DOCTOR WHO: OMEGA
Mark Griffiths and John Ridgway are bringing back “Time Lord Satan” Omega in a new comic series
A hero? He should have been a god! Now he’s a comic book. Funny thing, life.
ESTABLISHED BY THE publishers of Doctor Who comics fanzine Vworp Vworp!, Cutaway Comics is filling in the gaps of the classic series’ three-decade-long continuity. With the Doctor himself conspicuous by his absence, the focus is instead on various supporting characters whose copyright lies with their original creators, beginning last year with Eric Saward and Barry Renshaw’s Lytton. It’s now the turn of Omega, created by Bob Baker and the late Dave Martin for Third Doctor tale “The Three Doctors”, who returns in a four-issue mini-series by writer Mark Griffiths and artist John Ridgway.
“A friend described us as the Mandalorian and Rogue One of the Doctor Who universe,” laughs editor Gareth Kavanagh. “We’re far more influenced by the back-up strips from the early days of Doctor Who Weekly. Those little strips were a consciously Doctor-free zone inhabited by Cybermen with souls, Dalek
Killers and all manner of nasties.”
Kavanagh says that “we’re really interested in the mythology of Omega, as he’s such a big character in the history of Doctor Who”. The sinister, all-powerful Time Lord – whose stellar engineering provided his race with the power for time travel, but left him trapped in a black hole in the process – has been compared to Fantastic Four planeteater Galactus. “You also get something more to him than that,” Kavanagh adds, “as there’s that awful loneliness, the longing to belong to a universe – which would rather he stays where he is.
“I also thought, with Omega, that what we’d never seen was that idea of a malevolent god treating a whole race as his playthings,” he continues.
“That idea that they were important to him, but only in a sense that they were playthings and a means to his escape.”
“When the story starts, Omega is trapped within his black hole, so his influence on our universe is somewhat limited,” Griffiths explains. “Once we see him on his home turf, as it were, things get wilder and more psychedelic. The old Steve Moore/dave Gibbons Fourth Doctor strip ‘Time Witch’ [from Doctor Who Weekly, 1980] was a real influence on those sequences.”
Although Griffiths describes it as “more of a prequel to ‘The Three Doctors’ than a sequel to ‘Underworld’,” the series spins out of that 1978 four-parter (also penned by Baker and Martin), as it takes place on the doomed planet of Minyos – only mentioned in passing in the show itself, as the Fourth Doctor and friends encounter a spaceship of survivors on a quest to discover the fabled Minyos II. “Minyos had been destroyed in conflict, and the genesis of that disaster had been Time Lord interference,” explains Kavanagh. “Terrance Dicks had also written a lovely little prologue in the Target book of ‘Underworld’, imagining the last few days of Minyos as it descends into chaos, and it wasn’t too much of a leap to imagine Omega pulling the strings.”
Known for his many contributions to Doctor Who Monthly as well as DC’S Hellblazer and 2000 AD’S Summer Magic, Ridgway welcomed the opportunity to reacquaint himself with the world of the Doctor. “I’m always happy to work on material relating to Doctor Who,” he says. “I enjoy drawing stories with a science fiction or fantasy setting, and thinking up the appearance of the alien characters, the locations, the equipment and the whole worlds that can be involved. I’m not one for drawing mundane cities, as I like to imagine the reader turning a page and saying, ‘Wow!’ at what they find there.” Taking a lead from Doctor Who Weekly’s Doctor-less smaller strips, Omega will also boast its own back-up in the shape of Ian Winterton and Martin Geraghty’s
“Demons Of
Eden”. That follows on from Bob Baker’s 1979 story “Nightmare Of Eden” which as Kavanagh explains “brilliantly made the monsters of the piece the source of the most desirable drug in the universe, Vraxoin. These poor beasts were being smuggled out from Eden, their home world, under the auspices of conservation, and used to get the galaxy high! With ‘Demons Of Eden’, we’re back in the deadly jungles of Eden with a party of big game hunt tourists looking for the ultimate high – which is, of course, found in the deadliest beast in the jungle.”
As if the comic itself wasn’t enough, Omega
There’s a longing to belong to a universe which would rather he stays where he is
has also been adapted into an audio drama featuring Brian Blessed. “We needed an actor with the voice and the gravitas to bring this legendary figure in the Doctor Who mythos to life,” explains Kavanagh. “But also someone with the range and the subtlety to play the Time Lord Satan. I love Flash Gordon, so I knew Brian can do big, but his Augustus from I, Claudius showed he had the desperation and quiet rage that Omega also has. For although Omega is an epic space opera, at the core is a much smaller story about a very lonely god desperate for a second start.
“I had an inkling that Brian was a big Doctor Who fan from the season 23 DVD extras, so I got in touch with his agent and popped the question directly. In Brian’s words, ‘I like what I see,’ and the rest is history!” SJ
Issue #1 of Omega is available now, while the audio drama is due to ship in October – visit cutawaycomics.co.uk for more details.