A Fresh Start

"Faster than snuffing a candle, he pays with his life."

Writer: David Whittaker 

Format: Comic Strip

Released: 1976

Printed in: The Amazing World of Doctor Who

Featuring: The Daleks

Synopsis 

They say the strongest fears are born of ignorance and fed by imagination. The Daleks know little fear. But how can they fight an enemy they cannot see? How can they hope to guess the motives of an aggressor who will not show himself, a conqueror content to sit and watch?

Verdict 

A Fresh Start, or Eve of War as it was originally known, was a superb comic strip adventure! I was really pleasantly surprised with this little comic story and I say little because I literally mean just that as the story was only five pages long but it absolutely impressed me! After reading The Five Doctors on what used to be my usual train journey from south to mid Wales, I do plan on watching a couple of serials with my cousin who I have mentioned in quite a lot of my past blog entries. Upon arriving at my grandparents' house, where he's temporarily living due to my auntie being in the long process of moving house, my attention was drawn by a particular book amongst his things. There were copies of Doctor Who Adventures and his Companion Guide from the Doctor Who Exhibition but I saw this copy of The Amazing World of Doctor Who and it was something I hadn't actually seen before! Whilst I'm here, I think I need to take advantage of this tremendous resource and blog all seven stories within its pages. That's certainly the plan so things might get a little repetitive over the next week or so but I don't really care to be honest. The book itself is set out very much like a Doctor Who Annual and after doing some research on it (that's the historian in me), I found out that the book contained two original text stories along with two other text reprints and three comic strips reprinted in its pages. After asking where my cousin acquired the gem of an item, he told me it was at a local car boot sale so I think that's somewhere I need to take myself. I've never been to one before and after finding numerous bargains in charity shops, I think the car boot sales is where I need to go next. The addition of text links between each page was very good and I think it certainly helped with the flow of the story by reading it all in one go, page after page. That wasn't the original way in which the story was printed as I learned that the comic strip was originally printed in five separate parts, all consisting of just one page, in TV Century. I found that very interest in and I think if that existed today I would find it very difficult to blog! The Daleks having their own comic strip shows just how popular an enemy they were and that's obviously recognised by their continuing returns. I was surprised we didn't get a reference to The Chase with the return of the Mechanoids and I'm pretty certain that this was the first story I have blogged in which they appear after their televised appearance. The Daleks didn't seem to recognise then which was good because it made a distinction with these Daleks perhaps not being familiar with who the Doctor was. Despite being a part of the Doctor Who Universe, this story wasn't about our hero at all. He doesn't appear and he shouldn't. The Dalek Empire audios show just how successful the Daleks can be on their own and I'll soon be finding out the same about the Cybermen in the first series of their audio spinoff series. The appearance of the Dalek Emperor, in a story originally penned in 1965, was something I really loved and I also adored the colour of the comic. It really was attractive and things jumped off of the page which was great. The appearance of a Red Dalek as leader was fantastic and would be a tradition followed in later stories such as The Stolen Earth/Journey's End. I really liked the action that came with the battles between the Daleks and the Mechanoids and the idea of a cloud that could infect and hypnotise the Daleks blocking the identity of their enemy was tremendous. The Daleks would of course gain the upper hand and although things weren't settled between the two races, you felt it was just the start of many battles to come. I'm not sure where I'll be able to acquire those stories but I'll do my best to! But for now, this was a fantastic comic strip adventure!

Rating: 9/10