By Rob McCow

Dogs of Doom (or ‘Stan Lee presents Doctor Who and The DOGS of DOOM’ The devil spawned them --- but who controlled them? It’s a fact that comic strips are between thirty and fifty-two percent more exciting when presented by Stan Lee.)

First published in Doctor Who Weekly 27-34 during 1980. It was reprinted in the US Marvel Doctor Who Comic issues 3 and 4, from December 1984 to January 1985. The strip is currently available in Doctor Who: The Iron Legion graphic novel, published in 2004 by Panini Books.

Writers – Wagner + Mills

Artist – Dave Gibbons

Editor – Paul Neary

Sharon performs the traditional companion role by being sidelined for most of this story. She gets some witty comments but for the most part she’s ignored, kept in the background or left behind from missions that’re too dangerous. The Doctor is already trying to get her back to Blackcastle, even though she's just arrived on board the TARDIS. She gains a new catsuit to replace her Blackcastle school uniform, which makes her look more mature.

As everyone under the age of ten knows, the real star of Doctor Who is K-9. He gets my Best In Show award in Dogs of Doom. He first proves his mettle/metal by stunning the hordes of Wereloxes with his nose laser, at least until he is tipped over. ‘Regret I cannot help you, Master,’ he sadly apologises. When the Doctor is turning into a Werelox, he takes the trustworthy K-9 with him in the TARDIS to stun him when he loses control. K-9’s laser even proves effective against the Werelox’s Evil masters, which is quite surprising. Best of all, when the Doctor is captured, K-9’s side panel lights up, saying ‘EMERGENCY+ MASTER IN DANGER++’ You couldn’t imagine Jo Grant or Jackie Tyler having this useful skill!

The Doctor temporarily acquires a new companion in Brill, the ex-leader of The Festering Forty-Ninth Werelok Pack. Despite the fact that Brill is a ruthless murdering animal, the Doctor hypnotises him into being friendly. The comic strip ignores the questions that this poses, such as: Does the Doctor hypnotise all his companions into liking him? Why doesn't he hypnotise his enemies? And couldn't he have hypnotised Peri into actually enjoying her travels in the TARDIS?

Brill is essentially the same character as Morris in the Iron Legion – he is the Doctor’s minder, a brute force companion with a speech impediment and limited intelligence.

Joe Bean and Babe Roth own the Spacehog haulage freighter that the TARDIS lands in. They are dull space trucker types. Si tells me that these characters tapped into the "Trucker" zeitgeist of 1980, with their "CB" Radio and wild-west "lifestyle", plus appearances in films such as Cannonball Run.

The Davy Crockett colony in the New Earth system comes under attack from the Werelox, vicious and merciless wolf-men. Suffering huge losses, the colonists retreat to the safety of The Alamo, an impregnable dome. As the moon rises, anyone who was so much as scratched by a Werelok turns into one themselves. With no one left to oppose them, the Werelox quickly overwhelm the colony.

The TARDIS materialises on board the Spacehog of Joe Bean, head of Joe Bean’s haulage company, with his wife Babe Ruth. Joe Bean is angry with the Doctor as his botched materialisation has cut a big square hole between two decks of his ship. A Werelox ship suddenly appears and a number of limpet mines attach themselves to the ship. From each mine, a Werelok burns its way into the ship and attacks! K-9 uses his stun ray to hold some of them off until he is kicked over. A Werelok called Brill scratches the Doctor, but the Doctor is able to use marbles to trip him up and K-9 stuns him. Between Babe Roth’s laser and K-9 they are able to see off the Werelox and take some prisoner.

Babe finds some new clothes for Sharon to replace her school uniform. As the ship flies past a moon, however, the Doctor starts to turn into a Werelok! He forces himself into the TARDIS and takes K-9 with him. After three months work, constantly battling against the beast he is becoming, he is able to find an antidote and recover. He returns to the Spacehog in the TARDIS ten minutes after he left.

On New Earth, they meet President Wilson K Wilson. The Doctor surmises that the Werelox couldn’t possibly control the spaceship technology they have been using. He hypnotises Brill who tells him that Werelox’ masters intend to Exterminate the whole system. Ignoring the possibility that Brill's masters might be Space Nazis or Snap!, the Doctor concludes that it is the Daleks who are the real enemy.

The Daleks are destroying the system planet by planet using their neutron fire, so they don’t really need the Werelox anymore. The Doctor takes K-9 and the now friendly hypnotised Brill on a mission to infiltrate the Dalek ship, but tells Sharon she must stay behind. Materialising the TARDIS on the ship, they are quickly attacked. K-9 destroys a Dalek (Hurrah!) and Brill takes care of their Werelox guards. On the run from more Daleks, the Doctor and Brill are cornered in an alien zoo. The Daleks explain that they plan to take the most insidious elements of the hideous creatures in the zoo and use them to clone a race of Super Daleks that will lay in wait until their final conquest. K-9 rescues the Doctor by blasting the locks on the cages, allowing the monsters to attack the Daleks. The Doctor, Brill and K-9 escape to the TARDIS and materialise in the Dalek control room.

Meanwhile, Joe Bean has filled his Spacehog up with explosives and is preparing to ram the Dalek ship. He finds that Sharon and Babe Roth have stowed away on board, so he shoves them both in a capsule and ejects them from the ship.

K-9 destroys the Daleks in the time room and just as Joe is about to ram the Dalek ship, the Doctor projects it into Time Lock, so that Joe’s ship passes through it unharmed.

Back on New Earth, Brill takes it on himself to teach the humans how to fight like Werelox, while the Doctor and companions head on their way in the TARDIS.

From the alien zoo to the Werelox attack on Davy Crockett base, this would have been impossible to realise on the small screen. Unless the production team took up bank robbing.

The new companion who arrived in the last story is ignored in this one. Just like the TV show. What was her name again?

The Daleks are true to form by having a plan with three unrelated and unfeasible areas of attack. There’s the Werelox assault, the Neutron Fire and the Alien Zoo. If you read the story very closely, there are actually links between these plans. Just like if you stare at the patterns of any Jackson Pollock painting, you can see The Face of Boe.

The violence is miles over the top of what would be acceptable on British television, even in a post-watershed slot. In one brutal moment, Brill simultaneously claws one Werelok, stabs another and brings his boot down on a third, smashing its skull. If Mary Whitehouse, who frequently complained about the TV show, had seen this she would have been apoplectic. "I can still see it even today in my mind's eye. Doctor Who's companion, smashing the skull of a werewolf with it's boot." That’d have given the old biddy something to complain about.

There’s more superb art for this strip, with the Werelox transformations being a real delight. The opening scenes on Davy Crockett base give us child Werelox and the Doc Werelox with glasses. The Doctor’s own transformation is split across a number of frames, giving a real sense of his agonising fight against the venom.

Some of the little details bring the story to life, such as the Werelox’s toothbrushes and the sly faces of the creatures in the alien zoo. The Daleks also appear to have miniature versions of the TARDIS’s Time Rotor in their Time Room, which Si thought was nice.

The Daleks are well drawn for the uninteresting geometric dustbins they are. They’re pleasingly solid and chunky, with the only real problem being that their bases don’t taper properly, making them look rather conical. (That’s ‘conical’, not ‘comical’, they don’t have big clown shoes or red noses.) Gibbons also manages to put the Daleks into a lot of dramatic poses and action shots, which I can imagine would be challenging.

Frequently with these fourth Doctor stories, at least one part will end with a close up on the Doctor’s face while he says something portentous in capitals. This time, he bellows in wide-eyed horror: "The worst news possible! You’re dealing with the most evil race I’ve ever encountered…. The DALEKS!"

Usually when the Daleks returned on the TV show, the writers raised their game to give them a bit of a special story. The same is not true of Dogs of Doom, sadly, which is a decidedly average tale. What’s worse is that it is the Daleks that drag it down. It’s all entertaining fun when the Doctor is squaring off against the vicious Werelox, but the when the Daleks turn up the story loses steam and gets silly. The Trucker characters, Joe Bean and Babe Roth are also rubbish. Brill is far more interesting, but he is essentially the same character as Morris in the Iron Legion, exhibiting a lot of the same traits.

Dogs of Doom does have some quality moments though. The Doctor’s transformation into a Werelox and subsequent exile in the TARDIS is grim and disturbing. The revelation that the Daleks are behind the Werelox attack was always going to be exciting and it’s great fun watching the Daleks trying to defend themselves against the furious aliens escaping from the zoo.

What ruins Dogs of Doom though is the Dalek characterisation. When they’re showing off with their ‘Exterminate!’ and ‘Intruder on cargo deck twelve!’ exclamations, they’re fine. But when they pin the Doctor and Brill down in the alien zoo, a Dalek gives the following speech: ‘Daleks are incapable of love! Fool! Do you not yet understand why we are here? Can you not see THE DALEK MASTERPLAN?’ Firstly, The Dalek Masterplan was completely missing from the BBC archives in 1980. Secondly, having a Dalek exclaim ‘Fool!’ is wrong. If it was Cyberman you could understand. There’s no reason why a Dalek shouldn’t inform the Doctor that he is a fool before going on to explain their masterplan, but it feels so out of character for them. Maybe it’s just a Dalek aficionado thing.

The ending is weak, too. The Doctor enters the Dalek Time Room and puts the ship into a time vortex bubble, which conveniently makes it disappear just before Joe Bean can ram it. As Brill says ‘Sure seem like magic!’ The Doctor is a Time Lord, though, so maybe it’s forgivable and Dalek stories often end with a big ‘OFF’ switch being pressed.

There’s lots to enjoy in Dogs of Doom, but it’s not a great story for the Daleks.

This is the first time that the Daleks have faced the Doctor in Doctor Who Weekly. That's a heavily qualified statement though, as they had their own strip from the start of the comic, they previously faced the fourth Doctor in TV Comic's comic strip and a mini-Dalek turned up on the Doctor's key ring in Star Beast.

Sharon gets a new costume, which she wears for the rest of her adventures with the Doctor and possibly for the rest of her life.

Traditionally the Daleks always talk in a spiky font known as ‘Exterminate’. However in this story, they use standard comic font in spiky bubbles.

The Doctor’s new mission is to return Sharon to Blackcastle. Personally, I’d have still been trying to get to Benidorm. Sharon would probably enjoy it more there too.

The Doctor uses a laboratory in the TARDIS.

The Daleks return to the comic strip to menace the seventh Doctor in ‘Nemesis of The Daleks’. Nine years later!

There is a breakdown in the TARDIS’s vertical hold. It’s high time for it’s 10,000-year service. Presumably this would be 10,000 years travelled rather than it being 10,000 years old, which means that it is well overdue!

The Doctor activates the emergency unit and takes the TARDIS out of time and space when he is looking for the cure to the Werelox virus.

I deleted this review and had to re-write it, which made me very cross.