WHO REVIEW CATCH-UP: Emperor of the Daleks

The Seventh Doctor comics aren't the greatest era of Doctor Who Magazine's strips, but they definitely improved during the New Adventures period, when Benny Summerfield joined the TARDIS crew in the strips as well as the novel line. The strips collected in this volume appeared in issues 193 from late 1992 to 211 in early '94, plus one special and one strip cribbed from issue 227.

It must have been a bit of a surprise for readers when Benny suddenly popped up in the strip without introduction, but then, the DWM strips always reflected developments in the TV series even when it made little to no sense within the confines of the comic itself. The strip was often at its strongest when there was no series to line up with and it was able to go in its own direction, but the decision to stick with the template of the NAs meant there was a clear direction for Doctor Who at the time (compare to the Eighth Doctor era, when there were three competing media with their own continuities, causing no end of debate but also resulting in easily the best run of strips in the magazine's history). 

The first story in the collection is "Pureblood," by the now prolific Dan Abnett, who's written prose and comics for everything from Star Trek to Warhammer. Although completely at odds with The First Sontarans (proposed earlier but produced much later), "Pureblood" proposes a fascinating origin for the Sontarans, showing that their early warrior culture developed into the Sontarans we see today through a reductive process of genetic engineering. Abnett puts this across in an action-packed interstellar war serial, ably realised by Colin Andrew. Abnett''s script makes the Sontarans far more three-dimensional than they'd see in mainstream Doctor Who for decades. I also agree with Abentt's commentary - the Pureblood Sontarans do look like they're related to the Ogrons...

Next up is the one-shot from the 1992 Winter Special, from the normally reliable Scott Gray. It's not great, but to be fair, it was speed-written to fill a gap in the scheduling. A flimsy story that sees the Seventh Doctor and Ace run a holo-program of the First Doctor's time on Gallifrey - back when he was going by "Thete," as per Drax's stylings - there's not much to it. The main talking point is wondering whether the mustachio'd Magnus is really the Master, or the War Chief, or both, but really, it's such a throwaway story it seems hard to care.

Next up is the big title story, "Emperor of the Daleks!" itself. It's a co-op between the magazine's editor John Freeman and much lauded writer Paul Cornell. Cornell is one of the best writers in the franchise, and at this point had made his name as basically the bet writer on the New Adventures. Plus he created Benny, so you'd expect he'd give us something special with this strip. However, the story is hamstrung by trying to do way to much at once. It's a follow-up and retcon of the previous Dalek strip, "Nemesis of the Daleks," plus a linking story between the last two Dalek TV serials, Revelation and Remembrance of the Daleks. It also provides an unexpected sequel to Planet of the Daleks and introduces Cornell's pet project of setting up a weird semi-antagonistic relationship between the Sixth and Seventh Doctors. As such, it opens with a Sixth Doctor strip that sees him rescue Davros from the Daleks at the end of Revelation, and ends with a follow-up, the rather good "Up Above the Gods!" which sees them conversing in the TARDIS (this one from #227, almost two years later).

The rest of the six-part story is a rollicking adventure yarn with more Daleks than you can shake a stick at, but the insistence of doing yet another Abslom Daak story is really a problem. Frankly I don't think Daak become a usable character until Titan Comics brought him back in 2015, when they were able to appropriately take the piss out of him. For all that he's a pastiche, he's still taken far too seriously in "Emperor" and the dickish machismo of the character drags everyone else down, resulting in some of the worst character dialogue Cornell ever put to paper. It's still better than half of what was in the strips in this period but it's a pity to see Cornell put out something so shallow.

Warwick (later Scott) Gray gives us "Final Genesis," a solid four-parter that sees the Doctor take Benny and "New" Ace to a parallel Earth where the events of Doctor Who and the Silurians turned out rather differently. As Gray points out in his commentary, this clashed with the NA Blood Heat, but since they both involve parallel universes they could both be valid. As such Gray posits the events of The Silurians are a nexus point branching into many realities. This one is the one where the Doctor actually won the day and ushered in a new era of peace between humanity and the reptile people, but it's now in jeopardy. Anyone expecting a two Doctors team-up will be disappointed, as both the alt-Doctor and alt-Brigadier have recently been killed.

It's a decent story, let down by some scruffy artwork by Colin Andrew that doesn't suit the tone at all. The monsters of the story, hybrids of human and Silurian, don't look remotely like either and look pretty rubbish. The writing's solid though, raising interesting questions about the Doctor's motivation in visiting a parallel world.

"Time & Time Again" is a silly but fun one-off. Like the third part of "Emperor," which landed in the 200th issue, this one is in colour to celebrate the series' 30th anniversary, and like the earlier one, it's looks like it's by someone who's not used to working in colour. It's a daft story which sees the Doctor and co. assigned by the White Guardian to undo the Black's interference in time, which has left the universe in peril due to the Doctor staying on Gallifrey and becoming president. Now that everyone in the universe has invaded Earth, they've got to put reality right by collecting the six segments of the Key to Time again. The first time round this required a 26-episode season, but this time they manage it in ten pages. It's really just an excuse for a whistle-stop tour of classic stories with cameos by all the previous Doctors. Cornell manages to include a tense Sixth-Seventh Doctor scene, which is the highlight of the strip.

"Cuckoo" is of a highlight of the collection. Another one by Abnett, this three-parter sees the Doctor and his two no-nonsense female companions go back to the 19th century and face that sexist society head-on. Subtle as a brick but really not bad at all, it also features some lovely palaeontology at the hands of a transparent Mary Anning-pastiche. Quite why Abnett bottled it at the last minute and decided not to use real figures and instead use fictionalised versions I'm not sure. When James Quick and I wrote a similar story we used Anning herself and focused on details of her remarkable life. Big Finish are now going to feature her in a story as well. Given how much Abnett is clearly into this in his commentary, I wonder why he didn't just go all the way with it. (He talks about the Mantell's finding the first Iguanodon fossil - that was in my town of birth, Cuckfield, but unlike his native Maidstone, they don't have one on their coat of arms. I have suggested it.)

"Cuckoo" features an excellently realised monster by Jo Ridgway, and a clever contrast between the Doctor's priorities in this story and those of Benny and Ace. It's easily the best story in the collection for me. Finally there's Gray's one-shot, "Uninvited Guest," which sees the Doctor crash a party of Eternals and mete out his own brand of inhuman justice. It's here that I feel we see the real Doctor of the New Adventures, the one who worked to his own morality and was echoed in the television adaptation of perhaps the greatest NA, Cornell's Human Nature. We're reminded that this silly little man is someone you never want to be on the wrong side of. And with that, just when they seemed to get the hang of him, DWM dropped the Seventh Doctor and the NA links and went with a rotating series of past Doctor adventures.

Placement: The strips begin shortly after Love and War and continue up to around the time of Legacy. The Sixth Doctor strips take place at some point not long after Revelation of the Daleks.

It takes Perseverence

Fantastic news that NASA's Mars 2020 mission has been declared a complete success. Launched on July 30^th on an Atlas V rocket, the unmanned spacecraft reached Mars on the 18^th of February.

The Mars 2020 spacecraft was composed of a cruise stage, an aeroshell descent vehicle, and a Sky Crane, a device that delivered its passenger craft to the Martian surface. These craft are Perseverence and Ingenuity, currently active on the planet's surface. Perseverence is Mars rover, based on the design of the previously successful Curiosity, but with multiple improvements and upgrades. Among other upgrades is a Norwegian radar system, and a new rechargeable battery system that will help the system stay functional when solar panels are not an option. Ingenuity is the most remarkable new addition, a robotic helicopter that will act as a scouter for Perseverence and find areas of interest for the rover to explore.

The mission of the Perseverence-Ingenuity team is to explore the Jezero crater, a region which is believed to have held water around 3.5 billion years ago. As well as looking for signs of prehistoric water, the rover is looking for any signs of biological activity in the past. Jezero features a prominent delta, not only suggesting the existence of flowing water in the past but also a prime environment for preserving biomatter, should any exist. In 2026, a fetch rover will launch to collect the samples collected by Perseverence and return them to Earth.

Perseverence sent back its first photo of the Martian surface yesterday, and is happily getting on with its work on the planet. It's not the only mission to Mars that launched in the ideal window last July. China's Tianwen-1entered orbit on February 10^th, and after two months of orbital observations will launch its own rover to the surface. The UAE launched its own orbiter, Hope or Misabar al Amal, which entered orbit on the 10^th and will study Martian climate and weather patterns, in the hope of learning more about the drastic climate changes that affected the planet in the ancient past.

It's a very exciting time for space exploration, and we are gaining more knowledge about our solar neighbours every day.

Bafflement & Devotion - out very soon

Don't forget to order your copy of the new charity anthology Bafflement & Devotion: Iris at the Edges, featuring lost, forgotten and mysterious stories starring that gin-soaked lady time traveller, Iris Wildthyme.

Stories by Iris creator Paul Magrs include "Bafflement & Devotion" itself, the tete-a-tete between Iris and the Eighth Doctor originally published in Doctor Who Magazine; "In the Sixties," originally printed in Walking in Eternity; "Being an Extract from The Amazing Adventures of Iris Wildthyme on Neptune," originally printed in Tales of the Solar System; "An Unearthly Palaver," originally written for the "G'Day for the Doctor" convention; "Hospitality, from Iris: Abroad; "Entertaining Mr. O" from Perfect Timing and "It's Raining Again," with Stewart Sheargold, originally from Perfect Timing 2.

Stories by other ne'er-do-wells include "Iris Explains" by Lance Parkin, featuring the Eighth Doctor and originally included in Missing Pieces; "No Place Like Home" by Stuart Douglas, originally printed in Shelf Life; "Iris Wildthyme and the Spider from Magrs," by Alan Taylor, and "Cabinet of Changes" by Philip Purser-Hallard, originally in Walking in Eternity; "Deleted Scene from The Key Lime Pie 2 Time" by Cody Schell from a bonus ebook for Iris: Abroad; and "When Iris Met Tommy" by Stuart Douglas, from A Second Target for Tommy. 

Other stories have never been in print before, including "Faking It" by Philip Marsh, the mysteriously unattributed "Lost, Presumably Illogically Ignored," and my own Ninth Doctor and Iris story, "A World Apart."

You can order the paperback for £16.95 here, but I don't know how long it will be available so best get on it, chuck.

WHO REVIEW: Forgotten Lives, ed. Philip Purser-Hallard

 

It's surprising that it's taken so long for a book like this to appear. We've had anthologies with unknown, invented and alternative Doctors before (such as Unbound and Walking in Eternity, and even to an extent with the BBC's Short Trips and Side Steps), but remarkably, no one has ever sat down and put together a collection revolving around the ever-controversial "Morbius Doctors" before.

Perhaps it's the controversial nature of these mysterious pre-Doctors that has prevented most fans from engaging with them. Fandom has had such a rigidly defined idea of who the Doctor is for so long that versions of the character that contradict this have been thrown out. Even before the eight faces of the Doctor appeared in the mind battle with Morbius, there were more versions of the Doctor than the official four incarnations played by Hartnell, Troughton, Pertwee and Tom Baker. The introduction to Forgotten Lives chats happily about these extra versions, from Peter Cushing's eccentric inventor Dr. Who to Trevor Martin's theatrical incarnation, and goes on to say:

"When The Brain of Morbius episode four showed us (and it did so deliberately and, whatever the more conservative species of old-school Doctor Who fan may tell you, with no significant ambiguity) that Hartnell's 'first' Doctor had at least eight predecessors who'd never been on screen, it was really nothing revolutionary – just part of Doctor Who's long history of reinvention and revelation."

This is, of course, completely true. The eight faces seen in The Brain of Morbius were always and explicitly intended to be earlier faces of the Doctor, and while it's possible to interpret them as faces of Morbius or something more contrived, this requires deliberate misreading of the scene. Of course, this contradicted pretty much everything else on screen up to that point and beyond, besides very tiny hints at bits of the Doctor's life we hadn't seen. It was one of those oddities that exist in the series' continuity, which by 1976 was already full of curiosities and contradictions.

Aside from the lightest of touches and one inarguable cameo in Lance Parkin's Missing Adventure Cold Fusion twenty years later, these well-dressed gentlemen (being in actuality production team members in fancy dress) were forgotten about and dismissed by licensed fiction and mostly by fandom at large. Which was a crying shame, because the idea that there were some secret lives before Hartnell's Doctor is just so much fun that it's surely impossible not to want to play with it. Finally, Chris Chibnall's latest season of the revived TV series bombed continuity with the notion that the Doctor has had countless lives before, and explicitly included the Morbius Doctors in this by showing them in the Doctor's bombardment of memories. (Of course, if you wanted to be a real stick in the mud you could insist she was just remembering the mind battle and that they were still the faces of Morbius, but really, where's the fun in that? And would Morbius have such a fine selection of hats?)

So it's now quite right that Obverse Books presents us with a collection of full-fledged adventures for these Doctors, taking those tiny glimpses and extrapolating them into eight new versions of the character. These are timely children, indeed, and whether you're an old-school fan who's been pondering their existence since 1976 or a recent viewer who's desperate to know more about the Doctor's mysterious and ever-contradictory backstory, Forgotten Lives is a must. And nothing here, in The Brain of Morbius or The Timeless Children stops Hartnell from being the First Doctor. He always will be, no matter how many faces retroactively come before him.

Eight authors bring to life eight Doctors, in this beautiful volume illustrated by the uncomparable Paul Hanley, who I believe must have depicted more incarnations of the Doctor than anyone in his artwork. If there's one complaint to be had about the book it's that Hanley's artwork isn't given enough prominence inside, but I understand this is due to costs. Nonetheless, you're missing out if you only see the cover versions and the black-and-white prints at the back of the book, and must check out the full portraits on Hanely's Patreon. However, each of the plates in the book includes a wonderfully silly note on "The Changing Face of Doctor Who" which makes up for the lack of colour and clarity.

The collection kicks off with "The Knocking in the Mine Shaft," which puts the Christopher Barry Doctor, the earliest of these incarnations, in an adventure in historic Cornwall that involves spooky goings on down the tin mines. Drawing on the local folklore of the Knockers – mining goblins with a perfectly sensible name – who naturally turn out to be of a more extraterrestrial origin than expected. The Doctor here is very much a medical doctor, a practising one at that, who goes by the pseudonym of Doctor Medec and has very much assimilated into the local community by the time this adventure starts.

Each story presents a distinct era of the Doctor's life, and the feeling, in general, is that a very long time passes between each one. Collection editor Philip Purser-Hallard presents the next Doctor, portrayed by Robert Banks Stewart, who speaks with a distinct Scottish accent (I had in my head the voice of Bill Paterson as I read the dialogue). While still flitting about time, this Doctor has a base in WWII London where he acts as an observer for his superiors, while also being the most alchemical of this always mercurial character. The story is told by his secretary, the charming Miss Weston, who joins him on his investigation into what's essentially a vintage take on Terror of the Autons, but both funnier and more atmospheric than that implies. There's a fair bit of The Avengers (Steed and Peel, not Marvel) in there too. This Doctor has some of my favourite characterisation in the book, really coming alive on the page via the tellings of Miss Weston. His bow-tied far future self would be very disappointed in his lack of knowledge when it comes to silent comedy, though.

The Doctor's lives span long enough that we hear of multiple different families, but only in Andrew Hickey's "The Cross of Venus" do we actually see them. Featuring the Christopher Baker Doctor, this story feels rather like one from an old World Distributors annual, except that it's very good indeed. It's a clever extrapolation backwards (a backstrapolation?) to the 1940s, imagining how Doctor Who might have existed then, and sees the characters travel to the distant space year 1975 and the first manned mission to Venus. There's some clever playing with expectations when it comes to the nature of the villain, but the most striking element of the story is that the Doctor is travelling with his two precocious children Jilly and Cedric. They're wonderfully drawn characters, and I can't help but wonder... is one of them the parent of John and Gillian?

Based purely on the fleeting images of the Doctors, my favourite was always the fourth (or fifth in the reverse-order they were shown): Phillip Hinchcliffe's Cavalier incarnation. With so little to go on but their fabulous outfits, it's not surprising that many of these Doctors make a big deal of their clothes, and this flamboyant fancypants is no exception. He's only just regenerated, allowing for an age spent in the TARDIS fixing his look. This Doctor's wonderfully full of himself and I love him for it, sashaying onto a planet and immediately getting locked up, and naturally taking it upon himself to overturn the entire civilisation's corrupt legal system. Kara Dennison's "Gauntlet of Absolution" is a cracking adventure.

At the halfway point comes the only Morbius Doctor to have appeared in licenced print fiction before, the blond and bearded Douglas Camfield incarnation. This version always looked like a real charmer, but interestingly, Lance Parkin takes a darker, more serious view of him in "Past Lives." Parkin, of course, is the one writer who absolutely had to write for this collection without fail, and his story, while the briefest, is one of the most fitting thematically. Dealing with a Doctor seeking to secure justice against galactic war criminals, this story says a lot about retribution and responsbility with admirable restraint. I also feel that this is what Chibnall's version of the forgotten Doctor was trying to be, rather than what we got. However the Thirteenth Doctor complains about how harsh and ruthless Jo Martin's Fugitive Doctor is, her actions are no different to what we've seen various Doctors do before. The Camfield Doctor seems like he could genuinely take a step too far.

Aditia Bidikar has a unique voice within Obverse Books and Doctor Who fiction and it's always fascinating. "Valhalla Must Fall!" is a strange and intriguing tale that covers things from millennia-old virtual lives to a sentient mountain. In amongst these mind-bending concepts (careful, your brain case might explode) is the Graeme Harper Doctor, and the character has never seemed more otherwordly and mysterious. Each of these Doctors has their own parallel story in Hanley's illustrations, but with Harper's it's truly a whole adventure, as Hanley not only discovered a remarkable truth about the director's appearance in that odd costume but (with a nudge from Cody Schell) made this Doctor less gender-specific than we might have thought. Bidikar's story goes out of its way to never refer to the Doctor by any pronoun – they're always "the Doctor" – and so salt-of-the-earth bloke Harper becomes the face of a genderqueer incarnation.

Jay Eales provides the penultimate story, "The Other Side," and it's one of the best in the book, a storming adventure story which sees the Doctor land in a civilisation seemingly split in two by an alien forcefield. A rather Orwellian story of abuse of power, it sees the Robert Holmes Doctor, resplendent in his finery and chewing on his pipe, acting as a rather unwilling agent for the Time Lords. Rather like the Black Widow in The Avengers (Marvel, not Steed and Peel), this Doctor has red in his ledger and is only going along with these missions because he's trying to tip the balance back in the right direction. Plus, he's kind of kept on a lead. While he's perhaps the most troubled Doctor, he's also tremendously charismatic, forcing his way through the story on sheer personality. Things don't always go to plan for this incarnation though, and an unexpected encounter with his own future sees him at his most vulnerable.

Finally, the eighth of the pre-Doctors stars in Paul Driscoll's "Doctor Crocus and the Pages of Fear." George Gallaccio's Doctor always looked like the most fun travel with out of the eight, based more on the extra behind-the-scenes photos which showed him with a lovely, twinkling smile. Driscoll's jumped on that, with this dimpled Doctor revelling in his appearance as just "made for the 1880s." However, he arrives in what would be a contemporary adventure for an incarnation set before Hartnell and just starting out, so it's predominantly in the 1950s. The story deals with the notorious moral panic around comicbooks at that time, which is just like the moral panic around heavy metal in the 1990s and violent video games in the 2000s. It's quite right that the Doctor would be repelled by the idea that children can be warped by slightly dangerous adventure stories, games or music, but this is just the doorway into a ripping sci-fi adventure.

I really can't praise this collection enough. Each of the eight stories is a great success and each Doctor a bold and unique version of the character. It's an excellent set of stories and I recommend it heartily to any Doctor Who fan who's looking to broaden their horizons within the show. My only gripe is that I'm tremendously envious I wasn't involved.

The Obligatory 'Who Should be the Doctor?' Post I suppose

 So, allegedly, Jodie Whittaker is leaving Doctor Who at the end of the thirteenth season. This may or may not be true. Three series over four years is, after all, pretty much the standard tenure for a television Doctor these days. On the other hand, it may be bollocks. It's all started because The Mirror, which has about a 50/50 record of actually reporting the truth in these matters, broke the "news," just like they do every year with every Doctor. By law of averages, occasionally they are right. Unfortunately, because the news these days seems to involve people making shit up on social media and this then being reported as a source, every online paper has been running it. And, of course, this has brought all the haters out with their predictable petty comments.

But let's just say for the moment that she is leaving. I mean, if not this year, it can't be too long before she decides to hang up the screwdriver, so let's have a look at the favourites and see who's worth considering if I was suddenly miraculously made showrunner tomorrow. Let's be clear that, firstly, the BBC has made no comment so it's still not clear that Whittaker is leaving, and secondly, at this stage a bookie's favourite just means more people have bet on it, there's no actual relation to fact.

I do like that the various suggestions have been across the board in terms of gender and race, which is a refreshing look at how people are viewing the character now. Personally, I feel that a person of colour is likely for the Fourteenth Doctor, and we'll probably have a man, because I doubt the Beeb will have the guts to go for a woman of colour yet (I realise we've had that with Jo Martin's Fugitive Doctor, but she's a guest star rather than the star, and while they've made a big deal of her in publicity material, there's a big difference between the two.) But, I may well be completely wrong. I probably am.

Richard Ayoade

The hot fan favourite. I'm in two mind about Ayoade. On the one hand, I really like him, he's got a very Doctorish feel to him and is a joy to watch on TV. On the other, I'm really not sure if he's a decent enough actor to make the role work. Everything I've seen in him has him basically as his himself, and while that's a big part of any actor's performance as the Doctor, I'm not sure he could pull of anything more than that. I imagine the outfits would be amazing though.

Kris Marshall

Again? This is who The Mirror "revealed" had got the role last time, if I recall correctly, so that tells you everything you need to know about their reliability. I'm of the same opinion as I was before: I like him, he'd be fine, but he's about the most obvious and unadventurous choice you could possibly have for the part.

Michaela Coel 

One of the bookies' favourites, mainly I should think because her star power has rocketed lately. I've not yet seen I May Destroy You, which I must remedy very soon, but Cole is a tremendously talented actor and is brilliant in The Aliens. There's something a bit alien about her and she has amazing charisma, and I think she could be very interesting. And clearly the door is open for a woman of colour, so it is possible, however unlikely I think it will be at this time. However, she's said she definitely isn't involved in the series, so unlikely to happen.

Jo Martin

Highly unlikely, I feel, for both the reasons above and because she's already been established as some mysterious past version of the Doctor. However, they could always make it work in some timey-wimey fashion. Martin made an excellent Doctor for her brief appearance, and I'd definitely like to see more of her in the role, one way or the other.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge

Well, obviously she'd be fantastic, but she's probably too big a deal now, what with Hollywood roles and writing Bond films and all. But she'd be the perfect combination of posh, weird and sexy, so here's hoping.

Jodie Comer

Jodie Comer is another actress who's become a big deal lately, with Killing Eve propelling her to stardom. She's certainly got the acting chops and can give the right sort of unsettling yet fascinating performance the Doctor needs.

Michael Sheen

According to some reports, the favourite, and a much more traditional choice than most of the above. Probably much too expensive for Doctor Who now - Staged is a one-off exception between mates - but he'd be pretty spot on in the role. Plus, it'd be owrth it just to see him share the screen with David Tennant again in a multi-Doctor story. It's about time we had a Welshman in the role, too.

John Boyega

Again, probably to big a deal to get now, but a potentially good choice. He's an excellent actor, but I'm not quite sure I can see him as the Doctor. Willing to be disproved though.

Reece Shearsmith

He made a dreadful Patrick Troughton in An Adventure in Space and Time, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't make his own Doctor work. I've never really seen him as a potential Doctor, but I could be convinced.

Ben Whishaw

Never going to happen. Much to big a deal already. Still, he's just about perfect if you're after a young, Matt Smith-esque Doctor. He'd be great, but again, a very obvious choice. Still not going to happen though.