The first instalment of Gemini Plan from Countdown issue 1 (1971).
Art by Harry Lindfield.
When Countdown launched in February 1971, one of its gimmicks was that its pages counted down, rather than up – not unlike an Apollo rocket launch. “The original focus of Countdown was pure,” remembers reader Martin Wiggins, now a leading Shakespeare scholar. That focus was neatly summarised by the motto that often ran beneath the title: “The Space Age comic!”
In early issues of Countdown, Doctor Who often occupied the full-colour centre spread. While TV Comic, Doctor Who’s comic-strip home from 1964 to 1970, had sometimes adopted this format, it hadn’t done so with the dynamism of writer Dennis Hooper and artist Harry Lindfield’s rendition of Jon Pertwee’s Doctor, racing around in a yellow tourer and solving action-packed mysteries.