By Rob McCow

Dragon’s Claw

The Collector

The first half of this story was published during 1980 in Doctor Who Weekly #39-#43. The strip continued when the publication turned into Doctor Who Monthly, in issues #44 and #45. It was re-printed for the US Marvel Comic in issues #6 and #7, which featured new cover art for the story by Dave Gibbons. The strip is currently available in Doctor Who: Dragon’s Claw graphic novel, published in 2004 by Panini Books. It has a yellow cover.

The World Shapers

Writer – Steve Moore

Artist – Dave Gibbons

Editor – Paul Neary

Fellow Travellers

When Sharon steps out of the TARDIS at the start of the story, she says "Can’t we just get out of here Doctor?" which paves the way for the attitudes of future stay-at-home TV companions, Peri and Tegan. Sharon does lots of companion things in Dragons Claw, such as asking the Doctor what’s happening, getting captured and looking pretty. Her main role seems to be to show off the new enormous breasts that she gained in The Time Witch. Her new hairstyle is groovy, but she now has an impossibly balanced body, poured into a tight fitting cat suit. It’s all terribly perverse. Apart from that, it’s difficult to pin down anything interesting about Sharon. She says "Blimey!" a lot.

K-9, the Doctor’s real best friend, gets a much better time of it. He gets to stun guards, blast holes in walls and his skills in mimicry eventually save the day. Although K-9 doesn’t get any pompous comments this time, it was lovely to see him shouting the hypnotic command to break the monks’ bloodthirsty rage. All this and he analyses quartz rock crystal lattices too. Geology field trips would be much more exciting if you went on them with K-9.

The Deal

The year is 1522 and the TARDIS arrives in a Chinese costal village that is under attack from pirates. The Doctor and Sharon observe a group of fighting monks fending off pirates – using a powerful ray gun that they call a Star Weapon! The monks take the Doctor, Sharon and K-9 prisoner and transport them back to their monastery. On the way, they tell the Doctor that they learnt their advanced fighting skills from the mysterious Eighteen Bronze Men.

At the monastery, K-9 stuns their guard Chang and they have a scout around. They find the old Abbot, Hsiang The Ancient. He was deposed by Yueh Kuang eight years previous and now spends his time buried up to his waist and meditating in the hills. Hsiang The Ancient tells them how Yueh used the skills of the Eighteen Bronze Men to depose him.

They are discovered by young Li, one of the monks, but the Doctor and Sharon trip him up and Hsiang The Ancient knocks him out with a tap to the neck. The Doctor and Sharon return with the unconscious Li to the monastery. They tie Li up and return to the cell just as their guard Chang recovers from being stunned. They convince him that he merely slept and that they haven’t been anywhere.

In the morning, Yueh orders their guard to show the Doctor around. He is shown the Hall of the Bronze Men where young initiates face their final test. The Doctor spots young Li and darts inside to hide. Yueh follows him in with the Star Weapon. The Doctor, cornered by Yueh, uses the sonic screwdriver to open a door and finds his way into the lair of the Bronze Men, who turn out to be Sontarans!

The Doctor, Sharon and K-9 escape the monastery with the help of Chang. From Chang’s description of the final test of the Bronze Men, the Doctor surmises that the Sontarans are planting hypnotic commands in the monks. With the help of Hsiang The Ancient, they find the Sontarans’ crashed scout ship. The Doctor realises they will need a large rock crystal to contact their fleet for rescue. Chang tells them that the Emperor of China has such a crystal and that he has commanded the monks’ presence in Peking.

They dig out Hsiang The Ancient and take him back to the monastery, just as Yueh is preparing to leave with his army of monks. Yueh uses his command "The Bronze Buddha has a heart of iron!" which turns the monks into mindless killers. But K-9 records the phrase and plays it back, breaking the trance. The monks overpower Yueh. Chang, who is still in a frenzy, wipes out the Sontarans. With the old Abbot reinstated, the Doctor, K-9 and Sharon ride off to get back to the TARDIS.

In some respects, there would have been no problem staging this on TV. Burt Kwouk, David Yip and John Bennet could have been enrolled as convincing Chinamen and Wales could have doubled as China. Best of all, Sontaran’s masks and costumes could have been done on the cheap as they don’t do very much in the story. Even if they got the Sontaran with the Cockney accent, Derek Deadman, he’d only have got about two lines in total.

Unfortunately, the violent nature of the story would have scuppered any real hope of getting it on screen. You can’t have a story that relies on fighting monks for most of the action and edit out all the violence. Never mind the nunchucka that the BBFC banned from TV at the time. This story has swords, halberds, hooked blades and a nasty iron ball and chain affair that could cause obscene damage.

It would even cause headaches for the new series. The few moments of extreme martial-arts violence in Tooth and Claw were skimped over and achieved mostly with fast paced jump cuts. Seventies’ director Pennant Roberts wasn’t known for his fast paced jump cuts.

4-Dimensional Vistas

As this story is a historical, there are less of the bizarre aliens, effects and backdrops that characterised the artwork of the earlier stories. There are however two great full page spreads, the one of the initial Pirate attack on the village and the other being two battling monks framed against a backdrop of a masked Sontaran. Both are wonderfully stylish. There’s surprisingly little in the way of Chinese landscape and architecture, just the odd frame to remind the reader where the story is set, but it does look good when it’s there. The monastery in particular is spectacular.

Also, I love the Sontarans’ control room. All flashing lights and gleaming panels, it’s a great contrast with the rest of the art.

The story’s fight scenes are dynamic and quite subtle in places. For example, in the flashback where Yueh betrays Hsiang The Ancient, he sweeps low with his blade and slices the back of the Abbot’s ankles. The frame is in silhouette and the actual attack is partly covered by a text box, but it’s definitely there. The suggested violence may make it acceptable for a children’s comic, but it’s still realistically painful and gory.

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, we get the rather post-modern: "As Sharon would say… OH BLIMEY!" And later in the strip he says: "Hear one key-word… AND START KILLING EVERYONE IN SIGHT!", inexplicably turning into Gareth Thomas as he does so.

End of The Line

This story promises a lot. From the premise, you might have thought that it would feature Sontarans battling ninja monks, K-9 blasting away and some narrow escapes for the Doctor before he saves the day. It certainly delivers some of that, but overall it’s disappointing. Perhaps if it had been scripted by the previous comic writers, Mills and Wagner, it would have given us all these things and more.

To be fair to Steve Moore, there’s a lot about Dragons Claw that is very good. The old Abbot buried in the sand who’s always hungry is a great character. Hsiang is the kind of seasoned old ninja toughie who in any martial arts film would be able to beat seven shades of sushi out of everyone else. He’s always thinking of his stomach, coming out with lines like: ‘First thing to do is order a feast… all the food I can eat… You can have some too of course… but not too much!’ Chang, the young monk who helps the Doctor, is also pretty cool, though he’s not as entertaining as the malicious Yueh who always manages to strike a dramatic pose and get his face lit up in a sinister fashion. His beard is evil enough to topple the Emperor on it’s own.

Although the Sontarans are integral to the plot, it could have been any monster manipulating the monks. Their militaristic society means that the Sontarans fit into the story neatly, but it ends up being pointless because they don’t do anything. The plan about collecting the crystal to contact the fleet isn’t nearly as exciting as Yueh’s desire to overthrow the Chinese Emperor. It might have been a better strip if it had been Yueh’s plan all along, with no direct alien involvement.

Dragons Claw isn’t a complete let down, but it should have been so much better. And I just can’t forgive that the Sontarans are annihilated out of frame. Perhaps I’m just bloodthirsty!

Follow That TARDIS!

This is the first time that the Sontarans battle the Doctor in the comic strip.

The Sontarans return in the comic strip time and again to plague the Doctor, most recently facing the Tenth Doctor in The Betrothal of Sontar.

The final two parts of this story appeared in Doctor Who Monthly. Consequently, the first five parts of this strip vary in length from three to four pages. Part six is seven pages and the final part is an epic ten pages long! After this story, the strip settled down to eight page instalments per issue which became the definitive format for Doctor Who comic strips for the rest of time, or at least until the present day.

The chopping and changing of the format affected the way the story developed, probably explaining why there was no proper showdown with the Sonatarans.

K-9 is shown to be capable of recording voices and playing them back. He is unable to move as fast as someone running because he cannot exceed the speed limit, or so he says.