Mocking the Tom Baker Annuals is almost too easy. Bizarre stories with the most unbelievable, trippy and odd artwork. Quite what was going on in the World Distributors offices in the mid 70s isn’t all that difficult to work out. Possibly. And every year, the Dr. Who fiction starved kids lapped them up.

It all starts off kind of sanely with a photo cover. Tom Baker against a painted blue background. Enjoy this glimpse of the most recognisable of Doctors, because he’s not going to be spotted very often inside the annual itself.

The first story inside is called A New Life. It all begins when the Doctor and Sarah decide to go off on holiday, which Sarah Jane knows will annoy the Brigadier. And look, here he is!

They’ve gone to the planet of Lexopterans who have eradicated dust from their planet, which Doctor Who knows is every housewife’s dream. Anyway the Lexopterans have all disappeared, and it’s only when Sarah stumbles upon a message in what looks like double Dutch, that the Doctor realises they’ve changed themselves into plants. Well, after solving that little puzzle and saving the Lexopterans from being plants for the rest of eternity the Doctor says they need a holiday. Ha!

Cue some facts on the strange plants you might find on planet Earth… and some space facts for good measure!

Anyway, soon enough the Doctor is experiencing The Hospitality on Hankus. Inside the Tardis all hell has broken loose and the crew are being flung across the ceiling!

This I think is Doctor Who on the ceiling. It’s difficult to tell. Things settle down and Sarah and Harry resign themselves to accepting whatever is happening, but meanwhile on the planet Hankus Jen-Ka is feeling excited because Doctor Who is coming to stay at his house again! But Doctor Who has been silly enough to calculate the lowest materialisation denominator to the power of ten not ten thousand! So the Tardis was as small as a fly on the fruit Jen-Ka was about to eat! Oh silly old Doctor Who!

Next up is our first strip story, The Psychic Jungle. In it we see our first glimpse of the Doctor’s companions, Sarah and Harry, who you might remember from the TV series.

Yes, you remember, Sarah and Harry!

This adventure takes place in a jungle that realises all your fears, and so obviously inspired the creators of I’m a Celebrity… Of course because Sarah is a woman her fears are far more irrational than Harry’s are. They’re all an illusion though, and Doctor Who knew it but didn’t think to tell his friends. Sigh.

Next up is the celebrated classic that is The Sinister Sponge!

The Doctor, Harry and Sarah arrive on the planet Inscruta, and have their nostrils assaulted by a small that’s kind of familiar but according to the Doctor is unique to this planet. Harry quickly spots a cloud… but it’s not moving in a nebulous way (whatever that is) according to the Doctor. No! It’s more like a sponge and it absorbs Sarah! The Doctor and Harry give chase, but are assaulted by vicious vines that luckily are afraid of sound so they manage to escape, but the sponge has disappeared!

Apparently five Egraps after the Doctor’s last visit, all the male Inscrutans succumbed to a disease that caused all their feathers to fall out and their flesh to become transparent. Oh dear! The women had been harbouring a sponge and communicating telepathically with it. Despite breaking the code of the Inscrutes, the Doctor decides to help and using the Femzoid Aurapathy, a means of communication known to few outside of Femizor, the Doctor discovers that the sponge is an immature one, and because it was lonely it stayed on the planet, despite knowing that was wrong. Fortunately the plant life on Inscrute form a cure for the disease that is eating the sponge and Doctor Who is able to send it home too.

Sadly, there are ni pictures of the Sinister Sponge itself, so here’s another picture of Doctor Who, Harry and Sarah, looking just how you remember them from the last story…

Well maybe, anyway.

Next up is The Neuronic Nightmare. The Tardis has been travelling through Neuronic Space, where the universe can exist on a speck of dust. It hasn’t been a good journey because all the crew dematerialised at least twice, and Harry takes his time coming back. It turns out he’s been replaced by a Neuroid to stop the evil Skizos from controlling the planet.

The fake Harry is able to short circuit the Neuronic energy distributor and explains that he disguised himself as Harry because the Doctor was more likely to get involved if one of his own kind was threatened. Though how the Doctor can tell it was a disguised version of Harry is anyone’s guess, as again Sarah and Harry look entirely different.

The Doctor is left with the tricky problem of navigating through Neuronic space with a faulty indicator. But on the plus side, he does look like Tom Baker!

In Avast There! the Doctor defies the will of Warrant Officer Benton and takes Harry and Sarah on a trip in the Tardis to test out his new Oscillating Reverberator Unit. The Tardis lands on a galleon ship in space and Harry and Sarah are quickly captured and forced to walk the plank and will end up plunged into deep space. Doctor Who has decided though that he’d be better off finishing off the repairs to his new machine, and turns up just in time to save Sarah and Harry from death, in his new hovering Tardis. Phew.

The opening page of this story features what could be a glimpse of the title sequences if World Distributors were in charge of design….

Scary, huh?

Finally we have The Mission. A rogue robot from millions of years ago causes havoc on the planet Tyrano. The robot had been buried in the planet’s surface and waited for the call to come that would activate its mission. It never came, but it reawakens and threatens the planet. Fortunately the Doctor is there and he takes a helicopter ride out to stop it and then decides he’s got more than enough time to study it. Or something like that anyway. The artist was inspired to actually get a publicity shot to copy for the artwork for this story, but even then it doesn’t help much making Lis Sladen look like a frumpy, miserable old cow. Which she isn’t.

There’s just time for an ABC of Space before we reach the back cover. A for Apollo and Z for Ziolkowski… but if you want to find out what they are, you’ll have to find yourself a copy of the 1976 Dr. Who Annual!