Doctor Who in Comics

Doctor Who first transferred from television to comics on November 14th 1964, just under a year after its TV debut, when The Doctor materialized in the pages of TV Comic #674, illustrated by Neville Main (the writer is unknown). This Doctor, though, bore scant resemblance to the curmudgeonly scientist played by William Hartnell on TV; he may have looked vaguely like Hartnell, but he was more of a benevolent magician than a scientist (complete with magic bag which held something for every occasion) and he and his rather annoying 'grandchildren', John and Gillian, inhabited a whimsical fantasy world populated not by Daleks and Voord (TV Comic didn't have the rights to them), but by the likes of the Kleptons, the Trods of Trodos (robots who were Daleks by any other name but not as threatening) and the ludicrous, wheeled 'Go-Rays', all aimed firmly at younger readers. When Main left the strip to draw the slightly less silly adventures of Steed and Mrs Peel in The Avengers, Bill Mevin took over, but the strip stayed firmly in the nursery, with the Doctor on one occasion even helping out Father Christmas. In 1966, Patrick Troughton took over the role on TV, and John Canning took over the strip illustration duties, bringing a new depth to the strip and becoming unquestionably the definitive illustrator of the second Doctor. The strip still didn't really resemble its TV counterpart, but some of the more outre fantasy elements were phased out, as were John and Gillian (who went off to university on the improbably named planet of Zebadee), replaced now by television companion Jamie McCrimmon. TV Comic also negotiated for the rights to a couple of the television show's villains, including the Quarks (minus their Dominator overlords), the new TV sensation that were the Cybermen, and most significantly the Daleks themselves (who, in a rather nice twist, promptly exterminated those mickey taking Trods). The strip was for a time renamed 'Dr Who & the Daleks', even when the Daleks weren't actually appearing in it, TV Comic evidently figuring that cashing in on the metal meanies' popularity couldn't hurt. But the most wildly imaginative second Doctor story was without a doubt the final one: on TV, Patrick Troughton had departed the role, but with several months' break between seasons, his successor was not yet known, so the strip took a few liberties with the ending of Troughtopn's last TV story (in which the Doctor was exiled to Earth with a new face by his own people, the Time Lords) by explaining that, while the exile had indeed begun, part two of his sentence hadn't yet been instigated! Instead, for several months, the still unregenerated second Doctor lived in an hotel in London, investigating sinister occurrences, until finally an investigation into walking scarecrows had him dragged off by the straw men-really agents of the Time Lords-to have his appearance altered prior to the third Doctor's television debut!