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| Top: 'City of Daleks' and a Thatcher!?! Bottom: Dodo and the Emperor Dalek |
Written at a time when I was clearly full of teenage
angst and lashing out at anything and everything, irrespective of whether I
actually understood the subject matter in question, “The Demise Of The Daleks”
is probably the most disappointing story I’ve written… and much of the artwork
isn’t that great either. Indeed if I could turn back time and remake just one
story, this would definitely be it.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s some nice
elements to this four-parter, such as being set within the ‘City of Daleks’ and
being based upon companion Steven Taylor’s to recover and resurrect the Doctor
after he is electrocuted by Terry Nations’ pepper-pot creations. It also introduces
the new travelling assistant Dodo Chaplet, a talking budgerigar and provided me
with an opportunity to draw my own version of the Dalek Emperor. But all these
good ideas are implemented quite appallingly, and the inclusion of a
clip-clopping tortoise-shelled behemoth based upon Margaret Thatcher is
possibly the worst thought out creature I’ve ever imagined.
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| Top: The Doctor falls foul of a water trap Bottom: The Cybermen |
Bizarrely, the
following story, “The Chasity Of The Cybermen”, despite its somewhat perturbing
title is actually one of my all-time favourite tales. And it would appear that
some passage of time passed between its creation and that of ‘The Dalek Story’
before it, as the artwork is clean, stylised and the plot rather funny; in my
opinion at least. Clearly inspired by the “Doctor Who” September 1967 television story “The
Tomb Of The Cybermen”, it concerns the TARDIS crew exploring the Tomb of Metal
shortly after an archaeological explorer has been killed by a Cyberman.
Fleeing
the silver giant, the Doctor, Steven and Dodo rush headlong into a water trap
and only escape by drinking all the liquid up using straws. Having survived, the friends then
rush back to the time machine, and depart. Simple, straightforward stuff
which let me draw plenty of ‘Patrick Troughton-era’ Cybermen for the first time.
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