Comic strips inspired by the series appeared in different forms – and across several publications – in 1973. The best of these stories are some of the most faithful Doctor Who adaptations published up to that point.

By PAUL SCOONES

A detail of the striking cover picture from TV Action issue 112, promoting the new comic strip The Threat from Beneath. The art is by Gerry Haylock, who illustrated all the Doctor Who strips in TV Action + Countdown, Countdown and TV Comic in 1973.

In 1973, Doctor Who comics weathered varying formats, absences and an outright cancellation to deliver stories with intriguing ties to their on-screen counterpart. With the 1971 move from TV Comic to Countdown, both published by Polystyle, it seemed that Doctor Who in comic form was beginning to be treated with serious respect for the first time. The two and a half years in which Doctor Who comics appeared in Countdown and TV Action remain a pinnacle of quality for the pre-Marvel era. The artwork is exquisite and the writing more closely aligned to the source material than ever before.

The stories that appeared during 1973 were not only consistent with the standard set in the previous two years; they also saw the strip getting even closer to what was happening on screen. And yet, while this was happening, the strip was in a state of near-constant change. 1973 began with the final appearances of a longstanding format and ended with the strip returning to an old position that would remain fixed for several years. Between these two states, the comic rotated between complete and serialised stories, while sometimes disappearing for weeks at a time, before jumping from one title to another.

The Third Doctor strip departed from the television series in that there was no regular companion for most of its run. Polystyle couldn’t put Jo Grant in the comic as Katy Manning had declined the use of her likeness on merchandise. The comic’s writers opted instead to have the Doctor travel alone, encountering a long line of individuals whose involvement would be limited to a single story. Often, these associates were either hastily befriended on the first page or else were ‘old friends’, never seen or mentioned before or since. The added cost, on top of the regular licence fee, to cover character rights and use of actor likenesses meant that, although characters from the television series (the Brigadier, the Master and the Daleks) did show up in the strip, they were used sparingly. 1973, however, was an improvement on the previous year, in which the Daleks had been the only on-screen characters to make an appearance.