That Was the DWM That Was

The Basics - Issue 162, July 1990. The front cover has a photo of Sophie Aldred in Crystal Palace Park, London, as Ace joins the Seventh Doctor in text stories and comic strips from this issue.

News And Views - The Seventh Doctor and Ace will return in November in a new twenty minute episode of the educational series Search Out Science, which will also feature a new version of K9. The BBC Video schedule for the rest of 1990 has The Five Doctors and The Brain of Morbius (July) and The Dominators and The Web Planet (October). 1991 may see The Deadly Assassin, The Krotons, The Keys of Marinus, City of Death, Masque of Mandragora, The Mutants, Robot and The Claws of Axos.

Reviews - The Battle For The Universe board game is reviewed - "extremely playable - recommended!". Off The Shelf reviews The Mind Robber video ("a rather enjoyable romp - great stuff"), The Dalek Invasion of Earth video ("an absolute gem and well worth every penny"), three Myth Makers videos and the novelisation of The Daleks ("an excellent book - always worth a re-reading").

New Fiction - There is a complete five page Seventh Doctor strip - Doctor Conkerer! In a text story, Living In The Past, the Seventh Doctor is joined by Ace.

Notables - The DWM Survey Results are published, with the winners as follows :-

Favourite Issue - The Tenth Anniversary Special

Favourite Feature - Gallifrey Guardian

Favourite Strip - Nemesis of the Daleks

Boxpops - Top of the pop charts in July 1990 were the continuing Sacrifice and Turtle Power by Partners In Kryme.

Skaro Says - This was a key issue for Si Hunt as it was the last one he saw in Smiths until 1992, so he assumed that the magazine had folded! He bought Battle for the Universe, but not until many years later and then never played it! He found Doctor Conkerer to be pretty inconsequential. Simon Rayner also bought the board game but never played it, Sidesk has never played it but Si Hart has got it and has played it and describes it as quite good fun.

Critique - This issue is quite significant for introducing Ace into the magazine's new fiction, starting here with a text story where the Doctor collects her from the Cretaceous era. For me, this is a poor issue though fiction wise, as I've never been keen on text stories so I doubt that I've ever read Living In The Past. And the less said about Doctor Conkerer the better - it was much more suited to The Incredible Hulk Presents, which is where it originated from. For some strange reason, I have filled in the entry form for the board game competition, but never sent it off! To this day, I still haven't played the game. The main highlight of this issue for me was the Nostalgia piece on Marco Polo, although given its age and missing status, the usual readers' comments are unsurprisingly rather sparse and most of the article consists of an episode by episode synopsis. It did at least have plenty of rare photos - both colour and black and white.

Paying the Bills