The Deal

"I kill... they pay... that's the deal!"

Writer: Steve Parkhouse
Format: Comic Strip
Released: June 1981
Printed in: DWM 53

Featuring: Fourth Doctor

Synopsis

The Fourth Doctor finds himself embroiled in the Millennium Wars, a devastating battle between a thousand worlds that has been ensuing for a thousand years. The reasons are long lost but the Doctor is caught up with a deadly man who's got himself a deal, he kills for pay...

Verdict

The Deal was a decent little comic strip adventure that saw me finally continue my reading of the Dragon's Claw graphic novel. I have been overdue to continue my reading of the Fourth Doctor's comic strip adventures in Doctor Who Magazine but after my coming to Mid Wales, I made a quick visit to my young cousin's house to retrieve his copy of this collection of stories, something I haven't done for well over a year. Sadly, the quality wasn't quite as great as the stories I read in my previous little run of reading this but that's not to say it was bad at all. I thought the characterisation of Tom Baker's fourth incarnation was actually excellent with his likeness being very well-captured on the page. I really liked the idea of the Millennium Wars and I would love to return to that in some form in considerable detail - I really do think there is a lot of potential there for something quite great. An early replication of the Time War, perhaps? The Doctor having trouble with the TARDIS is not a new concept but it's always a fun one to revisit and this time it was the gravitational stabilisers that were on the brink. I did think Spider (if that was what he was called) and his chum managed to get into the TARDIS a little too quickly and easily but the Doctor's thoughts were rather humorous regarding his encounters with them. He was actually dematerialising the TARDIS towards the planet's core which was another surprise but then he surprisingly just left the pair of cronies to die when a king pursuit ship came to find them. I'm not sure that was a great representation of the Doctor's personality but it was pretty much how I figured the story would end. With my recent reading of the Nemesis of the Daleks graphic novel, I suspected this story to just be five pages but at only part I was very happy to see that it was a full eight pages which is a decent length story. Those three pages really do make a difference! I thought they played a little too much into the whole deal agreement that Spider had made and whilst it was clear he was a hired assassin, I'm not sure he needed to continuously mention it. It did end the comic strip nicely though and as a whole this was quite a fun little adventure. Overall, a pretty good story!

Rating: 7/10