Or “No, not that one, the one partially in black and white”
The start of the 1970s were something of a strange time for Doctor Who. Having only just made it through the 60s without being cancelled, suddenly the show found itself with a new lead actor, an almost entirely re-stylised format and, most importantly of all, in colour. The stories were longer, the feel grittier and the threats very different to anything the Doctor had encountered before. Well for the first year at least, after that it all settled down into the times the fans now refer to as the years of the “UNIT Family”. Thankfully though, in the comics, things were done the other way round.
After an initial run of third Doctor stories in the comics that had been short, kiddie friendly and slightly thin on the plot grounds at times, with the advent of “Countdown” (a futuristic new comic) the Doctor’s adventures were in colour, lacked the warm cosiness of UNIT (and indeed a regular companion) and had a more adult tone to them. Issues 47 to 54 had told the story of *Sub Zero (yes, the * was part of the title) which saw the Doctor travel to Australia to defeat a dalek invasion. This, however, was only to be the first of a two story tale and the second part of the story would see the Doctor travelling to the planet of the daleks itself to defeat them… does this setup seem in any way familiar? Fortunately, the comic Planet of the Daleks isn’t hindered by the budgetary constraints of its television counterpart and thus the reader is presented with an alien world with weird creatures roaming the forests, lavish sets and superb special effects all within the first few frames of the story. The daleks want revenge for their defeat (understandably) and plan to trap the TARDIS, bring the Doctor to their world and turn him into a human dalek. Rather than having the shock ending of episode one being the Doctor discovering daleks though, the first instalment ends with a thief breaking into his cottage (oh yes, the Doctor lives alone in a cottage in the comic strips) who’s planning on stealing the TARDIS and bashing in the Doctor’s skull if needed. Far more effective than any first episode dalek cliffhangers the TV ever offered. Sadly the second instalment has the Doctor offering to show the thief the TARDIS anyway which does feel slightly disappointing. Given that, at this stage, the episodes are only 2 A4 pages long, having about half of this part as a fight scene seems padding on a scale that even the television would shy from. The episode ends with the TARDIS being pulled to the planet of the daleks so things could only get better from here on in…
Part three is the chase scene through a few corridors of the dalek city (in a nice touch though the doors are the same as in the very first television dalek story and the thief/companion even manages to get stuck under one of them) and it’s not until part four that Finney (the thief who’s starting to now see the error of his ways) gets put into a cell separate to the Doctor and reveals himself to be moderately well equipped on the plastic explosives front and knows enough about science to guess how the dalek doors work. He races down the corridors, fights daleks but is too late… the episode ends with the Doctor rising from the operating table and announcing that the operation is a success and he’s now the dalek leader. And boy is it an effective cliffhanger. Sadly they don’t quite go the full way and give the Doctor’s dialogue the distinctive diagonal font but it’s still a scene that the readers could quite easily re-enact over and over whilst they waited eagerly for the resolution. The good news is that the strip was deemed so important that it got the front cover, so effectively an extra third of a page. The bad news was that the regular two pages were now in black and white. Trapping a handful of daleks in the console room (which is still more than most TV stories ever gave us), the Doctor (not dalekised after all) plans to land the TARDIS in the heart of a sun. It gets a little confusing for a while at the start of part 6 as it’s not clear if the TARDIS itself stops the materialisation or the daleks do. I’m not entirely sure how the daleks could operate the controls with their suckers but whichever it is, it brings the TARDIS back to the planet of the daleks and things degenerate into another chase through the jungle where they get to be threatened by dinosaurs as well as daleks. Finney, being the reformed character and good companion, now turns out to be something of an animal expert and the main part of the story concludes with the now tamed dinosaurs attacking “all” the daleks. Given this is the planet of the daleks there don’t seem to be too many of them around. The story concludes with Finney shoulder barging the dalek leader, just as he fires, and the ray destroys the trap. The Doctor is so grateful for this that… well actually he takes Finney straight back home and leaves him there!
I really wanted to like Planet of the Daleks when I first read it. I’d heard so many stories about these wonderful Countdown strips yet somehow it just fails to deliver. It’s got Finney’s transformation from crook to perfect companion (oh to have had him in another few strips), its got daleks, its got dinosaurs, it has fight scenes, chase scenes, explosions… and maybe that’s the problem. Part one is “the setup”. Part two is “the fight scene”. Part three is “the chase scene” and so on. It’s not coherent and the story you think its starting out as isn’t the one that it ends up as. Upon re-reading it though I find it’s grown on me. The fan inside has started filling in the blanks between frames. The fight scene now has Jon Pertwee making funny karate style sounds. The chase scene now has music in the background. The initial shots of the dinosaurs have CSO lines around them and the jungle is a studio set. It’s “Planet of the Daleks”, the comic strip version. A romp with daleks that’s partially in black and white and is almost a greatest hits of the daleks. When the TV version comes out on DVD one day, this really does deserve to be an extra feature.
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