Stairway to Heaven

"Time for me to employ one of my own art forms... escaping!"

Writers: Paul Cornell & John Freeman
Format: Comic Strip
Released: January 1990
Printed in: DWM 156

Featuring: Seventh Doctor

Synopsis

Hoping for the Chardaz Museum of Modern Art, the Seventh Doctor finds himself within a domed park-like area and stumbles upon a being who makes introductions very difficult indeed. Flustered, the Doctor follows him to an elaborate stairway, where once climbing somebody will not impress him at all...

Verdict

Stairway to Heaven was a pretty decent comic strip adventure that sadly just tried to do too much in its limited page allocation. The story continued my reading of the Nemesis of the Daleks graphic novel which I started a couple of months ago before moving back to university and after coming home for the weekend, I decided now would be a good time to continue it. I have a busy sport-filled weekend ahead but with how busy I have been lately with university and relationship stuff, I am glad to find some free time to be able to blog! I have been extremely sporadic lately which is a great shame and I can only see it continuing for the foreseeable future but fitting in a couple of blogs a month is now going to be the more realistic shame whilst I'm finishing up my third year of university. Busy times! But here I was reunited with the Seventh Doctor for seven pages and despite what is, by my marking standards, a pretty poor rating I did very much enjoy what I read. I just felt that the idea was way too much for seven pages and could definitely have worked much better had it been used for say a television or audio formatted story. Of course, 1990 was a time where Doctor Who was in limbo and there was no new television stories and the audios from Big Finish were a long way away yet. However, for readers of the time I imagine the new comic stories from Doctor Who Magazine were very much welcomed and served as an enjoyable part of the magazine. Even though the show was permanently off air, the Doctor's adventures continued in some really quirky surroundings. I thought the characterisation of the Seventh Doctor was pretty good with Sylvester McCoy's likeness being well captured for the adventure and I loved the art theme comment about him escaping which I included as my story quote. That was definitely the highlight of the comic strip for me. Garg Adoniquist was an intriguing character and had we had the time and space to explore his background I feel like the reveal of his creation would have been much more impactful. However, it seemed a bit rushed but I did find the humour in the way that the gathering crowd thought the Doctor was the one that had been created. He was even bloody interviewed about it! It was all quite barmy and rushed but I did enjoy the stairway concept and the Doctor actually had ended up where he intended to be. Now, that doesn't exactly happen very often! I thought the ending was another element of the story that was rushed but I do sympathise in how difficult it must be to put together a story that can work over just seven pages. There have been examples in the past but to get a high rating in that amount of space is very difficult indeed. Overall though, considering the small scale of the comic strip, I thought it made a rather decent effort and served as a good little story.

Rating: 6/10