Cyclone Terror

"They have a compelling desire for power, but also a horror of weapons..."

Writer: Glenn Rix

Format: Short Story

Released: September 1976

Printed in: Doctor Who Annual 1977

Featuring: Fourth Doctor, Sarah

Synopsis 

The Fourth Doctor and Sarah arrive on Zoto to a hero's welcome for the good the last time the Doctor did on his last visit many hundreds of years ago. But now he's back and there's a new threat in the form of cyclones...

Verdict 

Cyclone Terror was an excellent little short story from the 1977 Doctor Who Annual! Compared with the post-revivals Annuals, the ones that are part of the Classic era really are so much superior. It's just a detailed collection of little short stories and comic strips. For a text story, this was much better than my recent reading of Teenage Kicks as it wasn't just all chucked together in block text with a whole one page illustration containing the story's title. This was a much better example as it was probably about the same length words wise but it was spread evenly over four pages with half-page illustrations on each page to give us a better understanding of what's going on and to help us imagine the Fourth Doctor and Sarah being there on Zoto. Although the illustrations aren't the best (they're not bad at all but just look at the photo that I've used for the blog entry that's supposed to be Sarah), they certainly help the imagination when it comes to text stories of this length. The target audience of these Annuals are definitely what the current Annuals should be with a family aim in my opinion. The text stories are detailed but the illustrations obviously help with the younger audiences. The youth will obviously favour comic strips and there's still some fun special features in the Annual but nothing as child-orientated as what we get nowadays. I will purchase the Annual every year no matter how much I may criticise it as I still like it to stand in my collection, but I do hope that with DWM taking over DWA they also got the Annuals and take inspiration from stories such as this. I really liked the Doctor and Sarah's arrival and I thought the characterisation of both was superb. The cyclone threatening the Zotons was interesting and I liked the timing of the Doctor's return - just when he was needed once again. The Zanons were an extremely intriguing species and they seemed to be irony personified! As my quote suggests, they were thirsty for power and land and their ways were certainly of interest. But for a race who seeked power they themselves were petrified of weaponry! The Doctor and Sarah used weapons (that were pretty poor in all honesty) to scare away the whole party who outnumbered the pair by at least ten to one. They scampered and fled. For a race as ingenious to use cyclones as a way of conquering land, keeping themselves distance, they certainly had a fragile weakness! Show a weapon to them and off they'd go running back home with their tails between their legs. It amazes me that they ever conquered any land! The Doctor surely defeated them just as easily as he did here. My only qualm with this story, well Classic Annuals as a whole, is that they don't call the TARDIS all in caps! It's an acronym so it should be more than just the 'T'. But hey, I can let that slide no problem. The story was very good for an Annual which was a nice change of tone! I can't thank Scribd enough for having these Annuals on their app as I highly doubt I'd find it in a shop anywhere around me - though I was lucky enough to purchase the 1980 Annual which I prize in my collection. Overall, a very enjoyable short story. 

Rating: 8/10