Doctor Who – The World Shapers
Issues: 127 – 129
Script: Grant Morrison
Pencils: John Ridgway (parts one and three)
Breakdowns: John Ridgway (part two)
Inks: Tim Perkins (parts one and three)
Finished Art: Tim Perkins (part two)
Letters: Richard S. (part one)
Letters: Richard Starkings (parts two and three)
Editor: Sheila Cranna
Doctor: Sixth
Companions: Frobisher, Peri and Jamie guest stars
Episodes: 3
Summary:
Responding to a distress call, the Doctor arrives on Marinus where he finds a dying Time Lord. As the Time Lord dies, his last words are “Planet 14”. This triggers a memory for the Doctor and goes off to Scotland to visit a now very old Jamie McCrimmon. He reminds the Doctor that the Cyber-controller remembered the two of them from Planet 14 and they return to Marinus to find that, in the week that they’ve been away, an age has passed on the planet and it’s now a barren rock. The Voord are evolving into the cybermen with the aid of a worldshaper, which they plan to use to devastate the galaxy. Jamie sacrifices his life to destroy the worldshaper and the Time Lords arrive to stop the Doctor interfering more than he should.
Episode Endings:
One – The Doctor has left Marinus to find Jamie, unaware that the worldshaper repair men are about to arrive there, on the planet that they only know as “Planet 14”…
Two – Back on Marinus, the Doctor and friends emerge from the TARDIS, only to find the Cyber-Voord marching towards them.
Three – The Doctor has departed and the Time Lords discuss the future and the Cybermen’s role in it. After all, they have just come from there…
Continuity:
The Doctor refers to the Voord as amphibious assassins. He doesn’t show any noticeable signs of aging when exposed to the effects of the world shaper, unlike Peri and Frobisher. When the Time Lord that sent the distress signal dies his body breaks down into degenerate matter then into random molecules (but at a vastly increased rate due to the worldshaper device). The dead Time Lord’s TARDIS is far more advanced than the Doctors and has a speech unit, which the Doctor converses freely with. It has psychosculptures around the console room and a seemingly perfectly smooth console with only a few rods sticking up from it. Jamie is now somewhere in his sixties and lives alone. The Time Lords failed to wipe his mind and he remembers his time with the Doctor perfectly. He recognizes Peri from “The Two Doctors”. He never wanted to die in his bed. He destroys the worldshaper with his sword. TARDIS’ are terrible gossips when given the chance. The chronometer in the Doctor’s TARDIS is quite accurate. The ship can home in on the worldshaper’s residual energy. Worldshaper devices are only supposed to be used on uninhabited worlds. They were banned after one was used on the planet Yxia and the whole planetary system fell apart. Marinus is the water world. Presumably the Doctor has been to Mondas as well as he recognizes it at the end of the story. Cybermen remember people by their auras. Within five million years they evolve into beings of pure thought and become the most advanced and peace loving race in the universe. There’s a nice nod to the annuals when the Doctor refers to “The Fishermen of Kandalinga”
Comments:
I do not like this story for a lot of reasons. To start off with, it makes little sense. Why would accelerating time change the Voord into the Cybermen when it wasn’t a natural change but a completely artificial one? Why do they evolve into cybermen that resemble those from “The Moonbase” onwards instead of those we see in “Tenth Planet”? Why does Marinus look very little like the Marinus we saw on the television? Why does Marinus get re-named to Mondas? Why do the Time Lords turn up at the end… Those are just the problems I have with the plot. I detest the way that Jamie is killed off at the end of the story, there really was no need. The artwork isn’t up to the same standards as in previous strips (it’s no longer just John Ridgway doing it) and in one or two frames, Peri looks more like Mel than Peri!
Basically, “The World Shapers” is one of those stories that is written to fill a gap in the continuity of the television series and it’s one of the worst examples of its kind. This is not the story that the Sixth Doctor should have finished on, it’s a fanboy-type affair which needlessly kills off one of the Doctors best ever companions and does weird things to the cybermen and established history that should never have been done.
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