doctor Who shooting at them with his ray gun within about two panels, but here we have something slightly more sophisticated and a good deal more satisfying.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
After years of John, Gillian, utility belts and ray guns, to suddenly have the TV Comic strip align itself so unreservedly with the continuity of the television series is something of a shock, especially as this leads directly into Spearhead from Space, which would begin broadcast six weeks later, something that has never happened before or since in a comic strip. This strip is the closest we get to seeing the Second Doctor regenerate into the Third in any medium. The story is a simple one, but no less effective for that, and the animated scarecrows are a genuinely creepy idea that would be revisited by Paul Cornell in his television episodes Human Nature and The Family of Blood. Paul Cornell was also a firm proponent of the Season 6B theory, which does help to explain certain continuity problems in stories like The Three Doctors, The Five Doctors and The Two Doctors, not to mention the fact that the Doctor is equipped with gadgets in Spearhead from Space that he did not have on him at the conclusion of The War Games .

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

ISSUES: 934 - 936
COVER DATES: 8 November 1969 - 22 November 1969.

Now famous for his incredible exploits, Doctor Who is appearing on the TV panel show Explain My Mystery hosted by Perry Conway. Having explained the mystery of Mrs Swiggings’ poltergeist as her lodger taking his weekly bath, the Doctor is rather more baffled by farmer Glenlock-Hogan’s account of walking scarecrows on his farm. When Perry Conway makes a fool of him, Glenlock-Hogan storms from the studio, but Doctor Who catches up with him. He wants to investigate his walking scarecrows.

Arriving at the farmhouse, the Doctor and Hogan are trapped inside by a storm until two o’clock in the morning, then they go to investigate. They wait two hours before a fierce light animates the scarecrows with lifeforce. Despite the terrible danger, Doctor Who and Hogan set off after the straw men.

The Doctor and Hogan follow the scarecrows until they suddenly stop in a clearing. The Doctor realises their presence has been detected, but then the scarecrows turn and call for him by name. They reveal themselves to be servants of the Time Lords. They knew his curiosity would bring him to them so that they can carry out the rest of the Time Lord’s sentence. The scarecrows immobilise the Doctor and carry him towards a familiar shape - the TARDIS. Taking him inside, they begin to change his appearance. As they leave, the box begins to dematerialise. Hogan flees in terror.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Galea is the Latin for helmet, but tentipocus appears to have been made up. As the plant shows no desire to suck blood, calling it a vampire plant seems a trifle over-dramatic. Be it vampiric or not, the Doctor’s solution to the problem plant is the same as his solution to the problem plants in the previous year’s annual, though here unaccompanied by a heavy moral message. The likenesses in this strip are excellent,, though clearly sourced from standard BBC publicity photos. The strip itself is solid if unremarkable stuff.

SCRIPT: Unknown
ART: David Brian

REPRINTS: Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space (1981)

The Doctor takes Jamie and Zoe to visit an old friend of his called Doctor Vane in the Experimental Botanical Gardens on Venus. However, when they arrive, he asks Zoe to stay at the TARDIS while he and Jamie go alone. Something strange has been happening, which is why they are really there. A few days earlier, Doctor Vane found his laboratory wrecked and his prized Galea Tentipocus plant missing. He tells this story to the Doctor and Jamie and reveals that he has sent his assistant Regan after the thieves, but Regan finds a strange sentient plant at the end of the trail that attacks him. Hearing his cry, the Doctor and Jamie rush to the scene then head off after the plant, which has grown to gigantic proportions and threatens to engulf everything.  As the plant makes to attack them, the Doctor sets fire to it with his lighter. The menace is ended.

SCRIPT: Unknown
ART: David Brian

The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe travel 5000 years into the future to Hope City, but find it deserted and probably destroyed by an atomic explosion. They split up, but Zoe finds herself menaced by a robot, and Jamie is soon captured too. The Doctor finds the robot, who declares himself the Robot King. Now he has all three of them, they will die, as the robot believes humans are too irresponsible to live. However, as the robot attacks the Doctor, he hits its switch and turns it off.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Again, the artwork is sourced from standard BBC publicity photos and is the strip’s saving grace, for the plot is thin in the extreme and the resolution frankly laughable.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Okay, so it’s not really very good, but the sight of a Quark shouting ‘Follow that C-A-R if you value your life’ is worth the admission alone, and there is much brainless fun to be had.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

The Doctor lands at the London 2053 annual veteran car rally and helps a driver to get his car started just in time for the race. He joins the driver in his car as they set off, observed by spaceships from all across the universe. But one of those ships contains the Quarks, still out for revenge. They hijack an AA patrol vehicle and pursue the Doctor. The Doctor thwarts them and his driver wins the race, something he’d never have done without the Quark on his tail.

SCRIPT: Roger Noel Cook
ART: John Canning

At a US airbase, scientists are gathered to witness the test flight of a new rocket-powered plane called the Dart. The TARDIS materialises, and the Doctor is known to Commander Knight as a formidable aviator so accompanies them on the carrier plane from where the Dart will make its test flight. However, there are Cybermen stowed aboard intent on striking a devastating blow against Earth and kidnapping all their greatest brains. The Doctor jumps aboard the Dart and pilots it out from the carrier plane. He shoots at the approaching Cyberships and destroys the one destined to pick up the scientists, knocking the Cybermen out of the carrier plane at the same time, then mops up the rest of the Cyberfleet.

SCRIPT: Scott Gray
ART: Lee Sullivan

ISSUES: 224 - 226
COVER DATES: 12 April 1995 - 7 June 1995.

The Denossus settlement was once a busy space port, but now it serves as a judicial arena as Luther Ronayne, for attempting to destroy the Shroud, is sentenced to five seconds hard labour in the speculum by the Vortexians. He emerges a brainless wreck. The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe arrive, though the TARDIS acts like it is still travelling, but the travellers are soon caught up in an attempt by Anna, Luther’s wife, to destroy the Shroud, a web field generator that keeps them all trapped on the planet. Anna’s attempt fails, but the Vortexians arrive to punish them all, including her aged father-in-law who has a weak heart.

SCRIPT: Warwick Gray
ART: Martin Geraghty
LETTERS: Simon Weston
EDITOR: Gary Russell

Taking a break from their adventures following events on the London Underground, the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria find a trio of Daleks stranded on a distant jungle world. The Daleks are building a distress beacon. Deciding the Daleks must be wiped out, the Doctor and Jamie investigate the beacon while Victoria distracts the Daleks with a firework display. By redirecting the beacon’s electromagnetic pulse to ground level and activating it, the Doctor is able to destroy the Daleks, but Victoria is appalled by his ruthless actions and realises it will not be long now before she wants to leave the TARDIS.

SCRIPT: Tony Lee
ART: Pia Guerra, Kent Archer (flashback inks), Charlie Kirchoff & Kris Carter (colour)
LETTERS: Richard Starkings
EDITOR: Denton J. Tipton

ISSUE: 2
COVER DATE: October 2008
REPRINTS: Doctor Who: The Forgotten, ‘graphic novel’, IDW April 2009.

This story is a mini-story told within a much larger tale. To see the larger tale, click here.

Aboard a space station, the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe flee from snake soldiers, making it to relative safety with the station crew. The station is under attack from an Alvarian Space Wyrm. As the snake soldiers break through, the Doctor lulls them to sleep by playing his recorder. He needs to get to a communications array and find the Wyrm frequency. The TARDIS crew get to one through the ventilation shafts. While Jamie distracts the snakes, the Doctor and Zoe get the array working. When the Doctor plays his recorder, it transmits direct to the Queen’s mind and sends her to sleep too.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
This story reads like a megamix of Second Doctor television stories, with only Zoe’s dialogue sticking out as largely out of character. We have rampaging monsters, a base under attack, a small community of humans aboard a space station, an aggressive commander, ventilation shafts, ‘Oh my giddy aunt’, the Doctor’s recorder, and Zoe doing clever things with computers. It’s all mildly entertaining, but feels deeply insubstantial and inconsequential. The black and white artwork is a nice idea, but the likenesses are frankly terrible.

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