Follow That TARDIS!

"What's with all the flying toilets?"

Writer: John Carnell

Format: Comic Strip

Released: March 1989

Printed in: DWM 147

Featuring: Seventh Doctor

Synopsis

When the Meddling Monk is thwarted once again by the presence of the TARDIS, he causes damage to the vehicle of one of the Sleeze brothers. The Doctor unwittingly becomes a taxi for a chase through time and some unexplained events...

Verdict

Follow That TARDIS! was a fun little comic strip adventure! There are now very few comic strip stories I have left to blog from the pages of Doctor Who Magazine, and after a decision a number of years ago to purchase a colour copy of the Doctor Who Classics graphic novel featuring a number of Seventh Doctor stories which I believe to have been released in the A Cold Day in Hell graphic novel collection, this particular adventure didn't get the colourisation treatment. So with it only being one part I thought why not just buy the copy of DWM that it featured in from eBay? So that's exactly what I did and I had a blast flicking through the magazine that was released in early 1989! That's a big year for Doctor Who as the final year of the Classic era on a regular basis and just looking at the likes of the Season 25 guide and the Ben Aaronovitch interview from a contemporary perspective is a lot of fun. It seems that Remembrance of the Daleks was almost an instant classic which is hard to argue with but it's also a little sad to know what was coming later in the year, or rather what wasn't coming the next year. Anyway, to the story at hand and we see the Seventh Doctor travelling solo which must have been a little odd considering that we have seen Ace in the DWM comic strip and she was on the screen companion of the time. The Doctor was out to stop the Meddling Monk which is always a tremendous basis for the story and I loved the artwork depicting the Monk in his monastery robes. I'm a huge fan of his as a villain and the shock reaction he has when tries to rig the election but then sees the familiar horror of the Doctor's TARDIS was marvellous. The story does become a little silly from there but when the Monk is involved that's not a bad thing and is somewhat inevitable. Deadbeat and El Ape were amusing characters as the Sleeze Brothers and I was a little surprised to find that they went onto to have their own mini comic strip series! All from a six page one-part Doctor Who comic? The influence is uncanny. I thought the jumping around time from the likes of the Titanic to the Bermuda Triangle was fun and the insinuation that the iceberg which sunk the former was actually the Monk's TARDIS is quite incredible! I thought the Doctor's outrage towards the Sleeze Bothers for their interference at history in 1908 at Tunguska was good and the devastation they left from what was essentially a nuke in the forest to supposedly try and weasel out the Monk's TARDIS was very amusing! It was just downright needless and the whole nature of the Monk's TARDIS being disguised as a lavatory is a little barmy. I'm there something a little too funny in there with more than one obvious joke to be made but I'll leave it. I thought the way things ended with the Doctor chucking the Sleeze Bothers out of the TARDIS for all of their interference was amusing, even after they helped the Doctor catch the Monk, but the way things concluded with ambiguity regarding the Monk and what would happen to him after his TARDIS imploded was a little annoying. It just left a little feeling of unfinished business, and perhaps the next comic strip adventure will address it? I'll probably have to get buying each of the three issues in which it originally was printed in, but that can be a little pricey for just one story. I'll definitely blog it eventually! But for now, this was a fun and whacky comic strip adventure. 

Rating: 7/10