Comic Potential

THE THIRD DOCTOR’S MOST EPIC ADVENTURES WERE NEVER SEEN ON TV. ALISTAIR MCGOWN CELEBRATES THE DAZZLING WORLD OF THE PERTWEE COMIC STRIPS

With Jon Pertwee’s arrival as the Doctor in 1970 the show entered the colour era, after BBC1 finally switched from black-and-white broadcasts in november 1969.

Top Of The Pops at the dawn of the ’70s had Marc Bolan, David Bowie and slade in glorious psychedelic stage costumes taking full advantage of TV’s technological quantum leap. the third Doctor was now similarly attired, his red velvet jackets and purple-lined cloaks flashing across the new colour screens, as he sped by in bright yellow vintage roadster Bessie. it was a show that knew it was now in colour, exploding into a glorious multi-hued glam rock riot of monsters and mayhem.

except that for most, it didn’t. 273,000 colour TV licences were issued in Pertwee’s debut year, compared with 15.5 million black-and-white ones. it was closer to 5.5m colour sets when Pertwee left in 1974, but still twice as many sets remained in monochrome.

But there was one place the myth of the technicolor Pertwee era was a weekly reality – in the pages of Countdown comic, first published in February 1971.

Countdown’s quality printing showcased vivid centrespreads, initially by harry Lindfield, then later by Gerry haylock. Both, chiefly inspired by former colleague Frank Bellamy, shared a vibrant colour palette, and utilised dynamic centrespreads, often focused on the “hero frame”, a key action scene rendered large.

Despite its artistic fidelity to the Pertwee palette, the strip was not a carbon copy of the TV format, with rights issues making it its own beast. Lacking the cosier set-up of the Unit

family, the Doctor was his own man, striding brusquely through space tracking stations and solar energy research units to take umbrage with lab-coated boffins.

such detailed earthbound settings added to the strip’s verisimilitude. while the Doctor resided in a remote welsh country cottage, other backdrops included a quaint english village (nicked wholesale from a location photo session for 1971 Who classic “the Daemons”), a coastal lighthouse and a remote scottish island. Possessing worldwide scale, the strip could visit the Pentagon or witness sydney harbour Bridge destroyed by the Daleks in the space of a few frames, while on TV Doctor Who was still carrying much of the action noises-off via phone calls and stock film footage. After Countdown mutated into TV Action,

Doctor Who was promoted to the front cover, haylock launching each week with a painted splash frame. in “Zeron invasion” he vividly depicted a central London of bowler-hatted city gents nestling with hip deejays straight out of Blaxploitation movies, of crashed tube trains and the Post office tower crackling with electricity. the revived Doctor Who post-2005 could often achieve the impossible with its greater resources and judicious use of CGI. By 2012 it could even credibly pull off the trick of riding a triceratops on a spaceship. way back in 1972, the third Doctor had convincingly ridden just such creatures to defeat an alien invasion force of Daleks, demonstrating that the Countdown and TV Action strips had an ambition and scale that the TV show took just 30-odd years to catch up with.