This oddity is a comic strip in a magazine dedicated to Peter Cushing's Doctor. Writer Alan Barnes (better known to me for his work on audio, starting with Storm Warning) captures the enthusiasm of this incarnation and the action-orientated nature of his stories. Much of the dialogue is a bit trite, but in an eight-page homage to the movies it's entirely appropriate. As is the focus on spectacle: massed daleks on flying platforms from the TV21 comics! A Skaro Saucer! A huge battle with a giant robot war machine! Artist Lee Sullivan captures this well, with clear lines and simple, effective layouts. He also has a good grasp of light and shade, using this to create a contrast between the inside and outside scenes as well as to emphasise dramatic moments. If I have one complaint about the art, it's that Susie looks a little too old in the close-up shots; but that is a minor complaint.
The lettering by Elitta Fell is clear, I always like it when the angular dalek font is used for their speech, and there's good variety on the (plentiful) sound effects; but I'm not a good judge of it's quality beyond that.
The setting - a mysterious bubble of air on Mars - is just an excuse to have somewhere to stage the action, but that's fine in context. The grey-like telepathic Martians, similarly, provide an enemy for the daleks to fight, and someone for the Doctor to talk to, and the mystery of the Martian sphinx is good for pacing. We end with a bit of foreshadowing of the second movie. Basically, there's not a lot to this - but like a number of the 21st Century charity specials, what is there is well done.
There. As I expected, that didn't take long; so I've room for something a little different that won't fit into the review of the next film.
Fan Theories #1: Old Doctor 10.5
I've occasionally referred to the setting of the Amicus films as the Cushingverse, but I suppose in a similar vein it could be referred to as Pete's World. Which is kind of appropriate, given a particular fan theory that I am rather keen on. Credit where credit is due: I first came across this idea on Gallifrey Base, put forward by a timelord called Coco Nutkin. Ta very much, yer lordship!
For this theory, we need to fast-forward to 2008 and discuss SPOILERS for the Tenth Doctor story, Journey's End. Through reasons too complicated to go into now, the Doctor ends up with a single-hearted, human-lifespanned duplicate ("10.5") who he then dumps on a parallel Earth with an inconvenient old girlfriend (who happens to have a younger brother on the same Earth). So much for what appears on screen, but in a deleted scene 10.5 is also given a piece of coral from which he can (eventually) grow a new TARDIS. Assume that the brother has a daughter, Louise; and that the Doctor and the Missus have children, and eventually grandchildren - called Barbara and Susan. Meanwhile, 10.5 grows old and forgetful, loses his wife, builds/grows a TARDIS, and in an early experimental flight takes his grandchildren back to the 1960s...
We're all set, and there's a plausible explanation tying the movie universe into mainstream Who. David Tennant even has a similar body type and face shape to Peter Cushing! The question is, why would anyone care about making such a connection? Search me, but actually I do. It's not a big deal, but it is a really neat theory: too good to languish in an old thread. So it can languish here instead.
Published:
Doctor Who Magazine Spring Special, February 1996
Rating:
7.5/10.
Next Time:
Possibly the delayed look at The Time Travellers? We'll see.
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