Whovember 18: 1997 to 1999

This is exciting, as today we get to look at some actual televised Doctor Who from the era, and also it’s the first time in this list I’m going to be talking about a very influential strand of spin off media, the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip.  Again, I’m going to be talking in reverse order about these years, to allow for some spoiler space, so let’s dig into the first TV episode of Doctor Who by Steve Moffat…

Year 36: 1998 to 1999 - The Curse of Fatal Death

It’s kind of cool that this is one of the few things on this list I can actually show in full, so if you haven’t seen it already, take twenty minutes and give it a go, it’s good for a laugh.  It’s also a bit topical, given that I’m writing and posting this after the Children in Need skit Destination:Skaro yesterday.  (“Say Ed, wasn’t there another Children in Need thing before thi-” WE DON’T TALK ABOUT THAT!).  This charity special was indeed written by Moffat, back when he was probably still best known for Press Gang (in fact this features one of the Press Gang cast, Julia Sawalha), and just before he hit really big with Coupling.  Now it’s a fun parody of Who tropes, clearly being written from a place of love; only a true fan would have gone to the effort of specifically naming the planet Tersurus, which was one mentioned in The Deadly Assassin.  It’s quite well made for this sort of thing, I especially appreciate that they got in Zippy himself Roy Skelton to voice the Daleks one last time, and all the cast are clearly game (including Richard E. Grant who had no idea about the show before doing this, yet still does well in his small appearance).

But what it makes so amusing now is how it prefigures a lot of later developments in the show.  Firstly, Richard E. Grant mentioned above would get to be the Doctor properly in the animated pilot Scream of the Shalka, which represents a fascinating “What if…” possibility if the New Series hadn’t been commissioned.  Then, it’s funny that we have all the regenerations and the thirteenth Doctor is a woman, and blonde at that!  But the biggest one is that, with a story featuring the Master, Daleks, and where a big deal is made of sewers, Moffat must have had this thing in mind when he wrote The Witch’s Familiar!  So, for being an interesting little blip on the TV radar in the Wilderness Years, for being very classic Who in style but foreshadowing a surprising amount of New Who, and for having the utterly filthy sonic screwdriver gag, this earns a spot in here.  

Year 35: 1997 to 1998 - The Final Chapter/Wormwood

This entry I have been itching to write for a while; not necessarily this particular pair of stories, but where they are from, the DWM Comic Strip.  Now the strip has been going since back when it was Doctor Who weekly in 1979, and has offered some great and influential stories.  In fact, in a week’s time we’ll be experiencing one of them, as The Star Beast was a story that originally ran in the pages of the magazine in 1980 (I’ll be talking a bit more about one other case of RTD being involved in a comic story in a later entry).  Of course I didn’t get into it until I started collecting the magazine in 1996, but it was a great time to do so with the start of the Eighth Doctor stories, which kicked off well with the story Endgame featuring the return of the Toymaker.  (Man, imagine if he ever showed up again!).  I do hold the whole run of the comics from 1996 to 2005 as the high water mark for Doctor Who in that medium.  (Although there has been some fine stuff since then; I highly recommend the recently releases graphic novella Once Upon A Time Lord by regular Spider-Man scribe Dan Slott.)

So to these two stories then; this represents a bit of a transitional period for the comics; until The Final Chapter most of the Eighth Doctor comics were written by Alan Barnes, and from Wormwood onwards the regular writer would be Scott Gray.  It also represents a sort of “Season Finale”, as it’s the end of a story arc that had been building since the shocking end of the Seventh Doctor comics, featuring new villains The Threshold, this group of strange dimensional mercenaries and manipulators who appear to be made of Kirby Dots.  (If you want a real reason to hate these villains, in the comics their schemes got Ace killed!  Yeah, something tells me that’s not canon anymore…)  It’s an epic end, with The Final Chapter featuring a trip back to Gallifrey, and the return of some characters from when the strip did stories of the Fifth Doctor, specifically the Time Lord construct Shayde.  Then Wormwood has a final face off with the Threshold and their creators, and oh look, they are the result of yet another screw up by the Time Lords.  These stories are great fun, they are in the collected trade edition called Endgame, i highly encourage you to track them down.  Now, I am going to add in a SPOILER SPACE here, and talk about why this pair of stories in particular had a big impact.

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So, I’ll just straight up show you the reason; the ending of the Final Chapter had… this happen!

Yep, you saw that, it showed the Doctor regenerating!  If you wondering who that is he’s regenerating into, this “Ninth Doctor” is based off Nicholas Briggs; you might know him now as the voice of the Daleks, but back in the day he was part of a group called Audio Visuals who did fan audios, and he played The Doctor in them (and the Daleks; multi talented guy!).  You are probably all confused, well imagine how we, and the Doctor’s companions Izzy and Fey, felt in the day!  Now after this it’s no spoiler to say that we went back to McGann’s Eighth Doctor after Wormwood, but how it’s all resolved is actually pretty clever, and a great reveal.  What’s more, the story does this by pulling off a trick with the rest of the magazine… but I won’t reveal all here.  Seriously, if this gets your attention, go find the Endgame trade and give this a read.  Whilst you’re at it, give the rest of the Eighth Doctor run a go too, with the trades The Glorious Dead, Oblivion, and The Flood… actually, I’ll have more to say about that one in a future Whovember…

Next time on Whovember, it’s time to talk a bit about what has probably become one of the strongest sources of Who spin-off media, something that’s in its own way still contributing to TV Who to this day…