The Glorious Dead

The Complete Eighth Doctor 

Comic Strips Volume Two

09: HAPPY DEATHDAY

1 part (DWM 272) 16th December 1998

Writer: Scott Gray, Artist: Roger Langridge

In this 35th Anniversary story, the eight Doctors are removed from their timestreams by the Beige Guardian, who sends them to fight all their old enemies at once. 

The 6th and 2nd Doctors are sent to a space station and pursued by Davros, but they manage to trick him into making a bad pun, and he and his army of Daleks and Quarks are destroyed by a robotic Wildean Wit Enforcer.  

The 3rd and 5th Doctors materialise on the set of EastEnders, where the 3rd Doctor treats a party of drunken Sontarans and Ogrons to some Venusian aikido... 

...while the 5th Doctor take out the shapeshifting Broton with a cricket ball. 

The 4th and 7th Doctors discuss the effect of regeneration on their changing allergies, and use their sonic screwdrivers to bring down an avalanche on an advancing alien army...

The 1st and 8th Doctors have been strapped to explosive candles on the Guardian’s deathday cake, but as his other schemes come to naught, he is too distracted to notice as they untie themselves and use the explosives against the Guardian himself. 

The Guardian vanishes in a burst of electromagnetic particles; all this time, Izzy has been playing video games on the Time-Space Visualiser.

A rollicking anniversary story very much in the style of The Five Doctors but with its' tongue firmly in its cheek, this is a story that celebrates Doctor Who while gently ribbing its loveably rubbish bits.  

A jolly script from Scott Gray, married to the distinctive comedic style of Roger Langridge makes for a bouncy birthday bash that's a cut above the usual jokey one-shot.

8/10

10: THE FALLEN

4 parts (DWM 273-276) 13th January - 7th April 1999
Writer: Scott Gray, Pencils: Martin Geraghty, Inks: Robin Smith  

The TARDIS arrives in 2001 London, where the Doctor ignores a manic street preacher, and Izzy is accosted by soldiers. The Doctor is arrested by MI6 agent Duncan and his ally, Dr Grace Holloway! 

Leighton Woodrow, the head of MI6, welcomes the Doctor, who is horrified to learn that Grace has been conducting experiments on the morphant tissue she scraped off her arm after their encounter with the Master in San Francisco. 

She took the Doctor's hints about her future to mean that her destiny was to splice Time Lord and human DNA together to "hold back death". Her associate Dr Donald Stark vanished from a locked laboratory, and ever since then people have been vanishing from the streets. 

But the Master wasn’t in a Time Lord body, he'd possessed the body of a morphant, a shape-shifting animal native to Skaro, and in testing the procedure on himself Stark has become a human-morphant hybrid. 

When he tries to absorb Izzy, Stark finds an image of the Doctor in her mind, and recognises him from Grace’s story... 

When his first attempt to subdue the Stark creature with carbon dioxide gas fails the Doctor seizes a helicopter filled with CO2 canisters, planning to crash it into Stark’s body and kill him, but at the last minute Woodrow points out the copter has an eject button, allowing the Doctor to escape moments before the helicopter collides with Stark and explodes. 

Later, the Doctor apologises to Grace for meddling in her life, and she promises to torch all that remains of the morphant DNA. The Doctor gives her a whistle so she can call him if she ever needs him again, but as he and Izzy depart, the Doctor is left with a nagging feeling that he’s overlooked something. 

Meanwhile, Woodrow finds the remains of Duncan lying on the Thames; last seen confronting the street preacher, who’d appeared in a security zone for the third time in 24 hours, Duncan is now dead, his body shrunken to the size of a doll...  

The Fallen serves as both a satisfying sequel to The TV Movie, and a season-opener style jumping on point for a new storyline.  Arguably better than The TV Movie, this is a superior modern take on the UNIT-style tale of a military unit taking on a monstrous threat to 21st century urban London. Izzy gets some nice character moments as we get further echoes of her origins, but it's Grace Holloway and the 8th Doctor who are given centre stage, with a modern 'scorned companion' thread for Grace, and a 'consequences of hubris' thread for the Doctor. For Grace there's closure, but for the Doctor, this is just the beginning of something far more deadly, and although the story concludes on a cliffhanger, it's one that, fittingly, shares DNA with The Keeper of Traken, with the final panel promising a reckoning is not too far away...   

7.5/10

11: UNNATURAL BORN KILLERS

1 part (DWM 277) 5th May 1999
Writer & Artist: Adrian Salmon

This one-shot story does not feature the Doctor or Izzy, but sets up events to come in The Company of Thieves. Kroton originally appeared in the Doctor Who Weekly back-up strips Throwback and Ship of Fools.

When a squad of Sontarans attacks a primitive village incapable of fighting off the marauders by themselves, they find the settlement defended by an unusual champion: a Cyberman named Kroton who still retains some of his human personality and feelings. 

Kroton defeats the Sontaran squad in the village and tracks down their mothership, which is preparing to produce an army of clones; there, he fights off the awakening Sontarans and sabotages the ship, destroying it and saving the village. 

However, Kroton is unable to join in the celebrations back at the village, as the villagers’ happiness just reminds him of all he has lost. 

A welcome return for a much loved character, given an opportunity to tear it up with some decent opposition, and delivered in some considerable style by Adrian Salmon, on both artistic and scripting duties. It's a finely crafted effort on both fronts, with Salmon hitting the heights of his work on The Cybermen with some striking visuals and a script that strongly and beautifully evokes the feel of Kroton's previous outings, hitting the notes of heroism and pathos that exemplify the Cyberman with a soul. A superior and indispensable strip. 

8.5/10

12: THE ROAD TO HELL

5 parts (DWM 278-272) 2nd June - 22nd September 1999
Writer: Scott Gray,  Pencils: Martin Geraghty, Inks: Robin Smith / Fareed Choudhury

When the TARDIS lands the Doctor and Izzy in 17th-century Japan, they are captured by samurai but attacked by a fire-breathing dragon. 

Izzy is rescued by Katsura Sato, former samurai to Lord Makoto; Makoto was killed by demons wearing the crest of Clan Rikushira, and the disgraced Sato intends to kill Rikushira and then commit honourable seppuku.

The Doctor is brought before Rikushira’s mother, Asami, who has been contacted by nameless aliens from beyond time and space who seek to understand the concept of “honour”. To this end, in order to study Asami’s reactions, the Gaijin have supplied her with a nano-sculptor that creates colonies of nanites shaped by Asami’s mind. She has already exacted revenge for a past dishonour by killing Makoto, and she now intends to destroy the rule of the shogun. 

In exchange for his help with their studies, the Gaijin have also provided Rikushira with a colony of nano-drones programmed to repair cellular damage instantly, granting him immortality. The Doctor is infuriated with the Gaijin, who have supplied advanced technology to those who are incapable of handling it maturely, but they see no difference between their own actions and the Doctor’s interference in human affairs.

When Asami reads Izzy’s mind and sees the nuclear holocaust of World War Two, she is furious, and prepares to take pre-emptive vengeance upon the West, forming the nano-drones into Gojiro, otherwise known as Godzilla. 

Sato kills Rikushira, but is himself mortally wounded by a fire-breathing demon. At Izzy’s request, the Doctor saves his life with the immortality drones intended for Rikushira. Realising that Asami is beyond reason, the Doctor manages to explain to the Gaijin that true honour means taking responsibility for one’s own actions, regardless of the cost. The Gaijin understand, and turn on Asami, destroying the nano-sculptor even though it costs them their lives.

As the Doctor and Izzy prepare to depart, Sato tries to commit seppuku but discovers that he is unable to kill himself, as the nano-drones in his body instantly repair any damage. He is now virtually immortal. He allows the Doctor to live for Izzy’s sake, but will never forgive the man who cheated him of his honourable death.

Here we have another strip that, whilst it doesn't really justify its' 5 part duration, shows Scott Gray's skill in evoking time, place and character for Martin Geraghty to bring to life with stylish and exuberant detail. That said, though there's the usual sterling work from Geraghty, the inks throughout are not up to usual standards for me. As a leaner 4 parter perhaps this would be a more muscular effort but there's a will to deliver the epic (and indeed gigantic) here that balances very well with a story of high principles and personal stakes. Enjoyable but somewhat "monster of the week" and thus not as page-turning as you might hope for, though it's a story that will have greater significance further down the line... 

7.5/10

13: TV ACTION!

1 part (DWM 283) 20th October 1999
Writer: Alan Barnes, Artist: Roger Langridge

After a near collision in space, the TARDIS materialises in BBC Television Centre on the afternoon of 12 October 1979 (coincidentally, Izzy’s birthday)...

...where the infamous Beep the Meep uses black star radiation from his star drive to enslave the building’s inhabitants. 

The Doctor is captured and brought before the Meep, who refuses to believe that this is the same man who defeated him before. 

The Doctor also falls under the spell of the black star radiation, but Izzy remains free and finds the one man who can help her. 

The Meep is about to link his star drive to the BBC’s transmitter, bringing the whole of Britain under his control, when to his horror he is confronted by a babbling man with curly hair, buggy eyes and an immensely long scarf the very image of the Doctor who defeated him so long ago. 

While the Meep is distracted, Izzy sabotages his star drive, overloading the BBC transmitter and freeing the employees of the Television Centre. As the furious Meep is led off to the zoo, Izzy admits to the Doctor that she had help defeating the Meep and to explain, she gives the Doctor a copy of the first issue of a certain magazine... 

As this is the strip to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Doctor Who Magazine, it feels a bit churlish to resent a bit of self-indulgence, but this all feels a bit been there, done that. By no means a bad strip, with some fantastic portrayals of 1979 TV personalities and a fantastic Beep the Meep from Roger Langridge, nevertheless this is quite a laboured script that fills a week and provides light relief between arc stories without really providing the fun it feels like it should. Only a curmudgeon would resent the 4th wall chewing cameo from a certain TV personality of the time, and the final panel is of course, what it's all about.

6.5/10

14: THE COMPANY OF THIEVES

3 parts (DWM 284-286) 17th November 1999 - 12th January 2000
Writer: Scott Gray, Pencils: Adrian Salmon, Inks: Fareed Choudhury

Arriving aboard a cargo freighter in the midst of an attack by space pirates, the Doctor and Izzy are confronted by a Cyberman hiding in the freighter’s cargo hold, which the Doctor electrocutes. 

The Cyberman survives, and is revealed to be Kroton, last seen in Unnatural Born Killers. 

The TARDIS is stolen by a madman named Tobal Reist who destroyed his home planet while testing a weapon that turned out to be far more powerful than he imagined, and wants it to undo his mistake. 

The pirates try to gain control of the weapon but Izzy grabs it and orders it to self-destruct, which it does. 

The asteroid city begins to break up without the weapon to hold it together, and as the surviving pirates argue over who will use the transmat unit to get to safety, the Doctor and Izzy retreat to the TARDIS and escape... along with Kroton.

A slight entry, with a somewhat forgettable plot and no mark villains, but nevertheless enjoyable for the addition of Kroton to the TARDIS crew; he's a wide-eyed older brother to Izzy and a trusty lieutenant to the Doctor, who's starting to get highly suspicious about the TARDIS' unreliable wanderings and a bit ratty about the themes it seems to be returning him to, time and again. A weak script with only occasional 'moments of charm' bolstered by the always stylish work of Adrian Salmon, though I think I prefer when he inks his own pencils, to be honest.

6.5/10

 

15: THE GLORIOUS DEAD

10 parts (DWM 287 - 296) 9th February to 18th October 2000
Writer: Scott Gray, Pencils: Martin Geraghty (with cameo panels by Roger Langridge), Inks: Robin Smith

The TARDIS, apparently acting of its own accord, takes the Doctor, Izzy and Kroton to Paradost, a planet-wide museum, where buried memories can be stored and accessed by use of mnemonic crystals. Kroton refuses to use them as he doesn’t want the pain of remembering his old life before Cyber-conversion. 

The people of Paradost are about to return the long-lost final page of the holy Odostra to Cardinal Morningstar, of the planet Dhakan’s Church of the Glorious Dead, who believe existence is an illusion and that only the faithful will be allowed to exist when the Glory remakes creation. Morningstar orders his followers to fulfil the final page’s prophecy by launching a jihad and destroying Paradost utterly.

The Dhakanians use the “soul gems” implanted in their bodies to incinerate themselves, and are apparently resurrected as Ash Wraiths, burning spectres who take the peaceful Paradost completely by surprise. 

The Wraiths establish a force barrier around the planet, preventing the galaxy’s allied forces from launching a counter-attack. The Doctor comes up with a plan to save the world, but abruptly vanishes into thin air before he can reveal it...

...leaving Izzy and Kroton stranded on Paradost as the Dhakanians slaughter entire cities, while he 'wakes up' to a normal life as a human, married to Grace Holloway. 

After 3 weeks on the run, Izzy leads an attack on Paradost’s weather control station and creates a world-wide blizzard, freezing the Ash Wraiths so the force barrier can be dropped, but before she can escape, Morningstar shoots her with a Tissue Compression Eliminator...

The Doctor is drifting through different realities, each of which contains a different version of himself. 

Eventually, he realises that these are all aspects of a single, greater being, of which even he is only one facet. 

When he comes to this understanding, Esterath the Gatherer appears to him and explains that he has been chosen as an Adversary in the battle to control the Glory, the heart of the omniversal spectrum, the fulcrum of all that is. 

The living being that maintains the Glory is nearing the end of a nearly infinite life, and must be replaced by the most worthy of two adversaries. The Doctor is therefore transported to Dhakan, which he realises is a corrupted future Earth, to meets his adversary, the Master, who now lives in the body of the street preacher the Doctor failed to notice during his encounter with Grace Holloway and Donald Stark in The Fallen.

After their battle in San Francisco, the Master was cast into the Vortex, where his hatred of the Doctor attracted Esterath’s attention. Believing that he had found a suitable champion, Esterath showed the Glory to the Master, and placed his mind in the body of a human vagrant to teach him humility before the final battle. But the Master’s essence had remained lodged in the Doctor’s TARDIS when it absorbed him, and soon after the Doctor’s battle with the Pariah in Wormwood, the Master found that he could control the TARDIS’ flight.  It is he who has been controlling the TARDIS' flights since then. 

While the Doctor was nearly killing the innocent Kroton, the Master was on Earth, acting as a sensei to Katsura Sato, who fell under his thrall, and inspired him to become Cardinal Morningstar and launch the holy war that turned Earth into Dhakan. Somehow, Izzy has survived being shrunken to the size of a doll, and she too is horrified to learn Morningstar’s true identity. 

Sato and his followers retreat from Paradost and return to Dhakan, where Sato believes that his Master will defeat the Doctor and become a god. The Doctor is unwilling to sacrifice himself to the Glory, but he will nevertheless fight to prevent the Master from gaining control over all Creation.

As he and his nemesis do battle throughout uncountable dimensions and states of being, the Master chips away at the Doctor’s sense of righteousness, reminding him that his quest for knowledge spreads death in its wake, and that he enjoys being the self-elected champion of what is right. 

The Doctor finally realises that the Master is right; he is no more worthy of the Glory than is the Master. This moment of self-doubt allows the Master to get past his defenses and strike a killing blow. The battle won, he takes the Doctor back to Dhakan to witness his apotheosis.

Kroton has stowed away aboard Sato’s mothership and followed him to Dhakan, where he intends to avenge Izzy by killing Sato. As they do battle, Izzy manages to break out of her prison and set the TCE to reverse, restoring herself to full size. 

Sato, immortal and invincible, withstands all of the Cybermen’s blows, but just as he is about to kill Kroton, Izzy confronts him with a mnemonic crystal and forces him to experience the full impact of all the pain and horror she felt on Paradost. As Sato collapses in horror, finally understanding what he has done, Izzy forces Kroton to accept a crystal as well, and he finally remembers his past life, and becomes the stronger for it. 

At this moment, the Master arrives, but when he tries to take his place in the Glory, it rejects him. He and the Doctor were not the adversaries after all; Kroton and Sato were. 

Technology extended both their lives and robbed them of meaning, but by turning to hope instead of despair, Kroton has won the battle. Kroton thus becomes the heart of the Glory, and he restores Earth’s history, banishes the enraged Master, and grants Sato’s dearest wish by giving him an honourable death. 

Esterath expunges all trace of the Master’s influence from the TARDIS and dissipates, having atoned for his past sins. The Doctor and Izzy go on to new adventures.

An epic in every sense of the word, The Glorious Dead is a crowning achievement in the DWM strip (to date), not the first classic of the 8th Doctor strips by any means, but the first - though not the last - that can lay claim to joining the echelons of The Tides of Time and Voyager. 

The scale of the space opera dwarfs anything before attempted, the mindbending of the Doctor's journey through the multiverses tops the surreality of the aforementioned Parkhouse/Gibbons pinnacle, and stakes in terms of the consequences for the universe and the emotional impact on each of the TARDIS crew could not be higher. 

The length feels right, as Gray cleverly unpeels layers a week at a time, employing narrative tricks that are taken for granted in the grammar of the TV show a decade later - the episode where the Doctor is completely absent, and the companions walking the Earth, fighting in a resistance for a prolonged time, in a surprise throw forward of time. It's even cleverly structured to the extent that the entirety of Part Seven being expositionary dialogue from the Master is no less satisfying an installment than the disorientating Part Five, the narrated Part Four or the grand finale itself.

As the elements not only of this story but also The Fallen, The Road to Hell and The Company of Thieves all draw together in service of the Master's scheme, powerful lessons are delivered to the Doctor, who is able to fire on all cylinders when faced with his oldest enemy. Although it does perhaps feel that we're being robbed of Kroton too soon, the staggering conclusion is immensely satisfying, with the Master undone by the very hubris of which he accuses the Doctor.

My only minor criticism would be regarding this street preacher incarnation of the Master. No less insane than the last time we saw him, of course, but cast as a religious zealot, with an unrecognizable persona and appearance, it's sadly just that little bit too much of a stretch to connect him to the villain we love to hate. It's a difficult thing to make work; in one sense this is vastly more credible and believable than RTD's insanity drumbeat retcon in ascribing more tangible motivation to the Master, and the conceit of Esterath teaching him humility by his choice of body is an attractive and fitting one. Indeed, maybe his scheme once boiled down in not all that different to those gone by, for example in The Time Monster, wherein he tries to enslave a "god", the chronovore Kronos. In another though, Derek Jacobi's and John Simm's incarnations feel like far more of a continuation than this more wizened wizard-like avatar.

Despite this, it's hard to imagine a more TV-friendly incarnation providing as satisfying a protagonist in terms of the story we have here, which would perhaps be the lesser without fitting the fabric of Dhakan, the Church of the Glorious Dead and being able to lurk quite so effectively in The Fallen.

A glorious triumph, and one that rewards many a re-reading.

10/10

16: THE AUTONOMY BUG

3 parts (DWM 297 - 299) 15th November 2000 - 10th January 2001
Writer: Scott Gray, Artist: Roger Langridge

The Doctor visits Blueberry House, where Dr Andrelina Hastoff is in charge of rehabilitating robots with “severe programming deviancy”. While she discusses her work with the Doctor, one of her cloned assistants “accidentally” locks Izzy in the robot congregation chamber, where Izzy is nearly attacked by the mad robots until they realise that she’s human, just as they believe themselves to be. 

The depressed Emperor Zero tells Izzy that they are all human beings who have been locked up by robots, and the Doctor, watching, realises that the robots have formed their own society. 

They aren’t insane, they’re sentient; and just like children, they are developing emotions that they aren’t sure how to deal with. Hastoff, however, insists that their deviancy is the result of an undetected virus, and reveals that she has purchased an Adjuster from Kallulio Prime with which to electronically recondition the “deviant” machines, returning them to “normal”. 

The Doctor is horrified, and realises that Hastoff had Izzy locked in the congregation chamber in the hope that the robots would harm her, giving Hastoff an excuse to use the Adjuster on them all. When he threatens to shut her down, Hastoff tries to kill him with the Adjuster; however, by this time, Izzy has decided that the Doctor must be in trouble, and she and Zero thus break out of the congregation chamber to look for him. They find the Doctor being chased by the Adjuster, and Zero gives his life to destroy its guidance systems so that it careers off a balcony and sinks to the bottom of the bay. 

Angered by Zero’s death, the robots storm through Blueberry House -- but although they capture Hastoff, they don’t kill her. 

As the Doctor had hoped, they understand mercy; they are maturing, and one day they will be accepted by humanity as equals.

Oof! Never has there been such a shocking decline between stories since The Twin Dilemma followed The Caves of Androzani. Twee and forgettable, here's a story that at least as a one shot would have been disposable, but which at 3 parts overstays its welcome almost instantly. I do enjoy the cartoon stylings of Roger Langridge but here his work is wasted, providing pretty pictures that can't disguise (what for me represents) Scott Gray's worst ever work on the DWM strip by some considerable margin. It attempts a cartoony, fairy tale world and feel but never rises above the childish and tedious. Scott Gray and Alan Barnes, in the 'Stripped for Action' documentary on The TV Movie Special Edition DVD wax lyrical about this as one of their favourites, a dark and poignant take on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I've no doubt that was what was intended but boy does it fall short, and not by a short stretch. Have to confess to being baffled that they'd call this a favourite; it's dire. Langridge never quite serves the 8th Doctor very well, always seeming to give him quite a tiny head (or perhaps an overly broad shouldered physique), but his Izzy is always fun, and the character design on the robots can't be faulted. I get that his cartoon style masks the darker message behind the story, but that's the one note it hits in 3 parts of unengaging strip. One to avoid, though you won't have to try very hard at all to forget it.   

3/10

TTFN! K.
Coming Soon: Oblivion