Sunday, August 22, 2021

Top Five Doctor Who Magazine Comic Stories: The Fifth Doctor (Doctor Who)

Five has a good mix of Doctor Who Magazine comics. This comic run introduces the village of Stockbridge, which looms large in the Five era and reappears a number of times over the years in Docor Who Magazine. My favorite Fifth Doctor stories include new characters, vintage callbacks, parallel worlds, and cows in spacesuits! All is right with the world.

 

Stars Fell on Stockbridge

The introduction of Maxwell Edison, a pretty beloved comics character. Max, Stockbridge’s local UFO chaser, stumbles upon the TARDIS thanks to his trusty divining rod. In the Doctor’s company, Max’s experience of the universe pretty well explodes, and while it’s terrifying, it’s also virtually everything he’s ever dreamed about (to quote Madame du Pompadour, “The Doctor is worth the monsters.”) The ending of this story is especially lovely in that uniquely-Whovian way.

 

The Stockbridge Horror

This continues the creepy atmosphere of the Doctor and Max’s adventure in space, with a malevolent elemental being wreaking destruction on the sleepy little town. Good scares and fun action. I’m always up for a mystery that involves the TARDIS as a living entity, and Shayde is a great character – I read the Eighth Doctor comics before Five’s, so I’d already “met” Shayde prior to his real introduction in Five’s stories, and it’s fun to see his early encounters with the Doctor throughout this arc.

 

4-Dimensional Vistas

After flirting a bit with the multiverse, the Doctor has picked up a new companion – Gus, an American G.I. from a parallel Earth – and is trying to wade through parallels to get back to his home universe. Along the way, he runs into an old foe who makes for a delightfully-deep cut and adds greatly to the proceedings. The Ice Warriors get in on the fun as well. I couldn’t tell you why, but I really do enjoy those sibilant Martian bastards.

 

The Moderator

Introduction of another classic character – man, the Five era is just full of these! Josiah W. Dogbolter, frog-like alien and “legitimate businessman” who pairs market futures with professional hits. When your slogan is “time is money,” the idea of getting your hands on a TARDIS is a tasty one, and naturally, the Doctor proves to be quite the fly in the ointment of Dogbolter’s operation.

 

The Lunar Strangers

This one wasn’t published during Five’s comic run. It came later and is set during his TV continuity. The Doctor, Tegan, and Turlough arrive at a moonbase right around the same time as a couple of bovine strangers. I can’t get enough of the visual of cows in space suits, and their characters come together in a really entertaining way. Delightfully wild and offbeat.

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New promo – this is a good one. It has a lot of new shots from scenes we’ve already glimpsed, so it nicely whets the appetite without giving much more away. Some Wenwu moments to get me hyped, including a new line and a shot from a flashback we haven’t seen before. Less than two weeks until Tony Leung Chiu-wai’s Hollywood debut!

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