By Rob McCow

The Stockbridge Horror
 

The Collector

It’s another epic, 6 parts long, appearing in #70-75 of Doctor Who Monthly, running from December 1982 to April 1983. It was reprinted in issues #20-#22 of US Marvel Doctor Who Comic, published in May 1986 with new Dave Gibbons covers. If you were to buy the Doctor Who graphic novel ‘The Tides of Time’, published in 2005 by Panini Books, you too could read The Stockbridge Horror.
 

The World Shapers

Writer – Steve Parkhouse

Art –Steve Parkhouse (parts 1-3), Mick Austin (parts 4-6)

Editor – Alan McKenzie
 

Fellow Travellers

Shayde is back! The black cat-suited, bowling-ball headed assassin/companion returns to aid and abet the Doctor, so you know there’s going to be some hardcore Gallifreyan action going down. He’s still utterly mysterious, which is a good thing. He seems to be more allied to the Doctor than to the whims of the Matrix Lords, but that may all be a ruse.

We also meet a couple more of the Stockbridge villagers. These include Mrs Withers, owner of the Green Dragon Inn where the Doctor is staying. She’s a traditional Granny who appears in one frame with a tray and a teapot. Then there’s John Harvey the unlucky Fireman. First his fire engine goes off without him; then he’s burnt to a crisp by a fire god. Bummer. Harvey was on board when his fire engine ran over the Doctor though, so it jolly serves him right.

The Deal

Engineers in a quarry find the imprint of a Police Telephone Box in a five hundred million year old rock. Meanwhile, PC Jim Marshall finds a charred body in Wells Wood, near Stockbridge. Could there be a connection? It seems pretty unlikely!

The Doctor, staying at an inn in Stockbridge, reads about the Police Box being found in the rock. He heads back to the TARDIS and finds it covered in mud, but the TARDIS data-banks show no evidence that the ship has moved. The Doctor muses that the TARDIS has been getting rebellious, because he has left it parked in Wells Wood for some time.

The Doctor heads to the quarry to find answers, but there has been a security clampdown and he is turned away. Heading back to Stockbridge, he finds to his horror that Wells Wood is on fire. Running across a road he is injured by a fire engine racing to the scene. Harvey the fireman gets out to check that he is OK, but the Doctor refuses his help.

In the blazing forest, the Doctor sees a shadowy image of a man. He assumes it is Shayde*, but he finds that it is an enormous, muscular man with a hooded face. On seeing the Doctor, the creature blasts a nearby tree with fire that leaps from his arms. The Doctor makes for the TARDIS, while the fire-creature kills the fireman, who had followed the Doctor into the woods.

The Doctor makes it to the TARDIS and dematerialises. The pain from his injuries and his grief at the death of the fireman cause him to slump over the console.

The Firemen and the Police finally bring the fire under control after two days. They are baffled by an unburned, square-shaped patch of grass.

The Doctor examines his injuries on board the TARDIS, finding two fractured ribs and a bruised shoulder. He tries to sleep.

In space, fire-creature is clinging to the outside of the TARDIS. It pulls itself to the roof and smashes the lantern, causing the central column of the console to explode. The fire-creature takes possession of the TARDIS and causes it’s systems to go haywire. The Doctor attempts to activate the emergency Over-Ride control, but it seems to have no effect. Unbeknownst to the Doctor, it sends a signal to Gallifrey that re-activates Shayde, the secondary agent of the Matrix-Lords. Shayde materialises on board the TARDIS to find the wrecked console, but he is zapped with electricity when he tries to touch it.

The Doctor meanwhile, finds himself lost on board the TARDIS, being chased by a mud-creature and hearing Maxwell Edison’s** voice. He heads to the TARDIS data banks to try to repair the damage. He is attacked by the mud-creature, but Shayde rescues him and blasts the creature. The Doctor is grateful for Shayde’s intervention, but disturbed that the Matrix-Lords of Gallifrey are one step ahead of him. Shayde confirms that the TARDIS is possessed and there may be no cure. He proposes to enter the TARDIS computer and confront the creature in computer-space. As he prepares to enter, the scanner screen flickers into life, revealing an enormous War TARDIS, piloted by a Time Lord who introduces himself as Tubal Cain. If Shayde can’t beat off the parasitic creature, Tubal will destroy the TARDIS!

Shayde enters the TARDIS computer, guided by the Doctor. He is attacked by several different kinds of warriors in the surreal landscape, but with the Doctor’s help he escapes and finds the huge demonic face of the creature. The creature swallows Shayde whole.

Suddenly, the creature communicates with the Doctor. The Doctor wonders if Shayde has established some control over the creature. He contacts the creature and discovers that Shayde has manoeuvred it safely into the Matrix. The Doctor has control of the TARDIS once more.

The Doctor makes a short hop in time, evading a volley of torpedoes from Tubal Cain’s War TARDIS. The torpedoes carry on and strike Gallifrey’s military HQ, causing it to become frozen in time. This is where the TARDIS lands, allowing the Doctor a few unhindered weeks to repair his ship. Eventually however, the time warp fades and the Doctor is arrested. The Doctor questions under whose authority he is being held. Suddenly Rassilon appears on the TARDIS scanner! He tells the Doctor that his actions have been irresponsible. His TARDIS will be impounded and he will spend the rest of his days on Gallifrey.

The Doctor is placed on trial. The prosecution reveals that a primal force – the creature - invaded the TARDIS*** and formed a bond with it. The creature took the TARDIS back to the dawn of Earth to experience the elemental powers of creation. The creature escaped and the TARDIS sunk into the mud, until the on-board safety factors returned it to Stockbridge. The creatures become a fire god for Homo sapiens, but it was forever searching for the TARDIS.

The Doctor asks how the prosecution knows this and is told that it was all recorded in the TARDIS’s data banks. The Time Lords ask the Doctor what he was doing on Stockbridge and why he had left the TARDIS, but the Doctor only replies that he was playing cricket and fishing. And going for long walks. The Doctor states that the trial is meaningless, as they have no evidence and the TARDIS memory banks are unreliable. The Time Lords intend to produce the evidence in the imprint of the Police Box found in the quarry.

At the quarry, Shayde arrives. He assassinates the experts investigating the Police Box mystery and destroys the imprint, shortly before a War TARDIS arrives. With the evidence destroyed, the Time Lords are forced to let the Doctor go.

He arrives in the quarry and meets Shayde. The Doctor asks Shayde why he is following him, but Shayde only replies that he is merely a shadow. The Doctor wonders if he is really free.

* Shayde first appeared in The Tides of Time.

**Max is from Stars Fell On Stockbridge.

***The ‘Creature’ is the presence that Max sensed in Stars Fell On Stockbridge.
 

Although this story would be just about manageable on a BBC budget, the tone is so far away from Doctor Who on TV as to be unreachable. The Stockbridge Horror is far more grim, violent and portentous. There’s the occasional instance of humour, but it’s rather bleak.

Instead of being enthusiastic and bubbling with energy like the TV Doctor, the comic strip version of this story is morose, guilt-ridden and dejected. He’s abandoned his explorer’s way of life to settle down in a small village and play cricket. He still has little respect for authority though, particularly the authority of the Time Lords.

There’s also an interest in the deeper mysteries of the TARDIS, which develops on some of the ideas from Castrovalva. All the elements of TARDIS lore are present, with the connection to the Matrix and we also get sight of the food machine and the data-banks. There’s a hint of the Doctor’s relationship with the TARDIS being strained by long periods of rest.
 

It seems that Doctor Who Monthly wasn’t ready for Dave Gibbons’ departure. Consequently, the writer Steve Parkhouse takes over for the first half of this story. His art is surprisingly good, it’s only by comparison that it loses out. Parkhouse has a fairly rough style, with scratchy lines and areas of loosely shaded black. He has as much trouble with Davison’s likeness as Gibbons did – perhaps he didn’t have access to the reference photos. However, his other characters are all very good, his Shayde is spot on and the fire-god creature is outstanding, with spot-on musculature. The best image of the whole story is the creature clinging to the edge of the TARDIS, climbing to the top and smashing the lantern. It’s a truly chilling moment and brilliantly realised.

Then, all of a sudden, we get Mick Austen. It’s a bizarre choice for the comic, because I think Parkhouse’s work was far superior. For the first two instalments Austen copies Parkhouse’s style to an extent but Austen is even scruffier. Shayde’s shiny polished head becomes over-textured (at least until the last page) and dark scribbles frequently represent ‘space’. The Secret Council of the Time Lords is a sketch at best. Most of this could be put down to stylistic interpretation but there’s no excuse for messing up the proportions of main characters, which happens often. So we end up with the ‘Diddy’ Davison whose arms and legs are too short.

It’s not all bad though. Rassilon looks superb and the page layout is generally pretty inventive. No disrespect to Mick Austen though, his online gallery of fine art at www.whitelinegallery.com showcases his style much better than these comic strips.
 

End of The Line

Despite some memorable moments, The Stockbridge Horror is a bit of a dud. The set-up is really intriguing, but the story shifts aimlessly from a mystery in Stockbridge, to a TARDIS ghost story, to a Time Lord mythic tale. It should be exciting but it barely hangs together. Rassilon turns up for a cliffhanger, then instantly is forgotten. The story should have ended with the defeat of the fire-creature, which means the last two episodes that explain everything just feel tacked on. Worst of all, Shayde saves the day with his gun while the Doctor just sits and watches.

It does have a War TARDIS though. The underlying concepts are superb, a haunted TARDIS story is just the sort of thing that could have worked well on TV (except when they actually did it in Edge of Destruction). This kind of sprawling story worked quite well in The Tides of Time, when the beautiful and surreal images kept things entertaining. But with unappealing artwork and a confusing storyline, The Stockbridge Horror is the start of a real slump in the Doctor Who comic strips.
 

Follow That TARDIS!

This story picks up on the events from Stars Fell On Stockbridge, unsurprisingly.

The War TARDISes turn up in a number of Doctor Who books during the 90’s and they also hound the 8th Doctor during his second season of Big Finish audio adventures.

The Amazing Spider-man briefly appears on a TARDIS monitor while the ship is being haunted.

The Doctor suffers two fractured ribs and a bruised shoulder after being struck by the fire engine. The TARDIS has an X-Ray scanner. The Doctor takes his shirt off when he uses it, which is exciting for Davison admirers. It’s still Steve Parkhouse drawing, so his chest is in proportion to the rest of his body.