A Comic Conundrum

I'm taking advantage of a short delay before the publishers are ready to begin work on preparing my book, The Comic Strip Companion 1964-1979, for publication to test it out on a small group of readers.

These enthusiastic volunteers have delivered invaluable feedback on the manuscript, enabling me to identify areas that need slight tweaks, additions or corrections. My readers, working in isolation to each other, have delivered quite different sets of notes - but they have almost all queried the same one specific point in the book.

The third story, latterly known as ‘The Hijackers of Thrax’ (the original title, if one existed, is unknown), appeared in TV Comic #690 (6 March 1965) to #692 (20 March 1965). The strip was later reprinted in Doctor Who Classic Comics #13 (10 November 1993).

TV Comic was required to routinely submit a synopsis for each of their proposed strip stories to BBC Enterprises for approval. This was so that if something was considered to be too similar to an aspect of a planned television serial, or deemed inappropriate, it could be sent back to TV Comic with a request for changes before it was developed as a full script or an illustrated strip.

The storyline for the ‘The Hijackers of Thrax’ was submitted in January 1965. Donald Wilson (Head of Serials, Drama Television) asked Doctor Who producer Verity Lambert for her comments. Lambert wrote back, “It’s quite obvious what this is based on!! But it’s OK by me if it’s OK by you.”

Is it “quite obvious” though? What did Verity think it was based on? This question has puzzled myself and my proofreaders.

Although the correspondence between Lambert and Wilson has survived, the copy of the synopsis which would have once been attached to this memo has not. It is reasonable to assume however, considering that the story was approved without changes, that the synopsis bore a strong resemblance to the strip as it appeared in print.

So what’s the story about? Here’s my summary:

A spaceship delivering food and supplies from Earth to a colony on Venus in the year 2075 goes missing soon after leaving Earth. This is the seventh supply ship to disappear without trace. The TARDIS lands on a space station where the crew of the missing supply ships are imprisoned. The station is run by Captain Anastas Thrax and his pirates. The station is hidden from Earth in a cloud of mist, and the hijacked cargo is sold on the black market. Thrax locks up the Doctor and his companions John and Gillian, but John overpowers their guard and frees the rest of the prisoners. Some of the prisoners leave in a supply ship to warn Earth about the space pirates. Led by the Doctor, the remaining prisoners overpower Thrax’s men. Thrax is captured and forced to show the Doctor the mist-generating machine. The machine is destroyed and the mist clears, revealing the location of the station to Earth’s space police, who arrive to apprehend Thrax and his pirate crew.

So what was it that Verity recognised as so familiar and obvious in this story?

Please let me know if you have any ideas, because I’m stumped!

Powershop of the Daleks

This advert for New Zealand company Powershop (a standalone subsidiary of state owned Meridian Energy) is currently appearing on various pages on the news website Stuff, and presumably elsewhere as well.

Last month Powershop were forced to drop another advert in this campaign which featured an Darth Vader, following a request from Lucasfilm's lawyers who understandably objected to the unauthorised use of the character.

Powershop are now using an image closely resembling a Dalek. Close enough I believe to raise the ire of the BBC and Terry Nation's estate. There is certainly no wording an the advert to indicate that either party has approved its use.

The artwork isn't terribly original either. It is clearly based on artist Richard Jennings' cover of The Dalek Book, published by Panther Books/Souvenir Press in 1964.

Addenda...

In addition to the online adverts, this artwork is also being used by Powershop elsewhere. Posters featuring Powershop's Dalek have been spotted on display in bus shelters around New Zealand.

The above photo was taken by Simon Granville (that's his reflection!) at the corner of Victoria and Dixon streets in Wellington on Saturday 21 January.

Simon says, "I've seen the poster in a couple of other places too, including along Arthur St on Wellington's bypass and on a huge poster on the side of a building on Stout St near the train station, both highly visible places." Simon adds that the posters have appeared very recently. "I first saw them on Saturday, and I would have noticed if they'd been there last weekend, so they're only a week old at most."

Incredibly, there's more. Powershop has an online game for visitors to their site to play. The game is called Merry Xmas from Santa's Robot Helpers. The eponymous robot helpers are Daleks, and fairly accurately rendered ones at that - with the addition of a jetpack for the player's character, a red Dalek.

The simplistic game involves moving the red Dalek across a landscape, picking up gift-wrapped boxes along the way, and then blasting fifteen brown Daleks to end the game and deliver the gifts to Santa Claus.

The Christmas theme suggests that the game hasn't just been added to the site but has probably been there for at least a month. Here's a screenshot from the game:

(Thanks to Jon Preddle for pointing out the game)

Sex in Space

The Prison in Space is an unmade Doctor Who story from Patrick Troughton's last season that has survived as a complete set of scripts. These scripts have just been published as a book by Richard Bignell under the Nothing at the End of the Lane imprint.

The four-part serial was conceived as a light-hearted comedy story, a broad satire of the battle of the sexes. Commissioned in April 1968 from the experienced television scriptwriter Dick Sharples, for a time during its development it was intended to write out Jamie and introduce a replacement male companion. The story is especially remarkable because it came so very close to being made. A director, David Maloney, had been assigned, design work was underway and casting was in progress by early October 1968 when producer Peter Bryant decided the story was not working out. Its replacement was The Krotons.

Early this year, Richard Bignell asked me if I’d like to write a review of the story as part of the supplementary material to be included in the book. I had previously written a piece for Richard’s first Nothing at the End of the Lane script book, Farewell Great Macedon, and eagerly accepted the opportunity to contribute to the follow-up volume.

My two-page review, entitled ‘Sex Crimes’, is a fairly scathing of the dreadful sexism prevalent in the scripts. I do however praises other aspects of the story, such as continuity references to an earlier televised story, the strong characterisation of the Doctor and Jamie, and the highly imaginative opening sequence. I wrote my piece in isolation from other contributors and it wasn’t until I received a copy of the finished book that I saw that my review was one of two - the other, by Jonathan Morris, is more forgiving of the story’s shortcomings and effectively provides some balance to my criticisms. This seems to have been more good fortune than design as I gather that Jonathan was equally unaware of what I'd said in my review.

In addition to mine and Jonathan’s critiques, there is also a 'Time Team' feature in the style of Doctor Who Magazine's popular and long-running column, reuniting the original line-up of Jac Rayner, Peter Ware, Clayton Hickman and Richard Bignell - though it should perhaps be noted that Clay is suspiciously slumbering throughout the group discussion!

Also included are Brian Hayles’ original storylines for the Ice Warrior story Lords of the Red Planet, which was scrapped in favour of a different serial - The Seeds of Death.

The highlight of the supplementary material is in my opinion Andrew Pixley’s article ‘Winds of Change’ which examines month-by-month the behind-the-scenes work on the writing and production of Troughton’s turbulent final season throughout 1968.

The Prison in Space script book offers an invaluable insight into what was so very nearly a produced, televised Doctor Who story. It is available to purchase here.

The Corden Factor?

The second half of Doctor Who Series 6 has now screened in New Zealand, and overnight viewer ratings for all six of these episodes have been posted. The ratings for the top-performing programmes on each of the main television channels, as supplied by Nielsen Television Audience Measurement, are published daily on Throng.

As I've posted previously, ratings are available for the first-run screenings of each of the Matt Smith episodes. The figures show that Series 5 performed better than the first half of Series 6. Amy’s Choice topped the chart for last year's series with 146,560 viewers. This year's series opener, The Impossible Astronaut, just about matched this with 146,520.

At the other end of the scale however, no episodes from Series 5 dipped below six figures. The Beast Below was the poorest performer on 105,140. This year the ratings haven't been nearly as strong. The seasonal special A Christmas Carol, got a dismal 85,130, and The Almost People plunged even lower to 67,060. Only the opening three episodes (The Impossible Astronaut, Day of the Moon and The Curse of the Black Spot managed six-figure ratings.

I think the later timeslot is the key contributing factor accounting for this year's under-performance. In 2010 episodes screened at 7.30, whereas this year Series 6 and the Christmas special started at 8.30 pm. This later start time not only pushed the episodes out of reach of younger viewers who could not stay up to 9.30 to see to the end of the programme, but also placed Doctor Who directly against heavy-hitting prime-time drama series on the other main channels.

That said, the ratings for this latest batch of six episodes - which continued to screen in the same Thursday 8.30 pm timeslot - are not all bad news. The opening two episodes, Let's Kill Hitler and Night Terrors, rated a respectable 117,110 and 119,850, placing them slightly ahead of several of last year's episodes. The audience dropped off for The Girl Who Waited and The God Complex, and the supposedly highly-anticipated series finale, The Wedding of River Song, which dropped to a low 80,490.

The stand-out episode was however Closing Time, which gained an astonishing rating of 171,280. This is higher than any other Matt Smith episode. Closing Time was also the top-rating programme on Prime on the day it screened. No other Matt Smith episode of Doctor Who has charted first on Prime's daily ratings.

So what compelled so many viewers to tune in for this one episode? Was it that it featured James Corden, an actor familiar to New Zealand television audiences from the oft-repeated Gavin & Stacey... or was it the return of the Cybermen? Both Corden and the Cybermen were promoted in Prime's trailer for Closing Time, screened frequently in the week leading up to the episode's showing.

Series Six Part 2:

Let’s Kill Hitler (15 September 2011): 117,110

Night Terrors (22 September 2011): 119,850

The Girl Who Waited (29 September 2011): 102,210

The God Complex (6 October 2011): 96,430

Closing Time (13 October 2011): 171,280

The Wedding of River Song (20 October 2011): 80,490

Series average: 114,562

Ranking:

1. Closing Time (13 October 2011): 171,280

2. Amy’s Choice (13 June 2010): 146,560

3. The Impossible Astronaut (19 May 2011): 146,520

4. Flesh and Stone (30 May 2010): 146,470

5. Cold Blood (27 June 2010): 143,270

6. The Hungry Earth (20 June 2010): 135,700

7. The Lodger (11 July 2010): 135,490

8. Vincent and the Doctor (4 July 2010): 128,950

9. The Curse of the Black Spot (2 June 2011): 126,240

10. The Pandorica Opens (18 July 2010): 120,610

11. Night Terrors (22 September 2011): 119,850

12. The Big Bang (25 July 2010): 118,220

13. Let’s Kill Hitler (15 September 2011): 117,110

14. The Time of Angels (23 May 2010): 116,710

15. The Eleventh Hour (2 May 2010): 113,000

16. Victory of the Daleks (16 May 2010): 111,930

17. The Vampires of Venice (6 June 2010): 109,500

18. The Beast Below (9 May 2010): 105,140

19. The Girl Who Waited (29 September 2011): 102,210

20. Day of the Moon (26 May 2011): 101,760

21. A Good Man Goes to War (30 June 2011): 98,790

22. The Rebel Flesh (16 June 2011): 96,580

23. The God Complex (6 October 2011): 96,430

24. The Doctor’s Wife (9 June 2011): 91,660

25. A Christmas Carol (30 January 2011): 85,130

26. The Wedding of River Song (20 October 2011): 80,490

27. The Almost People (23 June 2011): 67,060

Delivering the Book

Today I composed a short email, attached a Word document, and hit 'Send'. In doing so, I delivered the manuscript of my book to my publishers.

The Comic Strip Companion: An Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who in Comics 1964 – 1979 (to give the full title), has been four long years in the making. I was contracted to write it in late September 2007.

At that time I had not yet been approached to write DVD Production Information subtitles. I was still working full-time. My mum was still alive.

I finished writing the first draft back in June 2009. Since then I've been editing and revising, a process that has proved to be just as time-consuming as getting that first draft written.

I haven't kept a watch on the word count during editing, as I cut far more than I added during this phase - there's few things quite as disheartening as watching the word count plunge - so I was surprised to discover that the manuscript I delivered today was 185,676 words. That is remarkably close to what I predicted nearly three years ago: in December 2008, six months before I finished the first draft, I estimated it would come in at 185,000 words!

I've delivered the book, but it remains to be seen what my publishers make of it. I'm certain that there will be tweaks to be made based on their feedback. After four long years, it's in their hands.

Very soon I'm going to start work on the follow-up volume covering the later years of the comic strip. Hopefully this next book won't take quite so long to write!

Dalek artwork origins uncovered

I'm currently making corrections and changes to The Comic Strip Companion 1964-1979, working from notes made on the manuscript by my good friend Jon Preddle, who is the book's very first reader.

Jon's notes on the chapter covering The Daleks strip from TV Century 21 alerted me to something I'd overlooked in the manuscript. Jon writes, "I might be wrong on this, but didn’t Chris Achilleos base his Target book cover Daleks on Turner’s style?"

This sent me scurrying over to my bookshelves to check, and sure enough Jon is correct - Target novelisation cover artist Chris Achilleos didn't just base his Daleks on Ron Turner's strip illustrations - he directly copied them, and here's the evidence:

Postscript...

And it doesn't stop there. As Jon has since pointed out, Achilleos clearly again turned to Ron Turner's artwork for the TV Century 21 strip when he illustrated the cover for the novelisation Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks. This time, Achilleos reversed the images and altered the designs very slightly, but they are unmistakably based on Turner's artwork.

I've reversed the relevant sections of Achilleos's cover on the right for a direct comparison.

Doctor Who Viewing Figures

Thanks to Throng (which has for the past two years published online the daily viewer ratings for the top performing programmes on each of the main channels), we can get an idea of how Doctor Who has been performing on New Zealand television of late. Throng's viewer ratings come from Nielsen Television Audience Measurement.

The figures for the first half of Series 6, which finished screening yesterday, show that the series got off to a strong start with a very healthy 146,520 viewers tuning in for The Impossible Astronaut, but thereafter declined, dropping below 100 thousand viewers after the third episode, and hitting its lowest point with The Almost People which had just 67,060 viewers. The series made a strong recovery for the finale, with 98,780 viewers watching A Good Man Goes to War. Curiously the ratings follow a consistent pattern of decreasing one week and increasing the next.

Series Six:

The Impossible Astronaut (19 May 2011): 146,520

Day of the Moon (26 May 2011): 101,760

The Curse of the Black Spot (2 June 2011): 126,240

The Doctor’s Wife (9 June 2011): 91,660

The Rebel Flesh (16 June 2011): 96,580

The Almost People (23 June 2011): 67,060

A Good Man Goes to War (30 June 2011): 98,790

Series average: 104,087

So how does this compare with previous Matt Smith episodes? Here are the ratings for last year's series, as well as the Christmas special screened earlier this year.

Series Five:

The Eleventh Hour (2 May 2010): 113,000

The Beast Below (9 May 2010): 105,140

Victory of the Daleks (16 May 2010): 111,930

The Time of Angels (23 May 2010): 116,710

Flesh and Stone (30 May 2010): 146,470

The Vampires of Venice (6 June 2010): 109,500

Amy’s Choice (13 June 2010): 146,560

The Hungry Earth (20 June 2010): 135,700

Cold Blood (27 June 2010): 143,270

Vincent and the Doctor (4 July 2010): 128,950

The Lodger (11 July 2010): 135,490

The Pandorica Opens (18 July 2010): 120,610

The Big Bang (25 July 2010): 118,220

Series average: 125,504

Christmas Special:

A Christmas Carol (30 January 2011): 85,130

One conclusion that might be drawn from these figures is that Doctor Who performs better when screened earlier in the evening (Series 5 screened at 7.30pm whereas the Christmas special and Series 6 started at 8:30pm), and on Sundays (where Series 5 episodes screened) rather than Thursdays (Series 6 and the Christmas special). The lower figures might be the result of some younger viewers missing out on seeing the series on broadcast, as the later broadcast means that it is on after bedtime. It is not necessarily just the children who may account for the lower figures but also the parents who might otherwise have watched the episodes with them as a shared family viewing experience.

Taking all of the first-run Matt Smith episodes screened to date, here they are ranked by rating. The Impossible Astronaut just misses out on being the highest-rated Matt Smith episode, but by The Almost People, screened just over a month later, is the lowest.

Ranking:

1. Amy’s Choice (13 June 2010): 146,560

2. The Impossible Astronaut (19 May 2011): 146,520

3. Flesh and Stone (30 May 2010): 146,470

4. Cold Blood (27 June 2010): 143,270

5. The Hungry Earth (20 June 2010): 135,700

6. The Lodger (11 July 2010): 135,490

7. Vincent and the Doctor (4 July 2010): 128,950

8. The Curse of the Black Spot (2 June 2011): 126,240

9. The Pandorica Opens (18 July 2010): 120,610

10. The Big Bang (25 July 2010): 118,220

11. The Time of Angels (23 May 2010): 116,710

12. The Eleventh Hour (2 May 2010): 113,000

13. Victory of the Daleks (16 May 2010): 111,930

14. The Vampires of Venice (6 June 2010): 109,500

15. The Beast Below (9 May 2010): 105,140

16. Day of the Moon (26 May 2011): 101,760

17. A Good Man Goes to War (30 June 2011): 98,790

18. The Rebel Flesh (16 June 2011): 96,580

19. The Doctor’s Wife (9 June 2011): 91,660

20. A Christmas Carol (30 January 2011): 85,130

21. The Almost People (23 June 2011): 67,060