L.J. Scott: It was the experience of all the preceding installments of this comic serial that honed studio robb and me into a smooth, effective, working machine and this, with the subsequent installments, are clearly our best, IMHO.
Page 1: I was always looking for an excuse to split up the gang, and the "Grim Tidings" installment studio robb suggested was the perfect excuse...
"The Poor Farkers" was stolen straight from Late Night with David Lettermen. He had made the joke about a defense contractor with a similar name not getting the contract to build a jet fighter...
But it takes a little effort to set up the same punch line for Doctor Who. Which leads us to a related question: Where do I get the ideas for each planet's culture and history?
Well, it was natural to go from Farker, to Fark U, then to somewhat hide the obvious change it to Farkurius U. As most things ending with the initial 'U' stand for University, I then had a cultural theme for the planet.
Now, this is true for the television show as well as the strip: You really don't want a bunch of locals running around in the background. In the case of the TV show, you have to cast and pay the extras. In the case of the comic serial, you have to draw the lot of them and explain what they are doing. So the simple answer is to have them already wiped-out.
To explain why they would be wiped-out, you either have to make it a disease, natural disaster, or a war. A disease always leads to concerns of the visiting characters getting infected. A natural disaster needs figuring out (unless you're Pip & Jane Baker in which case you just say 'the natural disaster' without any explanation; if you rewatch 'Mark Of The Rani' you might see what I mean...)
So that leaves war. But then losing a war means that the winners would have moved in and you're back to having extras. As we've already determined that this is a University planet, who do we know who would be callous enough to attack such a planet, but then not think it of strategic value? Sontarans!
And thus sausage is made. (as well as the first page...) And we end it with the predetermined punch line!
Page 2: Just in case you might not recognize Qui'Ouder in the bottom frame, I make sure to bring up his name as a reminder of who else we'd find here. Also, we've pushed off the title of this installment in the hopes of keeping the surprise for a few more pages until you find out it's...
Page 3:
The Master! And yes, during the Pertwee years the Master was always hiding his involvement by using a thinly disguised pseudonym that always meant 'Master', but that people would overlook at first. What's more transparent than having "Transgalatica Master's Club"? And I bet most overlooked it as the obvious clue in installment one...
The note about what happened at 'The Lord's Haven" was originally going to be the plot of installment five, but as I mentioned in the previous commentary, I was in the mood for a laugh when I finally sat down to write the installment. But no ideas ever die, they just get recycled and used later.
Page 4: Earth's natural resources being used up by the mid twenty-first century...? For those paying close attention, you would have heard that oil production has already peeked and that this century will most likely be marked by ever decreasing, annual supplies of oil... This line is turning out more prophetic than I had originally imagined!
Page 5: Oops! The reference to the Cheetah people means this scavenger hunt has to come after the episode "Survival".
Page 7: How will the Doctor get out of this one if he doesn't even exist? I don't think I even told studio robb, at the time, how the good guys would win. Perhaps some unlikely hero will pop-up in the next episode to save the day...?
studio robb: This was the story I had been waiting
to do...as mentioned, when L. J. Scott, DWIS editor Jay Ritchie, and myself sat
down to discuss the possibility of doing a comic, it was this story we
chose...what I didn’t mention (to avoid spoiling things) was that it was L. J.’s synopsis of this story that caused me to forget about
her other proposals and totally focus on this story: "The Doctor decides to
join a scavenger hunt, and it turns out the items are the segments to the Key
To Time that he collects for The Master." The idea floored me. The Master with
the Key To Time?! Man, the universe will be *screwed*!
For those
unaware, the Key To Time was a season-long storyline
from the Fourth Doctor’s seven-year tenure where he was sent by a person called
The White Guardian to collect the six segments that make up the Key. The
segments were hidden as various things (one segment was the princess of a
planet), so The Doctor was given a wand-link thing called the Locator to find
them. Once all six segments were found, the locator would then be used to
activate the Key.
As for The
Master, you kind of need to have been born under a rock to not know who he is,
but just in case: He was a Time Lord who was the arch nemesis of the Third
Doctor, and then kept popping up to torment the various other incarnations of
The Doctor.
Page 1: I loved the fact that L. J.
incorporated the "omake" story at the opening of this
story and used it as an excuse to separate Susan from the Doctor and Ace.
This
page also recaps just what items The Doctor has...note that he has *four* items
and that Qui’Ouder has two...this was part of L. J.’s brilliance...because the items kept getting mixed and
matched (and one, Galbi’s Pole, you never even see procured),
she was able to keep the reader off-balance to hide the fact that the point of
the Hunt was to gather six items, and thus possibly tip her hand to an avid fan
that the items were going to end up as the Key To Time...
Page 2: The oriental clothing Susan is putting
on is patterned after the garb she wore in the (now lost) "Marco Polo" story.
By all accounts, it was one of Susan’s better moments in the series, so I
wanted to throw a nod that way. It’s a pity it can’t be seen ever again (the
BBC destroyed the film in an effort to clean up library space several decades
ago), but as I understand it, there is a nice novelization
of the story with promo-photos through-out.
The
"Mini-Qui’Ouder" that Susan steps on is a trademark
of The Master when he kills someone he no longer needs.
Page 3:
And there he is! The
Master in all his evil glory! I truly enjoyed drawing him.
Another
example of "Art Imitating Life": The first resort to "rape" the "Lord’s Haven
Planet" is a Hilton...I’m sure
Page 4: My personal feeling when I first drew
this was that the Hunt’s Coordinator on the Vid-Screen
back in Chapter 1 was the better choice for The Master’s disguise. But I later
came to realize that "Mr. Fingers" was the more devious choice.
One
would argue (L. J. certainly did!) having The Master say, "From the bottom of
*both* my hearts", because, in all likelihood, he only has one. Back in the
Fourth Doctor’s tenure, The Master was horribly burned and at the end of his
allotted regenerations. Then during the Fourth Doctor’s final season (Season
18), The Master came up with a scheme to steal the body of a consular from the
planet Traken named Tremas
(Tremas was also the father of a girl named Nyssa who
becomes a companion of The Doctor). So, the question is, do Trakens
have two hearts or one? Or three? No one knows. But
when I stuck this panel in, it seemed to me that someone as arrogant as The
Master would still *act* as if he were a pure Gallifreyan,
and thus would say the "bottom of both my hearts" line. Seem far-fetched? Think
of Hitler, who had some Jewish blood in him, acting as a pure Aryan...
Page 5: "The Valyard
and the Cheetah People" The Valyard was the
prosecutor from the Sixth Doctor’s final season long storyline, "The Trial of a
Time Lord". The Cheetah People were the Cat-People mentioned previously in the
Season 26 episode, "Survival". Both episodes marked the last appearance of The
Master (until the Movie that aired in the
Originally,
L. J. had The Master refer to just The Valyard, but
since "Survival" had aired, it seemed like a good idea to throw that reference
in.
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