Doctor Who Annual 1976

 

By 1975/ 76 Doctor Who on tv had become more sophisticated in its storytelling yet the Annuals continued to run stories that more often than not lacked the then current approach of the series. Some of them feel generic as if they might be lifted from a pool that could be applied to any Doctor. The 1976 Annual does at least sometimes have the Doctor, Sarah and Harry sounding (though rarely looking) like they do on screen while there is one story so packed with great ideas it seems too good for this format. Annuals were always dated for the following year and this edition was actually published in September 1975 so the makers would presumably only have seen some of Tom Baker’s first season. Tom’s Doctor stares out from the cover looking somewhat unimpressed. Has he just read the stories?

`A New Life` sees the Doctor and Sarah ostensibly going on holiday to a planet he has visited before. Yet the native Lexopterons are nowhere to be found until they uncover the body of an old friend of the Doctor’s. It’s a very episode one sort of story with the duo meandering around the place, the narrative referring to Doctor Who several times and the character calling Sarah “my dear”. Contrary to the stealthy pace of discovery you’d get in a tv story, here Sarah even suggests going back to the Tardis for something to eat so they can have a ponder over the mystery. It’s almost Victorian storytelling. The denouement is a neat if anticlimactic one as they discover a formula to reverse a defence mechanism that has turned the natives into plant life in the event of an invasion. Visually the illustrations are bizarrely cut up over exposed photos.

The first of many scientific features, the one page ``Peculiar Plant Killers` could have been a longer feature as the text whizzes though the likes of the Venus Fly Trap and the Pitcher Plant.  For more career minded kids there’s a couple of pages about how to become an astronaut (they stop short of including a NASA application form at the end!). Its divided into sections such as Are You In Shape? suggesting potential astronauts need to be able to withstand temperature extremes. “Imagine two hours in an oven” the text declares though I’m not sure astronauts actually have to do that. When You’ve Passed- only then can you start proper flying tests. The vagueness of this article, necessarily boiled down for a younger reader, means it’s not an ideal guide for anyone wanting to become an astronaut.

The next science feature is more illuminating, charting the journey of Pioneer 10 which set out for Jupiter in March 1972, arriving in December 1973. Costing £20m, the rocket travelled at ten million miles a day. The absorbing feature is one of the best factual ones I’ve seen in these annuals. It concludes by saying after passing near Jupiter, Pioneer is still going “into the constellation of Taurus and from there who knows…” (Pioneer 10’s last signal was received in January 2003 but it is probably still drifting somewhere in space). A page of planetary themed questions rounds off this section of the annual.  Which planet is named after the Roman god of the ocean? If you don’t know then you can turn to page 60 to find out but I imagined fans were wondering at this point- where’s Doctor Who gone? Is this a Science Annual I’ve accidentally bought?

Well, he’s just over the page in the next story. `The Hospitality on Hankus` is a whimsical tale in which the TARDIS crew are being flung around  in fact the lively narrative has them “bounced helplessly off the ceiling, floor and walls.” This perilous voyage is interspersed with an alien waiting for the Doctor to arrive during which he was collecting fruit. The perceptive readers could probably have worked out the twist before it is revealed; the Doctor had accidently shrunk the exterior dimensions of the TARDS- and the turbulent journey was actually them caught on a pip of the fruit the alien character is about to eat. There’s plenty of lively description in this slight tale with the writer churning up a vivid image of what is going on. I’m not sure about the accompanying illustrations though- these are fairly minimalist sketches; one of which has the worst likeness of Tom Baker I’ve ever seen while another appears to be white patches painted on a black background.

The art work is considerably better for the Annual’s first comic strip `The Psychic Jungle`, a story that does what it says in the title. The Doctor, Sarah and Harry are plagued by nightmarish visions though it does peter out somewhat. While the visuals conjure up decent realisations of the jungle itself the likenesses of Sarah and Harry bear no resemblance to the actors at all. I’m starting to see a trend with these stories in that there’s no real danger, anything that threatens them can be explained away or easily dealt with. Maybe it’s time for more science…

`Space Talk` is a speculative look at claims such as those made by a Yorkshire scientist that part of the spaceship needed for take off could be made of edible substances which could be eaten later. They don’t name this scientist though.  There’s a bit on the do it yourself dentistry kit that could be used in the event of toothache in space plus other fascinating snippets about fireballs and space crockery. Over the page is a more detailed look at the history of pressurised spacesuits. Surely kids in the 70s didn’t want more educational stuff during the Xmas holidays when Annuals were traditionally given as gifts? Its informative but I’m not sure this is quite the place for it.

Shifting away from science altogether there are then a couple of pages about star signs which dip heavily into mythology. After yet another page of facts (The Sun’s radiation rate is so great that it loses some four million tons in weight every second don’t you know) we come to `The Sinister Sponge` which may be the funniest title ever for a Doctor Who story. However, the illustrations skew towards the spooky especially the first one with it’s depictions of people screaming. The story also manages to convey accurate intonations of the voices of the Doctor, Sarah and Harry to the point where you can almost hear those actors speaking them. After he and the Doctor narrowly escape being digested by a giant plant, the Doctor notes that noise “frightens anything not used to it.” With that dryness you can imagine Ian Marter coming up with Harry replies “So does a man eating plant”

The text also takes advantage of unlimited budgets so we can visualise something like “mushrooms eight foot high… tentacles reaching out from the gaping mouth of a huge red flower..” which we know would look cheap if they tried to produce these things on tv. After the promising opening, the second half of the story is mostly exposition explaining how the females of this planet started taunting the males to the point where the latter started to become invisible. I’m sure there’s a battle of the sexes type moral intended here but I’m not sure what it is because the story gets bogged down with all the flora and fauna of this planet. The illustrator seems to run out of inspiration too as the last page of the story sits alongside a sketch based on Tom Baker’s first Doctor Who photocall only the girl looks nothing like Lis Sladen. Still, the story is imaginative and a bit more than the standard Annual story.

There’s always a dice game in these Annuals so next up we have `The Plasmoid Jungle`. “Dr Who has become separated from the Tardis on the Plasmoid planet Spectro 6” we’re advised, “ a strange unreal world where fact and fantasy are one.” They could be talking about the Annual itself. Two or more players have to help the Doctor “bypass the countless dangers of the Plasmoid jungle and reach the Tardis.” Part of the game is a Maze of Madness wherein “players must not cross the coloured lines”. I love these games for the dangers they describe which are then illustrated by the most basic unthreatening images. Amongst the obstacles and assistance along the way we have “Winged Horses Appear”, “Foam Rubber Avalanche” and “Restless Rock”. Its strikes me these could all have been album titles from the mid Seventies. My favourite though is you get two extra throws when “pulled by space bees.”

The next six pages are even odder. `Neuronic Nightmare` might be described as a comic strip though it’s style is abstract, its images mix and match familiar and less familiar things which I suppose is meant to personify what they call neuronic space, “the crossroads of infinity.” There are big ideas going on here though ultimately it’s a possession story whose shock twist in which Harry has been duplicated would work much better had any of the images actually looked like Harry! The villain Skizos is suitably spooky though, inked in pale greens and even if the simple story is presented as if it’s the most complex thing in the world, the whole thing does possess a strong visual impact. I’m not sure though about the final exchange between Harry and Sarah in which he says “nothing like a short spell in irons to make a man out of you” and she responds, “No thanks.”

Next there’s another space themed quiz which is actually quite difficult. Do you know what a moon rat smells like? Or what are consenting stars? Me neither but the answers are – as you may have guessed - on page 60. In `Avast There` the Doctor is mending the Oscillating Reverberator Unit and tries a test flight with Sarah and Harry on board. They end up on a galleon in space (seven years before `Enlightenment`) only it’s a reproduction fashioned by the Argamems because….well they don’t explain this part to the captured Sran and Harry though they do make them walk the plank whereupon the Doctor materialises the TARDIS in space to rescue them. It’s a sort of half-finished story, high on concept but somewhat low on excitement. The writer seems more interested in the mechanics of how this ship is in space rather than why. The following two pages are devoted to telling us a handful of scientific developments that happened as an offshoot of space research and after that comes a crossword or a Spaceword. Dr. Who had compiled it for us apparently.

`The Mission` is the Annual’s final and easily best story. This opens describing a giant Bremtonian astronaut landing on a potential new home planet which is described well enough for the reader to glean a clear mental picture of the place; “thick red clouds”, “the way the atmosphere bent what little light filtered through the clouds making the horizon curve upwards all around him”.  Centuries later, the Doctor, Sarah and Harry are on that planet, called Tyrano, experiencing a version of immersive imagery We learn of that astronaut’s fate- killed soon after landing -yet his eighty foot tall robot was left waiting for a start up signal and the narrative describes the way life developed across millennia while the robot remains static. These passages sound like they could come from an adaptation of a film, they are so vividly delivered and the concept is intriguing especially when the robot finally does receive a signal and “the mud of the earth cracked, the trees fell away and the eighty foot robot rose from the slime and lumbered slowly off on his mission.”

The Doctor has to work out what the robot’s mission is and stop it while the metallic giant seems to be attacking the planet’s infrastructure.  I think this is one of the best Annual stories I’ve encountered, in fact it’s epic enough to be expanded. There are concepts here that would power a feature film and it seems a shame they are  languishing near the back of a fifty-year-old kid’s annual. The illustrations don’t do justice to the high concept story; because “heli boats” are mentioned there’s a treated photo of a helicopter. The artists’ version of the robot doesn’t really convey it’s size and seems wholly based on the robot from the fourth Doctor’s first story. Nonetheless this the highlight of the Annual.  To finish, because you can never have enough space facts, there’s an ABC of Space. C is for Cosmonaut “another name for a space pilot”. Best not mention the Russians!

As ever the Annual comes without any credits as to the creatives involved and often bears only a fleeting resemblance to the tv show. Apparently the main artist was Paul Crompton with Paul Green providing some of the illustrations. What they seem to be going for is a modern style for the time that works better for some stories than others.  I’m assuming there was an issue with Lis Sladen’s likeness as even art that essentially copies publicity stills shows her looking like someone else. I doubt the contents would engage a 2026 fan of any age yet fifty years ago things were different. A couple of behind the scenes features on the show or interviews would really bolster the Annual but for some reason this didn’t happen till later even though its an “authorised” book. The 1976 Annual is neither the best nor the worst I’ve seen but there is a sense that the people involved in it don’t watch the show much.  And given it is the 1970s, surely it should contain some posters?