In the Comics - Sixth Doctor




		Last update: March 2013

		Jump to: 1984 1985 1986 1987 Post-1987 VIEW THE TIMELINE VIEW THE INDEX


	THE SHAPE SHIFTER

SCRIPT: Steve Parkhouse
ART: John Ridgway
EDITOR: Alan McKenzie

ISSUES: 88-89
COVER DATES: May 1984 - June 1984
REPRINTS: Reprinted first in Doctor Who Collected Comics, with colour by Gina Hart in September 1986, then in abridged form as a special promotion with Golden Wonder also 1986 (see below), then in July 1989 as part of the original Voyager ‘graphic novel’ also coloured by Gina Hart, in Issue 1 of a series of colorised German reprints in 1991, as part of the Panini ‘graphic novel’ Voyager, published in October 2007, then by IDW as Doctor Who Classics Volume 3 Issue 1, May 2010, then as part of an IDW trade paperback Doctor Who Classics Volume 6, published in December 2010, then in IDW’s Doctor Who Classics Omnibus Volume 2, released August 2011.

Dogbolter (see his previous appearance here) puts a price on the Doctor’s head. The Doctor, who is following his own investigation, is soon pursued by a shape-shifting Whifferdill, which manages to hijack his TARDIS. There it forces him to take it to Dogbolter’s headquarters on Venus.

Dogbolter first tries to destroy the TARDIS, but when this fails he accepts a deal from the Whifferdill who hands the Doctor over. However, it is all a trick, and the ‘Doctor’ was really the Whifferdill in disguise. This allows the Doctor to rescue the Whifferdill and for both of them to escape with Dogbolter’s reward money.

Doktor Who's Reisen Durch Raum Und Zeit Issue 1

IMAGINARY FRIENDS - ’FROBISHER’ THE WHIFFERDILL (Part One)

When the Doctor first encounters ‘Frobisher’ he is masquerading under the name of Avan Tarklu. By his own admission, he is forty-five years old and with a classical education. He is also a successful private investigator earning twenty-five a day plus expenses on an unnamed planet (which, despite the presence of owls, is probably not an Earth of the far future as it appears to have two moons). He is a Whifferdill from the planet Xenon, a shape shifter, ‘public parasite number one’ and ‘scourge of the galaxy’ and certainly enough trouble to give the Doctor cause for concern. In his natural form he resembles a short, almost featureless humanoid creature, but after transforming himself into a telephone, a pigeon, a hamburger, a fly, a goldfish, a boxing glove, the TARDIS time rotor, the Sixth Doctor and W.C. Fields, he finally assumes the guise of a penguin as the TARDIS arrives at the South Pole. By this point he and the Doctor have become firm friends and he has chosen the name Frobisher, in deference to the Doctor’s love of all things English. He once spent fourteen years as a till on a checkout counter in Walthamstow, which hardly prepares him when he is kidnapped by Astrolabus as bait to lure the Doctor to a land of make-believe. Here he is almost cooked by cannibals and chased by an ogre.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
A neat enough short story with some pleasing illustrations and a nice sense of the surreal that later strips would take to its limit. This brief tale turns a clever trick on Dogbolter, but mainly serves to introduce the character of Frobisher, though he isn’t named as such in this strip. Although there is a suggestion that the Doctor wants half of the reward money, it seems he does what he does mainly to get up Dogbolter’s nose, but the final twist in this particular story comes on the final page of Polly the Glot, eight issues later, which is a marvellous touch.

When the TARDIS materialises on Actinon, he adopts the form of a barbarian, but reverts to a penguin when they leave the planet. Helping save the universe from the Skeletoids, he briefly transforms into a Pantachian rock skipper. However, on the planet Sylvaniar, whilst in captivity, Frobisher gets sick with mono-morphia, which prevents him changing shape. He is a keen baseball fan, can probably play the piano but has never heard of Shakespeare. Conveniently, he has regained his shape-shifting powers by the time the Doctor needs him to scare off the reptilian inhabitants of Earth in Time Bomb, and he transforms into a Tyrannosaurus Rex. He also uses his powers when Peri and the Doctor encounter the Kymbra Chimera (which is a distant relative of the Whifferdills), battling the creature while the Doctor found a way to eject it from the TARDIS, but he seems to like resembling a penguin and usually stays in this form, except in emergencies, such as on Zazz when he transforms into a bizarre penguin hand-glider.

Frobisher accompanied the Doctor throughout his Sixth incarnation and into his Seventh.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE CONCLUSION OF FROBISHER’S STORY.


	VOYAGER

SCRIPT: Steve Parkhouse
ART: John Ridgway
EDITOR: Alan McKenzie

ISSUES: 90-94
COVER DATES: July 1984 - November 1984
REPRINTS: Reprinted in heavily abridged form as a special promotion with Golden Wonder in 1986 (see below), then in a rather glorious full colour version in July 1989 with colour by Gina Hart, and then again in colour in Issues 1 and 2 of a German edition in 1991, and as part of the Panini ‘graphic novel’ Voyager, published in October 2007, then by IDW as Doctor Who Classics Volume 3 Issues 1 - 2, May - June 2010, then as part of an IDW trade paperback Doctor Who Classics Volume 6, published in December 2010, then in IDW’s Doctor Who Classics Omnibus Volume 2, released August 2011.

The Doctor awakes from a nightmare of a death ship and a craggy-faced figure to find the TARDIS has landed at the South Pole. He soon sees the ship from his dream in the waters below, iced over. Investigating, he and Frobisher discover star charts beyond anything he has seen before, but an old man holds them at gunpoint and makes off with the charts in a Leonardo De Vinci flying machine.

The Doctor and Frobisher give chase in the TARDIS and arrive at a strange lighthouse. The Doctor detects great energy coming from this structure. However, before he can enter it, he and Frobisher are confronted by a giant automaton inhabited by a living soul which descends into the sea where Frobisher has seen a submerged spaceship.

The Doctor gains entry to the lighthouse and finds the strange old man who eludes him with trickery, magic and surrealism, but eventually reveals himself to be Astrolabus, the Thief of Time, who stole the Book of Old Time from Gallfrey before the Doctor was born. However, Astrolabus claims to be a real Time Lord who pioneered the meridians of time and reveals the lighthouse to be his TARDIS.

The Doctor escapes his tormentor but finds himself first falling through space then drowning in the sea. Frobisher rescues him, just in time to see the lighthouse - a space-time rocket - blast off.

The Doctor is finally confronted by the mysterious craggy-faced figure who tells him that he will haunt the Doctor for always unless the Doctor returns to him the star charts that Astrolabus stole... to protect the safety of the whole universe.

Steve Parkhouse said: “I enjoyed throwing everything at John [Ridgway] because he's such a nice man. I wanted to give him a party. I think he enjoyed the variety and the manic pace. He was coming from a tradition of War Picture Library and Prince Valiant. He reminded me of an uncle who'd taken acid by mistake - so they just give in and go along for the ride. I still have some of his original pages and I'm convinced they're his best work.”

Doktor Who's Reisen Durch Raum Und Zeit Issue 2

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Voyager isn’t really just this story, Voyager is a story arc that spans the previous story all the way up to and including Once Upon A Time Lord. This instalment is probably one of the finest comic strips ever to appear under the banner of Doctor Who, more than justifying its several releases. It has the bizarre logic of a dream with the heavy, haunted atmosphere of a nightmare, and always Voyager and its ghostly captain lurk on the fringes of the story to add a sense of menace.

Frobisher fits seamlessly into this surreal nightmare, and the idea of a talking penguin accompanying the Doctor on his travels never seems more than slightly strange in this freaky world. At a time when the TV series was arguably at a low ebb and distinctly lacking in magic, the comic strip was riding high and positively brimming with magic in all its forms.

The artwork is also some of the finest ever to grace the strip, a genuine feast for the eye. John Ridgway’s attention to detail, to texture, to lighting, to dynamic panel layout and to epic scale are perfectly attuned to the grand story being told here with such unusual and imaginative style.

The colourised graphic novel is also well worth seeing (in both English and German versions) as the colouring is extremely sympathetic to the original artwork and only serves to enhance the strip’s greatness.


	POLLY THE GLOT

SCRIPT: Steve Parkhouse
ART: John Ridgway
EDITOR: Alan McKenzie

ISSUES: 95-97
COVER DATES: December 1984 - February 1985
ON TV: Attack of the Cybermen - The Two Doctors (Season 22)
REPRINTS: Reprinted in a lovely full colour version in July 1989 with colour by Gina Hart, and then again in colour in Issue 2 of a German edition in 1991, and as part of the Panini ‘graphic novel’ Voyager, published in October 2007, then in colour by IDW as Doctor Who Classics Series 3 Volume 3, July 2010, then as part of an IDW trade paperback Doctor Who Classics Volume 6, published in December 2010, then in IDW’s Doctor Who Classics Omnibus Volume 2, released August 2011.

The Doctor and Frobisher help Doctor Ivan Asimoff to free an extraordinary creature known as a Zyglot. But the President of the Zyglot Trust, which seeks to free the creatures, is a certain Professor Astro Labus, and it is also he who is organising the Zyglot hunts. When the Doctor draws close to the truth, Astrolabus kidnaps Frobisher and makes off into the time continuum.

This is not a reference to the 2nd Doctor's companion

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Well, Walthamstow gets its second mention in the space of two strips, and Doctor Ivan Asimoff makes a surprise return appearance, but this strip feels rather superfluous, at least until it is revealed that Astrolabus is behind the whole thing, and then it begins to take on a little more substance. His kidnapping of Frobisher at the end bodes well for the next strip.

IMAGINARY FRIENDS - DOCTOR IVAN ASIMOFF

Last seen in the main Doctor Who comic strip back in Issue 56 when he encountered the Fourth Doctor and the Free-Fall Warriors (in one of Steve Parkhouse’s first strips for the monthly magazine), and with one appearance of his own in the 1982 Doctor Who Summer Special in a strip called The Fabulous Idiot (also penned by Parkhouse), Doctor Ivan Asimoff is an adventurer, scientist, mild and bitter by turns, wit, raconteur and vagabond at heart. He is also a science fiction writer in his spare time and an expert on the life-cycle of the Sigman sand-worm. Well, I guess someone has to be. In addition, Asimoff is a member of the Zyglot Trust and, it seems, after the Doctor leaves him the money he conned out of Dogbolter back in The Shape Shifter, likely to become head of the organisation. He later makes cameo appearances in Seventh Doctor strip Party Animals and Eighth Doctor strip A Life of Matter and Death.


	ONCE UPON A TIME LORD


		*SCRIPT:* Steve Parkhouse ART: John Ridgway EDITOR: Alan McKenzie *ISSUES:* 98-99 COVER DATES: March 1985 - April 1985 ON TV: The Two Doctors - Revelation of the Daleks (Season 22) REPRINTS: Reprinted in abridged form as a special promotion with Golden Wonder in 1986 (see below), then in a rather glorious full colour version in November 1990 with colour by Gina Art, and as part of the Panini ‘graphic novel’ Voyager, published in October 2007, then in IDW’s Doctor Who Classic Series 3 Issue 4, June 2010, then as part of an IDW trade paperback Doctor Who Classics Volume 6, published in December 2010, then in IDW’s Doctor Who Classics Omnibus Volume 2, released August 2011. The Doctor chases Frobisher and his kidnapper Astrolabus into an unknown dimension within a magician’s cabinet. He ends up on a world of fantasy where he and his friend make their way to a castle. Therein lies Astrolabus, and the Doctor pursues him, but Astrolabus is eventually confronted by the mysterious craggy-faced figure known as Voyager who demands the return of his star charts. But Astrolabus, seeking immortality and freedom from his last incarnation, has had the charts tattooed on his skin. Voyager strips him of his flesh and leaves him to die. The Doctor can do nothing, but he is at least free of Voyager’s curse.

		*ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:* A visual and imaginative tour de force about the process of presenting a comic strip story. The three pages in the style of Rupert the Bear are a delight and the striking blank full-page panel where Astrolabus tries to flee between one page and the next is the comic strip at its creative best. However, as the conclusion to ten months of adventure it does feel slightly disappointing as the Doctor doesn’t actually do anything to return the charts to Voyager - Voyager simply appears and reclaims them. This leaves you to wonder why he didn’t simply do that almost a year previously. Still, even if all the best images are in the strip’s superior first half, this is still a solid conclusion to a great run of strips, that signalled another high point in the Doctor’s comic strip adventures. Sadly, it also marks the end of Steve Parkhouse’s long association with the strip.


	WAR-GAME



		*SCRIPT:* Alan McKenzie ART: John Ridgway EDITOR: Ian Rimmer *ISSUES:* 100-101 COVER DATES: May 1985 - June 1985 REPRINTS: Reprinted in abridged form as a special promotion with Golden Wonder in 1986 (see below), then as part of the Panini ‘graphic novel’ Voyager, published in October 2007, then in IDW’s Doctor Who Classic Series 3 Issues 4-5, June 2010 - July 2010, then as part of an IDW trade paperback Doctor Who Classics Volume 6, published in December 2010, then in IDW’s Doctor Who Classics Omnibus Volume 2, released August 2011 (cover above). The Doctor and Frobisher land on the remote planet of Actinon, but find one of its barbarian tribes ruled by a Draconian called Kaon. His ship crash-landed there many years before and only he and his wife survived. However, his wife died in childbirth and Kaon has raised his daughter alone. Unfortunately, she has now been taken hostage by an enemy leader called Vegar. The Doctor agrees to help Kaon, to avoid bloodshed, and uses the TARDIS to get inside Vegar’s castle. As they attempt to free Kaon’s daughter Kara, the Doctor learns that Kaon is using a frontal assault by his men to distract Vegar’s attentions. But Vegar is waiting for them in the dungeon. Kaon is fatally wounded by Vegar, but kills Vegar before he dies. Kara refuses to leave with the Doctor and Frobisher.

	*ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:* After the imagination, wit and intelligence of the previous run of strips, this first effort by Alan McKenzie (who was previously Steve Parkhouse’s editor) feels extremely lacklustre. Frobisher transforms into a huge Conan-style barbarian but might as well have stayed a penguin for all the good it does him and the Doctor, the Doctor virtually allows himself to be used and makes a minimum of fuss, and then Kaon is killed and his daughter refuses to leave the planet, which makes the whole adventure somewhat pointless. There are no clever twists or revelations and the whole thing revolves around the (rather splendidly drawn) reveal of a Draconian, which feels fannish in a way that the strip never had before. The artwork starts with great style, but soon starts to feel rather cramped and a little hurriedly drawn, which is a great shame after John Ridgway’s breathtaking work on the preceding strips. Not one of the better strips and all the more disappointing following such a strong run.


	FUNHOUSE


	*SCRIPT:* Alan McKenzie (writing as Max Stockbridge) ART: John Ridgway EDITOR: Cefn Ridout *ISSUES:* 102-103 COVER DATES: July 1985 - August 1985 REPRINTS: Reprinted in abridged form as a special promotion with Golden Wonder in 1986 (see below), then as part of the Panini ‘graphic novel’ Voyager, published in October 2007, then in IDW’s Doctor Who Classic Series 3 Issues 5, July 2010, then as part of an IDW trade paperback Doctor Who Classics Volume 6, published in December 2010, then in IDW’s Doctor Who Classics Omnibus Volume 2, released August 2011. The TARDIS is lured to a strange house on an asteroid, where the Doctor and Frobisher encounter all manner of curious things, including Peri, who then turns into a monster. However, the house - in reality a creature with the form of a house - is simply distracting them whilst it bonds with the TARDIS, turning itself into a time-space machine. The Doctor disengages the TARDIS’ circuits that protects its crew from the changing time fields, leaving the house trapped in the time vortex, lonely and unable to materialise.

		*ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:* A strong opening instalment that captures some of the surreal menace of Steve Parkhouse’s best strips is slightly let down by the second part, which relies on the Doctor doing clever things with the TARDIS (never a very satisfactory means of concluding a tale), and the Doctor

condemning the lonely creature to an eternity trapped in the time vortex feels wrong, especially when he has madeno attempt to communicate with it and thus knows nothing of its intentions.

The artwork is good, especially the opening panels of the house and the panels of the TARDIS attacked by the tendrils, but still not up there with John Ridgway’s finer earlier works.

Series 3 Issue 5, and cover of the trade paperback


	KANE’S STORY/ABEL’S STORY/THE WARRIOR’S STORY/FROBISHER’S STORY

SCRIPT: Alan McKenzie (writing as Max Stockbridge)
ART: John Ridgway
EDITOR: Cefn Ridout

ISSUES: 104-107
COVER DATES: September 1985 - December 1985
REPRINTS: Reprinted in Doctor Who Classic Comics in Issues 19-22 (April-July 1994), then in the Panini ‘graphic novel’ Voyager, published in October 2007, then in IDW’s Doctor Who Classic Series 3 Issue 6, August 2010, then as part of an IDW trade paperback Doctor Who Classics Volume 6, published in December 2010, then in IDW’s Doctor Who Classics Omnibus Volume 2, released August 2011.

A ragtag band of unlikely heroes, which includes the Doctor, Frobisher and Peri, a scientist named Abel Gantz from the planet Triskaa, the Draconian named Kaon (see War-Game for his previous appearance, though in his timeline this adventure happens first), and telekinetic Professor Kane from Kaltarr, journey to the planet Vespin, homeworld of the deadly Skeletoids who are attacking the galaxy. The Doctor’s band defeat the Skeletoids thanks to Abel’s self-sacrifice.

Whooom! An enormous jelly mold explodes...

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
This is essentially a very basic story (as the plot summary above suggests) padded out to four part length with a lot of meetings. The threat of the Skeletoids never feels very serious, despite seeing them in combat with Daleks and Cybermen, and this is probably because they pose no direct threat to the adventurers until they actually

travel to the Skeletoids homeworld. There the Doctor and his party easily destroy the threat. The appearance of a younger Kaon is potentially very clever (akin to Riversong in Silence in the Library) but simply doesn’t hang together with his reactions in the earlier strip, where he knows of the Doctor but clearly has never met him before.

The artwork varies quite dramatically between good and rather sketchy, which gives the impression that the strip was perhaps thrown together in something of a hurry.

IMAGINARY FRIENDS - PERPUGILLIAM ‘PERI’ BROWN

Peri has the distinction of being the first television companion to make it into the strip since K9 (or Leela if you want a more humanoid figure). She puts in a brief appearance in Funhouse, but turns out to be an illusion. The Doctor clearly knows her and doesn’t seem at all surprised to find her chained up in a peculiar house on an asteroid. She finally makes a proper appearance in Kane’s Story, where she is working in New York in an office and living in a bad neighbourhood.

She has met and travelled with the Sixth Doctor previously, though, as she comments that she never thought she would see him again. Once aboard the TARDIS she does very little apart from organise a picnic and prick the Doctor’s conscience, and by Time Bomb she is back on Earth enjoying a baseball game at the Dodger’s Stadium.

However, she returns in Salad Daze and remains with the Doctor until his sudden change of appearance, when her television fate (to be married to King Yrcanos) catches up with her. Poor girl. But at least she lasts longer in the strip than on TV. A duplicate of her also later appears in Planet of the Dead (see here).


	EXODUS/REVELATION/GENESIS



	*SCRIPT:* Alan McKenzie (writing as Max Stockbridge) ART: John Ridgway EDITOR: Sheila Cranna *ISSUES:* 108-110 COVER DATES: January 1986 - March 1986 REPRINTS: Reprinted in abridged form as a special promotion with Golden Wonder in 1986 (see below), then in somewhat rudimentary colour in Doctor Who Classic Comics in Issue 16 (February 1994) and then as part of the Panini ‘graphic novel’ The World Shapers, published in June 2008, then in colour by IDW as Doctor Who Classics, Series 4 Issue 1, February 2012, then in trade paperback as Doctor Who Classics Volume 8, October 2012.






		When the TARDIS accidentally materialises around a ship filled with peasants from Sylvaniar, the Doctor learns of droughts and disappearances on the planet and, having set the ship free, pilots the TARDIS to a castle of scientists on Sylvaniar. There he, Peri and Frobisher are immediately accused of murdering Professor Verdeghast and arrested by Captain Krogh. However, Krogh soon enlists the Doctor’s help having revealed that others have been murdered. The Doctor soon discovers that Verdeghast’s murderer was not human and that the professor was working in advanced genetics and cloning, his notes stolen to keep them a secret. The Doctor meets Doctor Kravaal, a singularly dubious looking scientist, but he is soon distracted when funny-looking little old Doctor Sovak arrives having claimed to have been attacked in his rooms. The Doctor and Krogh go to see the Director of the castle. However, they find the Director being strangled by a partially-converted Cyberman. Following the creature into secret tunnels, they soon find a concealed conversion centre - presided over by old Doctor Sovak! He reveals that he found a crashed ship of four damaged Cybermen and rebuilt them using limbs from the peasants. Nobody will laugh at him ever again! One Cyberman is active, but the other three are now also ready for activation. However, when Sovak flips the power switch, he overloads the circuits and accidentally sets fire to the castle. The Doctor rescues Peri and Frobisher from their prison cell, but Frobisher has become ill with mono-morphia - he’s stuck as a penguin for the foreseeable future!

*ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:* A pleasing mystery with a strong atmosphere, good artwork and a nice red herring in the form of the insanely ugly and evil-looking Doctor Kravaal falls apart slightly in the final instalment when Sovak’s mad scheme comes to nothing thanks to nothing more than a convenient power overload. Peri gets some good lines early on but - along with Frobisher - spends the rest of the time locked up in prison. An extra episode with all four Cybermen active and the Doctor having to think his way out of danger would have made this a much stronger story.


	NATURE OF THE BEAST


		*SCRIPT:* Simon Furman ART: John Ridgway EDITOR: Sheila Cranna *ISSUES:* 111-113 COVER DATES: April 1986 - June 1986 REPRINTS: Reprinted as part of the Panini ‘graphic novel’ The World Shapers, published in June 2008, then in colour by IDW in Doctor Who Classics Series 4, Issue 2, March 2012, then in trade paperback as Doctor Who Classics Volume 8, October 2012. Fed up with saving the Universe, Peri has persuaded the Doctor to take them to a sunny woodland glade where they can relax and recuperate. The Doctor’s inability to find an uninhabited planet for them soon comes to light, though, as first a beast from the woods attacks them, then those pursuing the beast capture them. It transpires that the soldiers who have captured them, led by Commander Hon, believe the beast to have killed the Lady Irna, wife of their War Lord Mackal. However, the Doctor realises that the beast is in fact Irna herself and her former lover Lupe is trying to save her from the soldiers. The Doctor succeeds in arranging for Irna and Lupe to live in the woods together but it is Irna herself who stops the whole planet from being destroyed by Commander Hon who believes himself to have failed in the task of saving her.





				*ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:* A strangely unengaging and forgettable tale despite a couple of good twists and some pleasing if unspectacular artwork. The problem is perhaps that the story offers no sense of danger and generates no atmosphere to enhance the slender plot. The Doctor is also superfluous to the main thrust of the story, with Lady Irna sorting it all out on her own. A shame, as the potential is far greater than the result.


	TIME BOMB

SCRIPT: Jamie Delano
ART: John Ridgway
EDITOR: Sheila Cranna

ISSUES: 114-116
COVER DATES: July 1986 - September 1986
ON TV: The Mysterious Planet (Season 23)
REPRINTS: Reprinted as part of the Panini ‘graphic novel’ The World Shapers, published in June 2008, then in colour by IDW in Doctor Who Classics Series 4, Issue 3, April 2012, then in trade paperback as Doctor Who Classics Volume 8, October 2012.

The TARDIS is penetrated by a time cannon. The Doctor traces it to its source, the Garden of Light on the planet Hedron in the year 2850, which has been devastated by some disaster. However, a robot disposing of a sealed container of concentrated genetic material also disposes of them and the TARDIS, shooting them back to primeval Earth. Moments later the cannon fires corpses to the same place. The Doctor decides to collect Peri from Earth in 1985 and head back to Hedron. Unfortunately, 1985 has been changed beyond recognition, with mankind never having evolved and reptile life in charge.

The Doctor and Frobisher escape back to primeval Earth to find out just what contaminant has caused the anomaly. But the Doctor is forced to use the concentrated genetic material as a missile when Frobisher is almost eaten by a dinosaur, and the sealed container splits. Fearing the worst, he and his penguin friend head back to Hedron, but just two days after the disaster that wiped out the city. Here they learn that it was a ship from Earth that crashed into the planet, wiping out most of the Hedrons, and microbes from the crashsite - microbes that the Hedrons originally eliminated from their world by use of the time cannon - killed all the survivors.

The Doctor takes control of the robots and uses them to overload the time cannon. Time is repaired and the Doctor and Frobisher return to Earth to collect Peri.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Story-wise this is rather good, but the visuals add little and are generally bland and lacking in invention, which means it might have made a better short story as it fails to play to the strengths of the medium. Oh, and Frobisher’s mono-morphia now comes and goes with annoying convenience, and his character has shifted. Previously he showed great loyalty to and support for the Doctor. Now, knowing of the Doctor’s fondness for Earth and having seen the future of the planet redesigned, he declares that he’s hungry and going to go fishing instead!


	SALAD DAZE






		*ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:* A pleasant enough interlude, perhaps trying to recall the heights of Once Upon a Time Lord. However, John Ridgway’s art here is nowhere near as good or inventive as in his earlier strip

SCRIPT: Simon Furman
ART: John Ridgway
EDITOR: Sheila Cranna

ISSUE: 117
COVER DATE: October 1986
ON TV: Mindwarp (Season 23)
REPRINTS: Reprinted in Marvel Bumper Comic Issue 11, February 89 - Issue 12, March 1989, and then as part of the Panini ‘graphic novel’ The World Shapers, published in June

2008, then in colour by IDW in Doctor Who Classics Series 4, Issue 4, May 2012, then in trade paperback as Doctor Who Classics Volume 8, October 2012.

Peri is taught a lesson about the perils of eating salads when she uses a Personal Reality Warp that the Doctor has deliberately left lying around aboard the TARDIS. She is plunged into a bizarre parody of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland where all the characters are vegetables and she is sentenced to death as a murderer.

Emerging from the personal reality, she vows to cook the Doctor some junk food... just as he wanted.


	CHANGES




		*SCRIPT:* Grant Morrisson ART: John Ridgway EDITOR: Sheila Cranna *ISSUES:* 118-119 COVER DATES: November 1986 - December 1986 ON TV: Terror of the Vervoids - The Ultimate Foe (Season 23) REPRINTS: Reprinted as part of the Panini ‘graphic novel’ The World Shapers, published in June

2008 and by IDW as Grant Morrison’s Doctor Who Issue 1, released October 2008, then again by IDW in Doctor Who Classics Omnibus, June 2010, then in trade paperback as Doctor Who Classics Volume 8, October 2012.

A Kymbra Chimera, disguised as a swuffle, is accidentally brought aboard the TARDIS by the Doctor as part of his animal sanctuary. This vicious creature is a shape-shifter and, after a hunt for it through the TARDIS’s many rooms, it impersonates Peri. However, Frobisher is able to tell the difference and, shifting his own shape, he fights the creature, depleting its energies, while the Doctor finds a way to expel it from the TARDIS.


	*ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:* Mmh... is it just me, or is it quite difficult to imagine the Sixth Doctor caring for homeless animals? This story is rather basic, and Frobisher’s act of bravery also seems somewhat out of character. Unremarkable filler.


	ADVENTURE COMIC


	*SCRIPTS:* Steve Parkhouse & Alan McKenzie ART: John Ridgway EDITOR: Alan McKenzie *ISSUES:* 1-6 Full colour (if slightly garish) reprints of six Sixth Doctor comic strips from 1884-1986 printed as miniature comics (14.5cm x 10.5cm). These stories are sometimes quite heavily abridged versions. For example, Peri is completely removed from Revelation, and Funhouse is edited to remove the Doctor’s regression through his own time stream.


	PROFITS OF DOOM


	*SCRIPT:* Mike Collins ART: John Ridgway EDITOR: Sheila Cranna *ISSUES:* 120-122 COVER DATES: January 1987 - March 1987 REPRINTS: Reprinted as part of the Panini ‘graphic novel’ The World Shapers, published in June 2008, then by IDW in full colour in Doctor Who Classics Series 4, Issue 5, in June 2012, then in trade paperback as Doctor Who Classics Volume 8, October 2012. Trying to take his companions to the planet Arcadia, the Doctor lands instead aboard the colony ship Mayflower, where cryogenically suspended humans are travelling to their new home. Kawa McAllista is awoken to do standard maintenance but finds the ship overrun with giant slugs. The Doctor recognises them as the Profiteers of Ephte, an ancient race of space merceneries who act only in the name of profit, but not before the creatures have abducted the sleeping humans and Peri and Frobisher. Trying to rescue them, Kara reveals to the Doctor that the ship was launched eighty years before by 24th Century entrepreneur Varley Gabriel. However, the Doctor discovers that the ship’s destination doesn’t exist and that Varley Gabriel, in reality a being called Seth with incredible longevity, is in league with the Profiteers of Ephte. The Doctor threatens to blow up the ship, and the Profiteers, sensing their profits slipping away, depart. Varley Gabriel threatens revenge. The Doctor reprogrammes the ship’s navigation unit to take the colonists to the planet that will become Arcadia.

		*ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:* The build-up and detail in this story is excellent. However, throughout the story, the clues are given that it will be the Master or another Time Lord behind the scheme, and when it turns out to be some other being who has apparently encountered the Doctor before in an unseen adventure, it all feels slightly confusing and something of an anticlimax. The sudden retreat of the Profiteers and Gabriel getting off without punishment for his crimes also poorly serve the story’s conclusion, though it is clear that Mike Collins is trying to set Gabriel up as a returning villain. The artwork veers between clean and crisp and sketchy and fussy, which makes the whole thing feel a little inconsistent. The Doctor gets a great line, though, when he says, “He’s not really a penguin, he’s just unwell.”


	UNCLE PIGG


	*SCRIPT:* Mike Collins ART: John Ridgway EDITOR: Sheila Cranna *ISSUES:* 120-122 COVER DATES: January 1987 - March 1987 Uncle Pigg escapes a trip to the slaughterhouse, disguises himself with a fancy dress costume and slips inside a police box which immediately catapults him into time and space. Much hilarity and a fair bit of shameless self-promotion ensues before Uncle Pigg lands back in his own time - on top of the butchers.

	*ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:* About as funny as swine fever, but thankfully much less contagious.


	THE GIFT


	*SCRIPT:* Jamie Delano ART: John Ridgway EDITOR: Sheila Cranna *ISSUES:* 123-126 COVER DATES: April 1987 - July 1987 REPRINTS: Reprinted as part of the Panini ‘graphic novel’ The World Shapers, published in June 2008, and then by IDW in Doctor Who Classics, Series 4, Issue 6, July 2012, then in trade paperback as Doctor Who Classics Volume 8, October 2012. Piloting the TARDIS to the Lorduke’s party on the planet Zazz, the Doctor makes a small piloting error and lands instead on a rocky island where the Lorduke’s bitter and exiled scientist brother Professor Strut is building a volcano-powered spaceship to take him to the moon. Before the Doctor and his companions leave for the party in Harlm Town, Strut gives them a gift for his brother, which the Doctor delivers. However, the gift is a robot, which immediately collects all the metal at the party and makes off. By the morning it is clear this is a Servotron, a self-replicating scavenger robot capable of overrunning the planet. While the Lorduke holds Peri hostage, the Doctor and Frobisher visit Strut who tells them that the scavenger robot came back from the moon in a sample of moon dust. Leaving Frobisher to restrain Strut, the Doctor travels on to the moon where he learns that the Servotrons built of civilisation from a crashed spaceship, but that the civilisation was wiped out by a freak meteor. Travelling back to Strut’s laboratory, the Doctor hatches a plan to lure the robots into Strut’s rocket. However, the recall alarm is too weak, so he writes a piece of music that closely resembles the alarm frequency and gets all the local people to play it, which sends all the servotrons to Strut’s rocket ship which then blasts off, leaving Zazz free of their scavenging.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
“Blow, men, blow!” says the Doctor, banging a tambourine and leading a marching band, and this story certainly blows big time. The story is inflated way beyond its natural length, the setting and resolution are ridiculous, and the art is extremely uneven, with some of it resembling rough sketches, and dull and undynamic layout of the panels. The main problem with the strip by this point is that the constantly changing writers are always leading the strip in different directions, so there is never a sense of continuity or development. Added to this, the writers clearly never get a chance to talk with the artist, as Steve Parkhouse did with Ridgway, to capitalise on what he draws well and what interests him. Not a high point in the strip’s history.


	THE WORLD SHAPERS




	*SCRIPT:* Grant Morrison ART: John Ridgway (breakdowns), Tim Perkins (finished art) EDITOR: Sheila Cranna *ISSUES:* 127-129 COVER DATES: August 1987 - October 1987 ON TV: Time and the Rani - Paradise Towers (Season 24) REPRINTS: Reprinted as part of the Panini ‘graphic novel’ The World Shapers, published in June 2008 and by IDW as Grant Morrison’s Doctor Who Issue 2, released November 2008, then again by IDW in Doctor Who Classics Omnibus, June 2010, then in the 100 Page Spectacular 2012, also by IDW, July 2012, then in trade paperback as Doctor Who Classics Volume 8, October 2012. Responding to a distress call, the Doctor arrives on Marinus, which he last visited during his first incarnation. Here he finds a dying Time Lord. As the Time Lord dies, his last words are "Planet 14". This triggers a memory for the Doctor and goes off to Scotland to visit a now very old Jamie McCrimmon. Jamie reminds the Doctor that the Cyber-Controller remembered the two of them from Planet 14 and they return to Marinus to find that, in the week that they’ve been away, an age has passed on the planet and it is now a barren rock. The Voord are evolving into the Cybermen with the aid of a worldshaper, which they plan to use to devastate the galaxy. Jamie sacrifices his life to destroy the worldshaper and the Time Lords arrive to stop the Doctor interfering more than he should.

									*ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:* Overburdened with far too much continuity and not enough plot and drama to drive it, this is a sad way to see out the Sixth Doctor’s regular run in the comics. It is also a sad way to throw away the memory of Jamie McCrimmon. Voord turning into Cybermen? Mention of The Fishmen of Kandalinga from the very first Doctor Who annual? Utter fan-driven rubbish. And I’m fairly sure that the Doctor and Jamie never heard the Cyber-Controller mentioning Planet 14 in The Invasion.


		The World Shapers concluded the Sixth Doctor’s regular run of comic strips. However, he would return for a few more appearances over the years...


	THE AGE OF CHAOS

SCRIPT: Colin Baker
ART: John M. Burns and Barrie Mitchell (art), Steve Whitaker (colours)
EDITOR: Gary Russell

ISSUE: 127-129
COVER DATE: October 1994

The Doctor makes one of his regular visits to see Peri’s grandchildren on Krontep, but lands during a time of civil war between Peri’s grandsons Artios and Euthys. To prevent it, he enlists the help of Frobisher, Peri’s granddaughter Actis, and a warrior named Carf and ventures out to the land of Brachion where .




	he suspects alien involvement. The journey is beset by many monsters, but he eventually learns that the Nahrung are behind the problems on Krontep, an ancient race who feed on the pain and suffering of other creatures. They are also shapeless and inhabit other bodies, and the Doctor defeats them when they try to take over his body with the immortal cry of “The time has come to ride a Time Lord!!” The Doctor stops one of his hearts and kills them

	*ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:* Reading rather like some strange European fantasy movie where logic takes a back seat to roaring monsters and spectacle, The Age of Chaos could never be described as disciplined or thought-provoking, and with lines like, “Cowardly eaters of the droppings of goats, I will crack your skulls for this!” it’s never likely to win any awards for its dialogue either, but it has a brash and breathless sense of fun about it, which is reflected in the colourful but highly inaccurate artwork. The Sixth Doctor looks nothing like Colin Baker and even Frobisher looks very little like his previous self, but if you like an attacking, full-page roaring monster every few panels then you’re undoubtedly in for a treat.


	UP ABOVE THE GODS







		*SCRIPT:* Richard Alan ART: Lee Sullivan EDITOR: Gary Gillatt *ISSUE:* 227 COVER DATE: July 1995 The Doctor, having abducted Davros during the Seventh Doctor strip Emperor of the Daleks, now talks to him in the Cloister Room aboard the TARDIS, seeking to understand the fury inside him. He offers Davros a deal - if Davros is willing to start again and make the Daleks a force for good, programmed with pity and compassion, he knows of a planet (Spiridon) where there is a vast army of Daleks waiting in hibernation. Davros accepts the offer.

		*ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:* In many ways, this thoughtful discussion between the Doctor and Davros is far superior to the strip that spawned it, with some genuine insight into Davros’ character and some strong and pleasing artwork. It takes its title from a line in Genesis of the Daleks when Davros and the Fourth Doctor have a quiet conversation. This strip is a natural continuation of that conversation.


	*SCRIPT:* Tony Lee ART: Kelly Yates LETTERS: Richard Starkings EDITOR: Denton J. Tipton *ISSUE:* 4 COVER DATE: November 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. The Doctor proves Peri innocent of murdering Professor Karac by making the real culprit - Karac’s assistant - confess to the crime.

		*ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:* With its courtroom setting, confusing technobabble and bright colours, this strip neatly evokes the era of the Sixth Doctor, even if - as with all the vignettes in The Forgotten - it feels rather slight. The characterisation of the Sixth Doctor and Peri is very accurate. And just so you know, according to Peri, this adventure occurs directly after the events of The Mark of the Rani.

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