The Meep in Doctor Who and the Star Beast (Doctor Who Weekly issues 19-26, 1980). Art by Dave Gibbons.
The
Tides
of
Time
Part Seven (Doctor Who Monthly issue 67, 1982). Art by Dave Gibbons.
In 1979, the “Fantastic First Issue” of Doctor Who Weekly devoted half of its pages to comic strips. They were a revelation, as reader Lance Parkin remembers. “The last year of TV Comic was reprints of Pertwee strips with his hair coloured in so he looked a bit like Tom Baker,” he recalls. “Then ‘KERRASH!!!’, to quote City of the Damned [DWW issues 9-16]. Us kids who read 2000 AD recognised Dave Gibbons’ art and the names of writers like Pat Mills and Steve Moore. They revelled in slapstick destruction in that way British comic strips do, from Dennis the Menace to Judge Dredd, but which Doctor Who never really did.”
The Fifth Doctor’s first strip adventure The Tides of Time (issues 61-67) was the zenith of Gibbons’ run in the pages of what had since become Doctor Who Monthly – a story, as Parkin puts it, “on a cosmic scale, very Doctor Who but without being like the show. No attempt to tell a story you could see on TV.” For Parkin, the TV series then responded to the strip. “The Iron Legion [issues 1-8] has a robot programmed to kill humans being confused by the Doctor’s two hearts, a scene reprised in The Caves of Androzani [1984]. Earthshock [1982] took lots of moves from Doctor Who Magazine. It’s fastpaced and cynical, with lots of sci-fi gunplay and explosions, sprinkled with continuity references – a style that came to dominate TV Doctor Who as the strip went in another direction.”
The Sixth Doctor’s strip debut The Shape Shifter introduced a controversial new companion – who, thanks to an attack of ‘monomorphia’, soon became stuck in the form of a penguin. Reader Glenn Miller (in issue 98) thought Frobisher was “pathetic” and Steve Parkhouse’s scripts “useless”, although he conceded that John Ridgway’s art was “beautiful”. Under Parkhouse and Ridgway, the strip became mystical and otherworldly. Highlights included the Doctor becoming trapped in pages that replicated the layout of a Rupert Bear Annual.
This era’s fans include Colin Baker, who wrote an afterword when its stories were collected as DWM’s first graphic novel, Voyager. The Sixth Doctor’s strip finale, The World Shapers (issues 125-127), is a well-remembered epic featuring Voord, Cybermen and Jamie McCrimmon. Written by rising comics superstar Grant Morrison, it made suggestions about Cyberman history adopted 30 years later in the acclaimed television episode World Enough and Time (2017).