Mooretoons - Early "Doctor Who" Adventures - A Duplicate Doctor And The Ice Warriors Return

Top: 'The Two Doctors' meet     Bottom: The TARDIS lands in a variety of bizarre locations

In many ways my early “Doctor Who” stories “Dual” and “The Earthboom” are of little interest except as examples of a time when both my storylines and drawing style were possibly at their most sloppy and undisciplined. However despite the poor quality of my writing and shoddy penciling, both four-parters do hopefully have some elements of note within them.

“Dual” was a rather half-hearted attempt to bring back one of my Doctor’s former companions, Susan Foreman and a duplicate First Doctor. It soon becomes abundantly clear however that I quickly ran out of ideas for the adventure as the tale swiftly degenerates into the Timelord simply meeting an earlier version of himself and having to then briefly travel with him (and his grand-daughter) in order to return to his own timeline’s co-ordinates. 

The story was clearly drawn in a hurry as well, as the inking is splotchy and undisciplined, and many of the panels lack any background whatsoever. However the plot does contain several references to genuine BBC “Doctor Who” television serials, and I must have been heavily influenced by these adventures at the time. As a result the TARDIS lands in Brisbane, Australia during World War Three (Magnus Greel was the Butcher of Brisbane and started World War Six in “The Talons of Weng-Chiang”), momentarily stops off in the year 1,000,000 B.C. (as does the real TARDIS in “An Unearthly Child”) and then briefly arrives in sunken Atlantis (inspired by “The Time Monster”). Even the planet Skaro and the Daleks make a single panel appearance before the Doctor is reunited with his own TARDIS once again.

Top: The Ice Warriors are swiftly replaced by a Terminator     Bottom: The Doctor blows up the Martian rocket

I still remember that at the time of my drawing “Doctor Who And The Earthboom” I was fleetingly filled with a lot of enthusiasm for the story, as it heralded the long-awaited return of the Ice Warriors; one of my favourite televised monsters. However my zeal for the tale quickly evaporated when I started making mistakes drawing the Martians and as a result I quickly removed their visible presence from the ‘screen’. Indeed after just a handful of frames during the second part, and yet another poorly executed Ice Warrior, they were never to be seen again.

Instead I replaced them with the Terminator character, who had accompanied my Doctor’s companion Viki during her initial story “Magma’s Return”. During that earlier two-parter I had only implied that the bald-headed humanoid space policeman had been eaten by the monster, Magma. In “The Earthboom” Viki discovers her former jailer was somehow rescued by the Ice Warriors, cybernetically enhanced (i.e. given the trademark ice Warrior clawed hands) and placed in charge of a rocket which had been built in order to destroy the Earth. A complicated, convoluted and unbelievable plot which only a young teenager could create.

In addition the story also gives my companion the full name of Kame Viki… a massive departure from the televised companion Vicky (Pallister) and in all honesty a bad mistake on my part. However as with its predecessor “Dual”, it was clear that I was in something of a rush to finish the tale and move on to the next one; my keenness for reintroducing the Ice Warriors clearly having been already exhausted. Needless to say the Doctor uses the TARDIS to land inside the Martian’s rocket, and blow it up prematurely, rescuing both Steven Taylor and Viki in the process.