By Rob McCow

The Mark of Mandragora

The Mark of Mandragora ran from issues #169 to #172 of Doctor Who Magazine, published from January to April 1991. There were two preludes to the main story, entitled Darkness Falling (#167, November) and Distractions (#168, December).

Story – Dan Abnett

Art – Lee Sullivan (and Mark Farmer, in Distractions)

Inks – Mark Farmer

Letters – Steve Potter

Editor – John Freeman

Ace is still unable to find her way around the TARDIS, despite having been a companion for a long time. She tries to control her temper by counting to ten in her head. She has great faith in the Doctor and is unable to accept that he could be defeated. In this story, she doesn’t wear her distinctive jacket with the Blue Peter badges, but she does have earrings shaped like Star Trek communicators. Ace is now old enough (and well-dressed enough) to enter a salubrious nightclub without raising any eyebrows.

Captain Muriel Frost is a dishy UNIT lady working undercover alongside Sergeant Jasper Bean, who is neither dishy nor female. Captain Frost has read the Doctor’s files. She’s a no-nonsense, capable military commanderette with a natty fashion sense and a great line in self-promotion.

The Doctor and Ace meet Frost and Bean on what could be their final adventure!

Brigadier Gordon Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart makes his first appearance in the comic strip. He spends most of the story in Geneva and narrowly misses the Doctor on his return.

DARKNESS FALLING.

A UNIT Trooper named Ashley is exploring a dark room at the top of a building. His colleague Patterson was killed by something in the basement. Ashley is in constant communication with ‘Control’, who he tells that he is afraid of the dark. He is startled by a movement and a strange creature appears. It growls at him and throws him through a window, causing Ashley to plummet to his death.

‘Control’ was the Brigadier. He is frustrated as contact is broken with Ashley, but there is nothing he can do right away because he has been called to attend a summit in Geneva.

DISTRACTIONS.

In a big Universe, how can the doings of two people be anything other than a distraction? Ace has been lost in the TARDIS while the Doctor is lost in thought. The Doctor is interested when Ace says she found his old study. He hasn’t been able to drag the TARDIS away from Earth for ages and he has faced creatures that should never have appeared there. He thinks that it may have something to do with the Mandragora Helix that once infected the TARDIS, so the Doctor and Ace start searching the TARDIS for a trace of Helix energy.

THE MARK OF MANDRAGORA.

It’s the turn of the millennium and London has regained its ‘Swinging’ reputation. The Falling Star is the biggest nightclub in the world, a glass skyscraper built around an enormous double-helix structure. Two agents, a man and a woman, are investigating the club and are offered a drug called ‘M’. They break into a room marked ‘Staff Only’, but they are under observation.

In the TARDIS, the Doctor explains to Ace about the Mandragora Helix. A part of the Mandragora energy has survived in the TARDIS and is warping the ship’s dimensions, causing brick walls to appear behind doors and making corridors become mis-shaped. Magog of The Mallvelius appears behind one door, trying to escape the pocket dimension that the Doctor trapped her in.

At Falling Star, the two investigating agents find a Mandrake factory, Mandrake being the ‘M’ drug that was being pushed on them. They are interrupted by Stranks, the nightclub owner and his two bodyguards who are armed with Uzis. Stranks tells the agents that he knows they are Captain Frost and Sergeant Bean of UNIT. Bean shoots one of the bodyguards and puts the lights out, allowing them to escape. Stranks instils the dying bodyguard with strange energies, making him become a Child of Mandragora. Frost and Bean keep running, pursued by a terrifying "AROOO!"

Arooooo! Is this the Doctor's final battle?

The Doctor and Ace round a corner in the TARDIS and crash into the UNIT agents! Bean is about to shoot the Doctor, but is grabbed by the Mandragora Child. The Doctor urges Ace and Frost to run. The Mandragora Child chases them through the corridors of the club, until they reach a metal staircase. When the creature touches the staircase it shorts itself out on the metal and explodes.

They escape to Frost’s car and she drives them back to UNIT HQ. The Brigadier confirms the Doctor’s identity from Geneva, via video-link. Captain Frost explains about Mandrake, the highly addictive drug that is sweeping Britain’s streets. UNIT became involved when an unknown type of radiation was detected in samples of Mandrake. When Frost says that the supply of Mandrake has been traced to the Fallen Star nightclub, the Doctor decides that they should return to the club immediately.

The Doctor, Ace, Captain Frost and a number of UNIT troopers sneak into the club through a ventilation shaft. Ace asks how they got from the TARDIS directly into the nightclub. The Doctor tells her that the TARDIS has been spatially linked to this time by the Mandragora energy. The TARDIS is at risk of falling apart.

In the basement of the club, they find the base of the enormous Double-Helix structure, which the Doctor explains is an energy syphon. A UNIT soldier touches a console at the base of the syphon and it crackles with Helix energy, killing the soldier. The Doctor throws up his umbrella to deflect a blast and the umbrella is shredded, but the energy is briefly shorted allowing them to escape. The Doctor directs them through a door that leads to the secondary TARDIS control room. The TARDIS and the basement of the Falling Star are becoming one and the same.

The popular question-mark umbrella bites the dust. Could this be the end?

The Doctor uses the TARDIS instruments to examine the Helix. He discovers that Mandrake is designed to weaken human resolve, making them susceptible to Helix influence. Before he can get any further though, Stranks bursts in with his bodyguards.

Stranks leads them to a balcony above the nightclub dancefloor and tells the Doctor that the Mandragora Helix remembers his interference. To Ace’s horror the Doctor admits defeat and asks Stranks to explain his plan. Stranks says that the Mandragora Helix will manifest on Earth, using the willing users of the Mandrake drug. The Doctor realises that there is nothing he can do and as Stranks gloats, he becomes resigned to defeat. Ace tries to hit Stranks, but is knocked down by Mandragora energy.

Has the Doctor finally met his match in Stranks?

The Helix at the centre of the nightclub dancefloor starts to send out energy that transforms the dancers into the Children of Mandragora. Ace tries to console the Doctor, saying that he did his best. But the Doctor is desperate – he jumps from the balcony into the crowd of Mandragora Children.

Major Frost struggles free from the bodyguard holding her and hurls him from the balcony. She calls for all UNIT squads to mobilise. UNIT helicopters move in around the Falling Star tower block, but one is destroyed by Helix energy and crashes into the building.

Faced with death, Frost, Ace and The Doctor put on their 'Game' faces.

In the crowd, Ace uses a fire extinguisher to batter the Mandragora Children and get to the Doctor. The Doctor protests that nothing can be done. The Helix will reconstruct our Universe into a new form. As the energy builds up, Ace and the Doctor can only watch as the Helix glows brighter, it’s brightness clouding out everything else.

Is this the end for Doctor Who?

Then the Helix shatters, throwing dust and ashes everywhere. The Doctor and Ace have survived. The Doctor tells Ace that at the final moment a power surge blew out a vital component of the build-up – his TARDIS. The Universe is saved but the TARDIS has been disintegrated.

At UNIT HQ, the Doctor and Ace recover from their ordeal. The Doctor is staring sadly out of a window, playing with a conker. Frost tells them that UNIT are going to be expanded in the wake of the crisis, to become the United Nations Foreign Hazard Duty. She leaves the Doctor and Ace.

They are disturbed by a creaking noise. The Doctor tells Ace that perhaps the TARDIS didn’t blow out and instead it landed just as he had programmed it to, in UNIT HQ. As they leave in the TARDIS, they just miss the Brigadier returning from Geneva.

The Mark of Mandragora is a direct sequel to the 1976 classic, The Masque of Mandragora, in which the Doctor stated that the Mandragora Helix would be in a position to try and take over the Earth again at the end of the 20^th Century. The secondary control room of the TARDIS, which was introduced in Masque of Mandragora, has an important role to play in Mark of Mandragora. There is also a flashback to the earlier story, a brief cutaway showing Tom Baker’s Doctor and the villain Hieronymous.

This story occurs at the turn of the 20^th Century. Round about this time, thousands of miles away in San Fransisco, the seventh Doctor was regenerating into the Eighth in The 1996 TV Movie.

Events in Battlefield are mentioned, referred to by Captain Frost as ‘The Availlon Fiasco’. Battlefield may not be the best Doctor Who story ever, but I think calling it a ‘Fiasco’ is unfair!

In the new series episode ‘Aliens of London’, a senior female UNIT soldier is wearing a name-badge marked ‘Frost’. If this is Muriel Frost, then it’s a shame because the Slitheen kill her.

The Space-Time Vortex scene in the Distractions prologue resembles the Pertwee era title sequence.

Lee Sullivan’s solid comic-strip style suits the story well. Everything is clearly laid out and the action sequences are full of motion and drama. Although the art seems rushed and sloppy in a few places, it’s spot on for all the important moments. So during some of the longer expositions the artwork is very sketchy, but it becomes more solid when the Mandrogra Child attacks, or when a particularly important point is made. There’s a lovely close up of the Doctor’s eyes spread across the middle of one of the pages when he is contemplating the horror of Mandragora’s plan.

Talking of the Doctor, there’s no doubt this time that it’s Sylvester McCoy that the artist is drawing. Lee doesn’t get him perfect every time, but he doesn’t need to. There are enough moments where he captures McCoy so wonderfully that it carries the comic strip through. The best moments come in the Distractions prologue when the Doctor is being mysterious, dark and quiet. Lee adds some great touches, such as reflecting the TARDIS console in the Doctor’s eyes and showing his face half behind the central glass column. These details add so much atmosphere to the story.

The TARDIS itself is lovingly rendered, with two console rooms and the library making an appearance. The warping of the TARDIS’s dimensions into the basement of the Fallen Star is achieved subtly, making the moment where the Doctor and Ace round a corner and bump into the UNIT soldiers quite a shock for the reader.

The design of the Mandragora Children is excellent, making them look powerful and menacing. They’re quite Cthulu-esque with their distended bodies and bizarre skin folds. They’re one of the most distinctive monsters that the Who comic strip has produced over the years.

The Mark of Mandragora had an excellent build up. It was given not one, but two prologues, so although the magazine got two months of cheaper, shorter stories, it felt like the start of something huge. The idea of having the TARDIS merge with the Fallen Star building is thrilling as well and creates a real shock when the Doctor and Ace round a corner and find themselves in the nightclub basement. With the return of UNIT and Mandragora, you get the sense that they’re really going for it this time. It’s a far cry from the quirky, inconsequential stories of the early McCoy run.

There’s good use of UNIT as a way of getting the Doctor and Ace into the story, telling them about their researches into Mandrake. Saves the Doctor sending Ace out on to the streets to buy some ‘M’. It also means that the Doctor quickly picks up some allies to help him. Jasper Bean is possibly the oddest name I’ve ever heard for a rock-hard, gun-totting UNIT trooper. Fortunately he doesn’t survive the story to bother anyone else with his incongruous name.

Again, this story is paving the way for the New Adventures and building on the ‘darker’ themes of Season 26. Though I don’t think that including drugs and setting it in a nightclub necessarily makes it adult. It’s part of the problem that all these stories face, that they take some of the trappings of adult drama but it’s still a portentous run-around with dodgy sci-fi and funny aliens. That doesn’t mean it can’t be a good portentous run-around, but it lacks the depth and complexity of convincing adult drama.

The plot feels very rushed, as though huge sections of the story have been put on fast-forward. The Doctor and Ace rush about from place to place without stopping. They go from the TARDIS directly into the nightclub, pop to UNIT HQ for five minutes then back to the nightclub then it’s all over. The rushing around works against the epic themes of the story, as do the vast swathes of exposition.

The ending is also a problem. The TARDIS is under a huge amount of threat in this story and you could almost believe that they were going to strand the Doctor on Earth permanently. So it’s slightly disappointing that with a wave of the Doctor’s conker the TARDIS is back in one piece. With the TV show off air and the comic strip trying to kick out in its own direction, it would have been interesting to see the Doctor stuck on Earth in the 1990’s. On the other hand, it’s very amusing that such an epic-feeling comic strip could be resolved by the TARDIS simply landing!

I don’t want to be too harsh on Mark of Mandragora though, because it’s failings only show up in retrospect. The story telling is first rate, it picks the reader along and sends them bowling into a full strike of a climax with barely a foot-fault to mention. The plot may jolt along, but it makes it interesting throughout and keeps us guessing as to what the Doctor can possibly do to save the day. It packs in fast-paced thrills and exciting action without straying too far from what good Doctor Who often is; the bizarre juxtaposed with the ordinary and the fate of the Universe at stake.

The Mark of Mandragora came top of the 1990 Poll as published in issue #176 of Doctor Who Magazine. The full results were:

- The Mark of Mandragora – 36.55%

- Fellow Travellers – 32.36%

- Train-Flight – 26.36%

- Hunger From The Ends of Time – 3.09%

- Doctor Conkerer! – 1.64%

It was also revealed in #176 that Nemesis of the Daleks had won the previous year’s poll with sixty-nine percent of the vote. This is interesting, as the full results of the comic strip poll for 1989 were never published in DWM.

Magog from The Iron Legion makes a cameo appearance.

In a bizarre spelling cock-up, Captain Frost refers to The ‘Gantic’ Invasion and The ‘Availlon’ Fiasco. Apparently this refers to events in ‘Invaders From Gantac’ and ‘Battlefield’ (originally titled ‘Storm Over Avallion’) respectively.

Captain Frost promotes herself to Major after throwing the bodyguard from the balcony in the last part of the story. She is consistently referred to as Captain up until that point.

Muriel Frost reappeared in the comic strip ‘Evening’s Empire’ and the Big Finish audio adventure Fires of Vulcan, where she was played by Karen Henson. An alternative Earth version of Muriel turned up in the comic strip ‘Final Genesis’.

This story features quotes from: Francis Bacon – Essay on Death; Othello and Anthony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare; and Alfonso – King of Castille. In the days before the Internet, choosing quotes for your comic strip truly demonstrated a muscular intellect.

There wasn’t much feedback on this story in the Letters pages of DWM. People were too busy complaining about Gary Russell’s review of The Krotons.