Tony’s in a corner, going ‘Meeeeep.’
So no change there then.
Doctor Who has, for longer than very
many TV shows, embraced the idea of a multi-media existence. From the William
Hartnell era, as well as the TV show and a couple of glorious, demented
technicolour big screen movies, Doctor Who existed in Target novelisations
(Doctor Who in an exciting adventure with the Daleks landed in 1964), and it
also existed in comic strip form – both in an every-year annual, and in
publications like TV Comic and Countdown (later known as TV Action).
With the arrival in 1979 of Doctor Who
Weekly, then Monthly, then Magazine, comic strips became a great additional way
to check in with the Doctor’s adventures. They were a primitive Easter egg –
extra adventures that casual viewers would never know had happened. And there
have been several golden ages of comic strip adventures, with developments in
the New Who era, with, for instance IDW and then Titan Comics publishing
ridiculously high quality New Who adventures, with their own companions, arcs,
loops, multi-Doctor stories – you name it, they’ve done it, all alongside the
Doctor Who Magazine stories.
When Doctor Who Weekly launched in 1979,
one of those golden comic strip ages came with it, when Pat Mills, John Wagner
and artist Dave Gibbons set about delivering arresting stories, unparalleled
statement-panel visuals and a sense of oomph that mirrored the likes of The
City of Death on TV.
Now some of the first comic strips to
feature in Doctor Who Weekly have been transformed into audio adventures from
Big Finish, adapted from the originals, written by Pat Mills and John Wagner,
by Alan Barnes. The first set includes The Iron Legion and The Star Beast – two
stories with entirely different approaches to hooking fans, but which are both
in their own way hugely well-regarded by those who read them when they first
came out. The question is whether they work as audio experiences, forty years
on from their original publication.
The first thing to say is these are not
Doctor Who stories as you know Doctor Who stories. They’re not really the same
as the Fourth Doctor’s TV output, even in the uniquely fun Season 17, and
they’re also significantly different from the original Big Finish Fourth Doctor
stories. These comic strip adaptations should be seen as existing in a slightly
different universe of Who. They’re Who, written for children in 1979 to read
for themselves, translated into audio with their bouncy, infectious, slightly
sillier-than-usual Fourth Doctor intact. If you really want a modern
comparison, have a listen to the Baker’s End series written by Paul Magrs and
released by Bafflegab for something as bouncy and demented as these stories.
But beyond that, there’s a logic in delivering these stories on audio. In the
late seventies, one of the easiest and most convenient ways of stepping outside
the restrictions of a BBC budget was to write and ink comic strips. Nowadays,
the same effect of a bigger, more believable universe can be delivered in audio
adventures, so the sense of translating the one into the other is undeniable.
Let’s get something straight here – The
Iron Legion blew our tiny little Who-loving minds when it appeared in 1979. The
sheer scale of it, the sweep and scope was like nothing that could have been
afforded on screen. Because The Iron Legion is essentially the story of a
future Roman Empire, with spacefaring technology, iron generals with the heads
of eagles, arenas full of slavering outer space slimebeasts, and a hapless
couple from a quiet English village, caught up in it all and needing to be
rescued and sent back home once the Doctor has toppled the regime.
As you do, if you’re the Fourth Doctor.
Alan Barnes, in translating all that to
an audio-friendly version, has recaptured that sense of grandeur, of scope, of
a million centurions and a billion citizens stretching this Roman reality into
a vista in your brain. And he delivers the relative smallness of the Doctor and
his new friends from the village of Stockbridge when compared to the might of
that empire very effectively too. This is a story of some stainless steel rats
in the Roman wainscoting, working away to bring down if not the empire itself,
then the forces that have permeated it and turned it into a force for ultimate
evil.
Tom Baker in this story is very full-on,
from telling jokes to slimebeasts to facing down generals and invasive alien
parasites. He’s Tom Baker, still, but with David Tennant’s energy. The
surprising thing is that while, based on that description, you could easily end
up with a Doctor you want to punch in the face, Baker absorbs the challenge
masterfully and bounds about the place like a bolt of audio lightning.
There are some simply barking mad bits
of invention in this story – ‘bacta-guns’ being a notable case. They’re guns
which rust metal. Sounds insane when you first hear it, but when you consider
that your legions are made of iron, it all clicks into place. The villains too
have a name which at least at first appears to be taking the mickey. But
they’re well and creepily rendered on audio – in fact, if anything, their
delivery on audio is considerably creepier than it was in the comic strips, so
what you end up with in The Iron Legion is a story that’s in its own pocket
universe of Who, but that within that universe, with a slightly different
Fourth Doctor, works brilliantly well, delivering a pulse-pounding,
air-punching, nail-biting story, studded with laughs both subtle and immature,
and ultimately wrapped around a sad and powerful sacrifice.
The Iron Legion flies past, whipped
along at pace and directed with confidence and brio, meaning you don’t get the
time to sit and think ‘Hang on, how does that work?’ Accept it – you’re in the
comic strip universe of Who now. Go with it, and The Iron Legion will give you
a fantastic ride.
The Star Beast is a different kettle of
fish altogether. Set in a Yorkshire village, it almost has the flavour of a
Companion Chronicle, focusing on the lives of two oddball pals, Sharon and
Fudge, who come across something odd in a garden shed. Beep the Meep is fluffy,
with big eyes and a seemingly sweet nature – he’s a pre-Mogwai Mogwai in fact,
and Sharon and Fudge decide to nurse him back to health, to help him get to his
ship, and to get him home.
Sound like a riff on ET – The
Extra-Terrestrial? Two years before the movie came out, sorry, and arguably a
more realistic take because (spoiler alert, but you’ve had forty years!), Beep
the Meep is an utter Star Bastard, covered in fluff and ready to burn whole
star systems just for fun. The space police who are hunting the little gremlin
down are decidedly less cute, less cuddly and less inclined to look up at you
with big wet melting eyes and go ‘Meeeeeeeeep.’
When the Doctor arrives, he’s a more
open-minded broker between the hunted Meep and the hunting space cops, the
Wrarth Warriors, bringing the wisdom of the Time Lords to the question of
whether cuteness necessarily means righteousness. The story unfolds as Beep the
Meep does what’s necessary to try to evade the justice of the Wrarth, sometimes
helped and sometimes hindered by the Yorkshire kids. While it feels at this
remove quite a comical satire, and while it’s been aped many times (we’re
looking at you, Galaxy Quest), the new audio version bursts with fun and
freshness, both in the adaptation and especially in the cast – with Sharon and
Fudge coming gloriously to life in the voices of Rhianne Starbuck and Ben
Hunter respectively, and Bethan Dixon Bate out-Meeping all-comers in the
cuteness stakes. While still firmly in the comic strip universe of Who, rather
than the more familiar universe of Tom Baker’s Time Lord, the fun of The Star
Beast is that it’s bonkers in a uniquely British way, with a balance of
optimism and 1970s realism that makes us laugh four decades on, not least at
how much of the British national character has actually changed since then.
If you enjoyed these adventures when
they first appeared, chances are high you’ll want to have a listen to them just
to see how they fare on audio. If you’re young enough to still have your own
hair and teeth, these stories may well come at you sideways and initially make
you think ‘Well, that’s #NotMyDoctor.’ You’re right. It isn’t. It’s the Doctor
siphoned through a print dimension, originally aimed at an audience which
didn’t include you, but brought up to date and poured into your lugholes. It’s
not, by any means, your normal Fourth Doctor programming. It is, however,
enormous fun in a universe where the Doctor was a little bit sillier and more childlike
than even the universe’s leading Jelly Baby-scoffer ever got on TV. Accept that
you’re in a kind of Unbound Fourth Doctor universe, and let the comic strip
adventures tickle you today.
