War of the Words

"All the data in the known universe is stored here."

Writer: Steve Moore

Format: Comic Strip

Released: April 1981

Printed in: DWM 51

Featuring: Fourth Doctor, K9

Synopsis 

For 47.63 years the Vromyx and the Garynth have been at war for possession of the super-weapon data thought to be contained on the library planet Biblios. Although the robot librarians of Biblios have repeatedly told the Vromyx and Garynth that the library has no data on weapons, the warring species refuse to end their war or move it elsewhere. It's now up to the Doctor to end a war...

Verdict 

War of the Words was a decent little comic strip story but there's no doubting it could have been better. It continued my reading of my cousin's copy of Dragon's Claw but today is where that will stop until the next time I come up, which is when I am to complete it before moving back to university. That will soon be here so I'm trying to keep up the daily blogging until then. Once October comes, I'm sure I won't be able to maintain daily entries but I'm sure as hell going to try! This story was interesting and to my knowledge (and recent blog entries should confirm) was the first one parter story from Doctor Who Magazine. It's quite the difference from the lengthy eight part stories in The Iron Legion graphic novel but I imagine the readers at the time were quietly pleased that they didn't have to wait a whole month for the next instalment of the story. As much as I love DWM, and also Doctor Who Comic, having to wait a month at a time for the next part of the story can sometimes be a killer. It almost always requires a reread but it does get the anticipation up for an adventure which I suppose is a good thing. With this story, there was no cliffhanger and it panned out over just the one part. The story had a decent setting with the knowledge based Biblios as the primary setting. The claim that it had all of the known data in the universe housed in the library was rather incredible and I liked the Doctor's reaction to that. I thought the characterisation of Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor was pretty good although he doesn't seem to be as involved in a one part comic strip story. But nonetheless, it was still a good capturing of his likeness. I thought the war between the Garynth and the Vromyx was rather redundant but that's what made the Doctor's involvement all the more necessary. They were both fighting over a free resource for information that it didn't have. Both wanted information on super weapons and did not want the other party having that crucial knowledge. The robots on Biblios had tried explaining to both factions of the war that the knowledge they wanted didn't exist here but they were having none of it. This had been going on for a rather precise 47.63 years which was strange and I liked how the Doctor was determined to end it. There was humour in the story but the way that the Doctor stopped the war was something I wasn't buying. It was a little too far fetched and the idea of both sides believing the word and actions of a stranger after nearly half a century of war wasn't a good resolution in my eyes which was a real shame. The story wasn't too bad but there just seemed to be a lack of excitement which in a one part story is something you need to make up for the less detailed nature of the comic strip. For each blog entry I do I always put when the adventure was released but I noticed that with this story being released in 1981, after the broadcast of Warriors' Gate, that K9 was still on his travels with the Doctor. That intrigued me greatly because that means that the comic strips have been behind the television series in terms of chronology. That's not a problem but I'd also assumed it runs alongside it. Overall though, a decent comic strip but it could have been improved.

Rating: 7/10