Stripped for Action (2008–…): Season 1, Episode 3 - Stripped for Action: The Seventh Doctor - full transcript

It's quite hard to describe the nature

of the Seventh Doctor comic strips,
really.

That's when I started working on them.

Because, unlike the other Doctors,
the other comic strip eras,

they didn't have a really consistent
creative team at any point.

There really wasn't one writer,
or one artist

working through the bulk of that period.

The Seventh Doctor stories were
the most disparate and inconsistent set

of presentations of the Doctor
in comic strip form has ever been.

There was some really good stuff.
There was some really interesting stuff.

There was some really bad stuff.



The genesis, if you like,
of the Seventh Doctor comic strips

is still a throwback
to the Sixth Doctor strips.

The Sixth Doctor strips
that Marvel were doing

had got a very core team
at the heart of them.

You got the writer, Steve Parkhouse,

and then, latterly, Alan McKenzie
writing as Maxwell Stockbridge.

And art-wise, you had John Ridgway,
virtually all the way through I think.

And that made it, the Sixth Doctor
strips, a very coherent thing.

You could look at them
as one big lump, and go,

“That's a really good era
of Doctor Who comics.“

So when it became
the Seventh Doctor strips,

I think there was an effort by Marvel

to try and capitalize on that,
and to go down the same route.

And, to that end certainly,



John Ridgway stayed on
for a few strips as the artist.

Both Alan McKenzie
and Steve Parkhouse, sort of,

were pulling back from Doctor Who,

and so in came Simon Furman,
who was a brilliant writer.

The actual approach to the strip changed

with the rise of the graphic novel,

and, sort of,
the more adult approach to comics,

editor Richard Starkings
really wanted to, sort of,

push for a variety of different writers,
a variety of different artists,

and different storytelling approaches
to the Doctor Who strip as well.

So, it was a time
of experimentation for me.

We were trying different things.

Different artists were coming on board
to draw the Doctor.

So it tended to end up being lots
of little one-shots,

little Doctor Who featurettes.

The Doctor Who strip in the magazine
was regarded by management

as something of an oddity,

in that it actually comprised
half the budget of the magazine.

But offered little in return beyond
what was appearing in the title itself.

I sought to try and use the strip
in other ways.

We eventually managed to persuade,
for example,

Virgin to republish some of this strip,

because Marvel itself
didn't want to do it.

But I think it was also seen
by Richard Starkings,

and later by myself,

as a way of introducing and testing
new artists and new writers,

generally on an adventure-style strip.

In the end, I guess,
I did about five or six stories,

featuring the Seventh Doctor
for the actual Doctor Who Magazine.

But I also did one
for Hulk Comic, of all things.

Hulk Comic was a more junior title,
as you'd expect.

And they ran original Doctor Who stories
concurrently with Doctor Who Magazine.

So I actually ended up writing my last
Seventh Doctor story for Hulk Comic.

Marvel UK were very keen
to bring outside elements

into the Doctor Who strip.

And they did that, I think, twice.

Once with a couple of characters
called the Sleaze Brothers.

And then, they did it with a character
called Death '5 Head

who was this big
Transformers-style robot.

In fact, I think he'd started
in the UK version of Transformers.

And both of those Marvel UK
wanted to spin-off

into their own successful series.

And so by bringing them
into Doctor Who first,

that gave them a wider audience.

One other little memory, I guess,

of doing the Doctor Who comic strip
for the monthly

was when we had to channel
one of our other Marvel characters

through the strip
and into another comic.

We needed to move a character
called Death's Head out of one comic

and into another comic.

What we needed to do in the strip was
get our giant-size robot, Death's Head

down to a human-size robot.

And artist, Lee Sullivan, came up
with the perfect gadget for the job.

And essentially, he drew for us

the Master's
tissue compression eliminator,

which, as far as we knew,
reduced things in size,

and we just had the Doctor whip it
out of his pocket all of a sudden,

point it at Death's Head and fire.

And there he was
suddenly down to human size.

So the story served a purpose,

and we had a bit of fun with it
at the same time.

Marvel had always wanted
to have an anthology title.

And it was decided
that they would run a Doctor Who strip

in The Incredible Hulk comic.

But the management
also wanted us to use it

in Doctor Who Magazine to save money.

I'm afraid that was one
of the very occasions

where I lost my temper
with the management and dug my heels in,

and said, “No, we aren't going to use
this material,“

because the material was written
specifically for a younger audience,

and I thought that we would lose
our reader's respect

if we ran all that material
in Doctor Who Magazine.

We did compromise.

We did run a couple of the strips
in the Doctor Who Magazine,

but, generally, most of that material

just appeared in
Incredible Hulk Presents.

It's a bit like Marvel are trying to,
sort of, claw a little bit of the Doctor

into their own world,

rather than letting him exist
and breathe in his own right.

Lee Sullivan came in
to the Doctor Who strip as artist.

He had started off, I believe,
on Transformers for Marvel UK.

And John Freeman had been very keen
to work with Lee.

Um, and they were quite a good team,

because it didn't matter
what scripts John gave to Lee,

it didn't matter who'd written them,

Lee could take a script
and absolutely make it beautiful.

I've always been a fan of Doctor Who
right from the first days.

I'm not sure I exactly saw
the very first story,

but I certainly saw
the first Dalek story,

and I was completely hooked.
I was about five years old at the time.

And then, there were a succession of
annuals and comics

and all the other stories on TV,
and I just loved it.

And I've been a fan ever since.

Probably one of the leading artists
of the time,

for the magazine's point of view,
was Lee Sullivan,

who contributed numerous stories,

Planet Of The Dead,
which is the one I wrote,

but also, Nemesis Of The Daleks,
which is an Absolom Daak story,

Emperor Of The Daleks,
which was a Dalek story.

Is there a theme here?
Yes, Lee, there is a theme,

because Lee is, without doubt,
in my mind,

one of the best Dalek artists ever.

Lee really understands
what makes a Doctor Who fan tick.

A Doctor Who fan
likes strong likenesses.

He likes lots of Daleks,

lots and lots and lots of Daleks,
and lots more Daleks.

Daleks are my first love really.
They're such a joy to draw,

because they're so complicated
and I like that.

I like the complexity,

but I like the fact that they have
revolving turret heads,

and they glide around.

But, of course, those things are quite
difficult to put over in a comic strip.

When the BBC effectively cancelled
Doctor Who,

there was a period when the comic strip

was the only new
Doctor Who adventure material.

With that in mind,
1 sought out some at the writers

who contributed to the TV series
such as Ben Aaronovitch, Marc Platt,

and script editor, Andrew Cartmel,
and they all came up with stories,

some for which were published
and some weren't, for the magazine.

And I think it did maintain
the persona of the Seventh Doctor.

It carried the Seventh Doctor
a little bit further along.

The comic medium does have this
great, great potential to do stuff

that's beyond what you can achieve
on even a very high budget

in television or in movies.

Plus, there's a particular thing
about the graphic nature of comics

that they can have an impact
which is utterly different from prose,

or radio, theatre, or screen.

And, in a way,

it's not just a case of being able
to do space battles

that you couldn't do on a budget.

It's something to do with knowing
about the rhythm of the page,

and what you can do
by a sequence of panels.

It can be a really liberating experience
writing Doctor Who for comics,

because, of course, the one thing
that everyone picks up on,

and everyone understands
is that you have an unlimited budget.

You can go to any planet you want.

You can have a million
space ships in the sky.

You can have a cast of thousands.

You can have any type of alien you want.

You can have the biggest
stadium sets you like,

and that's great.

And that's, sort of,
the chief advantage, 1 suppose,

that comics have over television.

On the other hand, of course,
while it's great to do that,

if you keep doing that too much,
it kind of stops feeling like Doctor Who

because there's something very, kind of,
small and tight and claustrophobic,

I think, about Doctor Who for the most.
And if you keep doing that,

then it ends up
just looking like Star Wars.

The comic strip allowed us to have that,

I think, that comic strip point of view,
which means if you've got an alien bar,

you've got lots and lots of
different species which are of a shape

that only the comic strip artists
can come up with.

You're not limited by prosthetics,

and what looks good
in what sort of light,

and how to light the whole thing.

And that, kind of,
gives the Doctor Who strip

a certain freedom
which it's always benefited from.

I'd been instrumental
in introducing the notion

of what people call
“a dark Doctor, a mysterious Doctor,“

which was a corrective

to what had happened on the Show
just before 1 arrived,

where the Doctor
was neither dark nor mysterious.

He could just about do anything,
so you need to give him a proper role.

And, being a time traveller,

it's quite nice to give him a kind of
chess-playing role, setting things up,

'cause he obviously has
the ability to do that.

There's a story called Ravens
in which...

...a gang of feral youths are
terrorizing people in the present day.

And, for reasons best known to himself,
the Doctor transports a samurai

to hunt down and destroy them
horribly and bloodily.

I don't recognise that
as any kind of Doctor Who.

I have to say that if I have written

this transgressive comic
that shocked people,

I'd be delighted,
because it would be lovely

to be in the tradition
of something like the EC horror comics,

and actually have written something
that had that impact.

But I take issue
that it's like that, actually.

I actually don't think that
it's an accurate representation of it,

because, for a start,
the villains who are despatched,

they're a very nasty piece of work.

And the Doctor does it
to rescue a mother and her daughter,

so there's quite a lot at stake.

And the Doctor doesn't get
the blood on his hands himself.

He actually uses this samurai warrior.
He employs this samurai warrior,

bringing him back
at just the right moment,

so he can play these two
antagonistic forces against each other.

But I'd say that there are plenty of
earlier instances of the Doctor behaving

with equal brutal force
against a sufficiently evil opponent.

FREEMAN: We were at that stage

where there was no new
Doctor who on television.

But the Doctor Who Adventures
were being launched by Virgin.

And I had several meeting with the
editor of the line, Peter Darvill-Evans,

with a view to trying
to keep the continuity

between the books
and the comic strips consistent.

In my opinion, it wasn't the most
successful phase for the comics.

Because, ultimately, the comics
were always going to play second fiddle

to whatever was happening
in the New Adventures.

You know, the companions were being
introduced in the New Adventures,

being written out in the New Adventures.

The comic strip was always
going to be running to catch up.

I kind of love it when things
resonate against each other,

so that you could read

something in the comic
that evokes something from the books

and perhaps there's a special meaning
to be gleaned from that.

As a reader, I always enjoy
that kind of thing quite a lot.

But I think it's easy
to go too far with it

because, as a writer,
what you don't want to be

is you don't want to be saddled
with strictures,

and to be forced to adhere
to a continuity

which probably you had nothing to do
with creating.

And I felt that even on the books,
where we were saddled with...

They tended to have the novels go out
in groups of three initially,

so that the books had to interrelate.

And all of the writers hated that,
at least I certainly hated that.

There wasn't any prospect

of the show coming back on television
at that point.

It seemed very distant.
It seemed impossible.

And so, the thought that both
the novels and the comic strip

were moving forward together
into doing new things,

just felt tremendously exciting.

It didn't work, I don't think,
but it was a noble effort.

And part of that noble effort
was actually incorporating

the character from the books,
that was invented by Paul Cornell,

Bernice Summerfield.

We brought Bernice in to try and give
the impression of continuity

between books and the comic strip.

We also used Absolom Daak in the comics,

and the idea was
that he would also appear in the books.

But that was one of those occasions
where I felt

the communication between
two companies didn't come up to scratch.

And I wasn't completely happy
with the results.

Cat Litter is a two-hander
written by Marc Platt,

who'd written some of the last stories
in the TV series.

And appears to show the Tardis
preparing to say goodbye to Ace.

Sure enough,
the next month, Ace is gone,

and, in the interim,

the story related in the novel
Love and War, has come and gone.

And Ace has departed the Tardis,

and we've been joined
by Professor Bernice Summerfield.

Bernice had kind of been co-invented
with Doctor Who Magazine,

with the comic strips in mind almost,

in that Lee Sullivan, who became
the artist on the comic strip,

had done the first
visual designs for her.

And, indeed, drew the cover
of the first book she was in.

And his designs, together with
a little essay by me, about her,

appeared in Doctor Who Magazine
before the book came out.

That's the degree of synergy that was
so effective back in those days.

My final strip as editor of the magazine
was Emperor of the Daleks.

There were several reasons
for Emperor of the Daleks.

One was, that I totally disagreed

with the former comic strip editor,
Richard Starkings,

who insisted that the only thing to do

with Absolom Daak, Dalek Killer,
was kill him.

I didn't want to kill off
Absolom Daak, Dalek Killer.

So, in the true spirit
of Eddie Marvel history,

I brought him back from the dead

simply by plucking him
from the point in time

where he thought he was about to die.

I remember Emperor of the Daleks

being chiefly an exercise
in using continuity.

It is designed to sort out
the continuities of Absolom Daak,

what happened at the end of the TV story
Planet of the Daleks -

where an army of 30,000 Daleks
is left frozen on a planet...

You can't believe
it would be left there.

Sort out Davros's continuity
after Revelation of the Daleks,

where he's taken off on trial

and then pops up at the end
of Remembrance of the Daleks,

as being in charge of everybody.
So, obviously something happened there,

a big reversal we weren't privy to.

It had an awful lot to do at once.

And I think it had
such a great running length

that we actually managed
to do most of that

without it being
tremendously ridiculous.

When John left the strip,

I was much keener, really,
to work closely with Virgin

and actually try and slot
the books and the comics

into gaps in between each other.

That didn't always work.

I then commissioned a brilliant strip
by Scott Gray, called Final Genesis,

which is all about a future Earth,
overrun by the Silurians,

where they had won and taken control

at exactly the same point that Virgin

commissioned a novel from Jim Mortimore,
called Blood Heat,

on exactly the same principle.

The even worse thing,

was that both were published
at exactly the same month.

So we both ended up
with a bit of egg on our faces there.

GRAY: It was a sort of "what if" story.

The idea being that the Doctor and Ace

and Benny had come
to this parallel Earth,

where the events of Doctor Who
and the Silurian; had changed.

The Silurians hadn't been killed off.

And the idea being
that there was this parallel world

where Silurians and human beings
were living more or less in harmony.

And then, there was this evil
Silurian scientist in there,

who was creating havoc, creating this
brand-new species and giving them hell.

It was an interesting situation,
quite ironical, really,

that the one story where
we accidentally ended up

duplicating a New Adventures novel,

which turned out to be
a parallel Earth story, anyway.

So you could sort of get away with it.

Scott Gray has turned out to be

the single most important person
in the history of Doctor Who comics.

Because, as either a writer
or the editor in charge of them,

he's been there for probably
just over 15 years now,

guiding the Seventh Doctor,
the Eighth Doctor,

the Ninth Doctor, the Tenth Doctor.

He's edited, he's overseen.
He's written probably 50% of them.

And I think that's a fantastic
achievement for any one person.

Scott was clearly a huge talent.

And really, really

serving out his apprenticeship
on the Seventh Doctor stuff.

But really, really coming onto his own
in the Eighth Doctor stuff.

There was a point in about 1993,
I think, '93, '94,

where I made a decision,

which probably would come back
to bite me years later,

but I decided to stop publishing
ongoing Seventh Doctor and Ace strips.

And this broke this previously
unbroken chain

of Doctor Who strips
right back to the '605,

which had always reflected
the current Doctor in the strip.

And I thought that as the TV show had
been off the air about four years,

it was time to try something new.

And as we had this big gap,
as we had nothing on television,

what was stopping us then going back?

And one issue would be
a Fourth Doctor strip.

One issue would be a First Doctor strip.
One issue would be a Third Doctor strip.

So, I could rotate the Doctors
and have a lot more variation.

I felt that the Seventh Doctor strips
really had run their course.

There was no more stories,
to tell at that point,

about the Seventh Doctor and Ace
and/or Bernice.

And I thought that some fresh blood
and fresh ideas was what was needed.

We hadn't actually done any Seventh
Doctor stories for quite a while.

Instead, we'd been doing
earlier Doctor stories.

We'd do a William Hartnell story,
and then we'd do a Tom Baker story,

and then there's be
a Peter Davison story.

And it was just
all over the place, really.

And the incoming
DWM editor Gary Gillett,

and I sat down and said, “Well,
it's probably a good idea to go back,

“and do some more Sylvester McCoy stuff.

“And just forget about this.“

But the whole thing
was a lead in to Ground Zero,

which was the final
Seventh Doctor story.

We're actually thinking that this was
going to be this exciting new beginning

for the Sylvester McCoy strip.

Then we quickly found out
that Ace wasn't in the TV movie.

And we thought, cap! 50, instead of this

becoming some brand-new,
exciting beginning,

we realised it was going to be an end.

This is clearly
Doctor Who Magazine saying,

“Actually, we'd like to have
our own continuity back.

“We'd like to be doing our own thing
from now on.“

I didn't even know that Ace
had been killed off in the comic strip

until somebody told me that.

And I think that's an incredible example

of the tail wagging the dog,
because Ace came from the TV series,

filtered down through the novels,
and sort of ended up in the comic strip.

And it seems a very extreme thing
to have done.

As soon as we came to that conclusion,
we realised that,

yes, it was kind of a huge thing to do,

but it was probably
the right thing to do.

The final Seventh Doctor story,
“Ground Zero,“ by Scott Gray,

very much paves the way
for the Eighth Doctor strips,

in that we've set up a new
ongoing adversary for the Doctor

in the company called the Threshold.

There's a new regular artist,
Martin Geraghty.

Scott Gray and some guy
called Alan Barnes

are sort of behind
the writing of it all.

And the story will continue.