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| Top: The Man-Eating Ants attack and the Master Ant Bottom: The Meddling returns... and more Ants |
Having suddenly fallen into an artistic style which clearly suited
my needs by being both clean-lined but also reasonably detailed, “The Invasion
Of The Man-Eating Ants” is arguably my favourite original “Doctor Who” story. Indeed
I have re-used the story for a subsequent adventure involving my own
time-travelling character “The Rambler”.
The main motivation behind the
four-parter, as I recall, was that I thought I could swiftly and easily draw a
horde of ants and as a result speedily finish another tale. Unfortunately the time
required to draw all the ants, irrespective of my technique of simply using a continuous
squiggle, quickly lead to the little ‘monsters’ being replaced by a far larger,
but infinitely easier to draw Master Ant. I also used the story as yet another
excuse for me to include the Meddling Monk; my own take on the villainous Time Lord
who I thoroughly enjoyed writing and drawing. In addition, knowing I was fast
running out of stories for William Hartnell’s incarnation of The Doctor, I
started to have the time traveller begin thinking about his great age and that he
would soon have to regenerate. Thus at the end of the adventure, an over-tired
Time Lord collapses from mental exhaustion.
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| Top: An invalid Doctor and Ogron meet the Glass Dalek Bottom: The Doctor's Dalek and a Rad-Mutie |
Carrying on with this theme that
the Doctor was mentally unwell “The Decoy Of The Daleks” was a chance to once
again script an insane Gallifreyan and include a few official canon monsters
from the BBC television science fiction series; namely the glass Dalek from the
March 1985 programme “Revelation Of The Daleks” and the classic Ogrons, thanks
to the July 1986 VHS video release of “Day Of The Daleks”.
By this time my
portrayal of the First Doctor had dramatically departed from his televised
counterpart and was now decidedly bald and wore a tracksuit. The story also
provided me with the opportunity to give an appreciative nod to the nuclear
irradiated mutants known as Mutos from the 1975 BBC story “Genesis Of The
Daleks”.
I too was a big fan of the glass Dalek (wonder what ever happened to the prop?), but surely you mean "Zarbi" rather than "master ant". I'm amazed that the web planet has never appeared in the "great television mistakes" program as you can clearly see camera's being pushed about behind the flimsy drapes they used as some of the sets, same thing happens in a dalek story too not sure if it was dalek master plan or the chase now though. Perhaps we could have an entire story of the doctor one day?
ReplyDeleteCheers Roger
Cheers Roger. I'm a huge fan of "The Web Planet" in its book form "Doctor Who and the Zarbi". But not so much with the TV story - though the first few episodes are okay. Its just overly long imho. An entire "Doctor Who" story? That's very possible... ;-)
DeleteOh good I shall look forward to that!
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean about "The Web Planet", like quite a few of the early stories it is rather slow to say the least. The one for me is "The Romans" the TV version is almost unwatchable but I really enjoyed the novel especially the "letters" written by one of the characters (forget who) back to his mother I think very funny.
CheersRoger.
Now the audio of "The Romans" is fun imho. I have read the book but it doesn't stick in the memory as a good one. The best First Doctor novel though has to be "Galaxy Four" and later when they released the audio I just fell in love with the entire story. I'll see about posting up an old full "Doctor Who" story after "The Rambler"; probably the very first one as its in colour. I was also thinking about doing a new 'First Doctor' one, using my versions but obviously drawn as I do them now...
Delete