By Rob McCow

Exodus / Revelation / Genesis

The Collector

This three-story arc ran from DWM #108 to #110 published in January-March 1986. It was also reprinted in colour in the February 1994 #16 issue of Doctor Who Classic Comics, with a cover by Colin Howard. Panini Books are on a promise to release this one day.

The World Shapers

Script – Alan McKenzie (adapted by John Ridgeway)

Art – John Ridgeway

Letters – Annie Halfacree

Editor – Shelia Cranna

Fellow Travellers

Peri is fond of clothes and is pleased to find a dressing-up box in the TARDIS. She wears an American Western-style bonnet in Exodus, but ditches it for Revelation.

Frobisher is allowed to help the Doctor carry out repairs to the TARDIS, at least to the extent of fetching pneuma-spanners from the console room. Although he is happy to travel with the Doctor, he does wonder sometimes if he’d be better off ‘…back home picking up twenty-five a day plus expenses as a gumshoe.’ In this story, he starts to suffer from mono-morphia, which restricts his ability to change shape.

Peri and Frobisher spend most of this story locked up in a castle dungeon. Helping the Doctor with his enquiries is Captain Krogh, a straight-laced man whose main responsibility appears to be to defend a group of scientists who live in a castle. As Captain, he commands a number of guards. Like his guards, he carries a sword for defence. Although not unintelligent, Krogh needs the Doctor’s help to solve the mysterious disappearances in the castle.

The Deal

On Sylvaniar, a planet swamped by ‘progress’, the poverty stricken inhabitants are struggling to survive. Some are able to leave the planet in space-cars.

The Doctor is repairing the TARDIS with Frobisher’s help. Peri, meanwhile has found a new outfit. While looking for a pneuma-spanner, Frobisher and Peri come across something unexpected in one of the rooms of the TARDIS – a space-car, with a family of travellers!

The Doctor is initially hostile, while the family are frightened and confused. They also have no idea how they got into the TARDIS. They explain that it was the Doctor’s sort – scientists – that caused them to leave home. An attempt to control the weather caused the crops to fail. When farmers started to go missing, the well-fed scientists in the castle refused to help.

Having heard enough, the Doctor decides to dematerialise the TARDIS and send the family on their way. Peri, however is shocked at his callousness and tells him they should offer them aid. The Doctor realises he’s been wrong and they load the family’s car up with food and clothes before sending them on their way. The Doctor sets the co-ordinates for Sylvaniar to find out what happened to the missing farmers.

The TARDIS arrives in a stone castle, where the Doctor, Peri and Frobisher find a dead body. A troop of guards burst into the room led by Captain Krogh. He identifies the dead man as Professor Verdeghast and immediately accuses the Doctor and his companions.

Dr. Sovak uses Cyber-might to overcome comedy moustache

Krogh interrogates them in their cell and the Doctor explains what happened. Although still suspicious, Krogh allows the Doctor to help his investigations, leaving Peri and Frobisher locked up. The Doctor finds marks on Verdeghast’s neck and missing research papers. They also meet the scar-faced Dr. Kravaal, who had come looking for Verdeghast’s help.

Krogh takes the Doctor to see Director Rukh. On the way they bump into the diminutive and white-haired Dr. Sovak, who has been attacked. Although Sovak managed to get away, he doesn’t know who is responsible.

The Doctor and Krogh arrive at Director Rukh’s office, only to find the Director being throttled by a Cyberman!

Sometimes, John Ridgeway felt constricted by the Doctor Who comic strip

Krogh attacks the Cyberman with his sword, but is easily swatted away. The Cyberman disappears behind a curtain, leaving Director Rukh breathless but alive. Dr. Sovak arrives and takes Director Rukh to the infirmary at the Doctor’s request.

The Doctor and Krogh find a secret passage behind the curtain in Rukh’s office. They head down the passage and realise they are being followed by Dr. Kravall. They confront him, but the Doctor is sure that Kravall is not responsible for the attacks. At the end of the passage they find a chamber where there are four Cybermen hooked up to machinery. The Cybermen have a mixture of Cyber and human limbs. And adjusting the machinery is Dr. Sovak!

My army awakes, Doctor!

Sovak explains how he found the Cybermen in a crashed ship. He used body parts from the farmers he abducted to rebuild them. Sovak was sick of being laughed at for being a funny little man. He instructs the Cybermen to kill everyone in the castle and re-energises them all at once. But as he does so, there is a flashback and his machine explodes.

The feedback starts to burn out every circuit in the castle, starting fires everywhere. Kravall and Krogh escape while the Doctor uses the TARDIS to rescue his companions. The Doctor leaves Director Rukh with a message, that he should focus his research on helping his people rather than esoteric research.

On board the TARDIS, Frobisher reveals that he is suffering from mono-morphia. Until further notice he’s stuck – as a penguin!

TV Action

This story is ideal for television in several ways. There are some lovely TARDIS interior scenes (cheap!). The action of the last two parts all takes place in a nondescript castle. The Cybermen with human body parts would be easy to achieve and probably cheaper than full Cyberman costumes. They’ve even taken the budget-friendly step of limiting Frobisher to his penguin form.

The characterisation is also similar to the TV show. The Doctor is irascible and angry when his TARDIS is invaded, while Peri is more compassionate and caring. The TARDIS has a nice loft and trunks full of spare clothes, as well as food and medical supplies.

4-Dimensional Vistas

There’s very little art of note in this story. John Ridgeway’s freehand style isn’t particularly suited to the symmetrical, manufactured form of the Cybermen. There are still some imposing images though, in particular at the end of Revelation where the Cyberman is seen for the first time.

Dr. Sovak is a very classical comedy Einstein type, Dr. Kravall is disfigured without being hideous and Captain Krogh looks very noble with his uniform and little moustache.

Strangely, the farmers in Exodus look absolutely nothing like the humans in the castle. The farmers all have domed heads, gangly limbs and big round arms. The reactivated Cybermen have distinctly humanoid body parts, which look different from the limbs of the farmers. This is odd, as Dr. Sovak claims he used the body parts from the farmers. It’s an unusual art continuity error that can’t be satisfactorily explained. Perhaps the people in the castle are simply different from the farmers, or maybe the Doctor went to the wrong planet altogether.

End of The Line

Although not brilliant by any means, Exodus-Revelation-Genesis is a pretty decent three parter. Exodus even stands up well on its own as a tease to the main story. It’s a refreshing change to have the drama coming out of the Doctor being angry, especially when it’s Peri’s compassion that resolves it. The poor farmers who crashed into the TARDIS are sympathetic, all the better for being a family.

In the rest of the story, the Doctor gets suspected of murder, imprisoned and eventually allowed to help investigate. It’s a very classic Doctor Who story outline and it gives this story a warmth of familiarity which the brilliantly bizarre epics of the previous few years lacked. Although some might say that it’s clichéd and predictable, the cliffhanger of Revelation is undoubtedly a brilliant moment and a decent surprise after the very traditional build up.

The end of the story is an enormous cop-out though. Just as we’re about to get four human-Cyberman hybrids on the loose and causing mayhem, Dr. Sovak’s equipment explodes. It’s as though the story simply ran out of time. Another episode of Cyber-mayhem would have been much appreciated. And having Dr. Kravall say ‘He was a genius, at electronics, biology and microsurgery, but he always had trouble with heavy duty electrics’ is quite funny, but severely underlines the problem. It could have been worse though… Alan McKenzie’s original draft had an even more random end for the Cybermen.

Follow That TARDIS!

The Doctor mentions that he was a funny looking little man a few regenerations ago.

A Fine Arts Casting model was produced in the mid-eighties of the part human Cybermen from this story, complete with globes to hold.

Director Rukh looks exactly like a certain artist named John Ridgeway.

Colin Howard’s cover for the Classic Comics issue 16 features Peri in her outfit from The Two Doctors. In the strip she wears something closer to what she wore in Attack of the Cybermen. (Well, this IS the trivia section! What did you expect?)

The TARDIS is well stocked with medical supplies and food, including ‘BEANS’.

The Beans of Kindness

In the John Ridgeway interview for DWM, he claimed that ‘It may be noteworthy that the final episode credited to Alan was written by me. Shelia Cranna who was DWM editor by then, had paid the BBC for the use of the Cybermen and was rather upset by the fact that the original script only contained half of one Cyberman. I eliminated a couple of coincidences that weakend the storyline, one of which was that after a prolonged period of drought, an electrical storm suddenly appeared from nowhere and blew up the bad guy and the Cybermen. I also decided to re-use Steve (Parkhouse)’s idea of mono-morphia to explain how Frobisher was kept prisoner in a cell.’