Review: Doctor Who Classics vol. 2 (comics)
Doctor Who Classics Volume 2 by Pat Mills
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Most of the stories in this volume are lightweight, but fun, with my favorites being one where the Doctor and Sharon tangle with aliens in 16th century China, and a short piece where they travel to a "blank dimension" and engage in a battle of wills with an alien criminal. I was a bit disappointed in the story that produced the very striking cover image of the 4th Doctor giving himself a good punch to the head - it involves the Doctor going back in time and knocking himself out in order to prevent himself from doing something that turned out to have bad consequences. There's a reason why Doctor Who has invented the Blinovitch Limitation effect, the Laws of Time, and other assorted technobabble to explain why this shouldn't be done: in storytelling terms, it's a cheap trick. That quibble aside, everything in this volume is at least good fun.
Given that these stories were written in 1979, they feel surprisingly contemporary. It's hard for me to come up with specifics, but I get a distinct feeling that these comics influenced the tone and content of New Who more than is often acknowledged. Maybe it's just that this volume features werewolves, fighting monks, Daleks, and Sontarans, and has the Doctor travelling with a contemporary Londoner. (Though one distinctly retro touch is that when it's time for Sharon to leave, she stays behind to get married to someone she's just met. Pity.)
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