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 By Rob McCow |
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Click here for this column with the new layout What’s the story called? The Good Soldier The Collector The Good Soldier reported for duty in issues #175-178 of Doctor Who Magazine, thrilling all with its army manoeuvres from July to October of 1991. The World Shapers Story – Andrew Cartmel Art – Mike Collins Inks – Steve Pini Letters – Glib Editor – John Freeman Fellow Travellers Ace is fed up with hamburgers and would prefer a curry. She’s unfamiliar with the insular paranoia of the US in the 1950’s. She says ‘Gordon Bennett’ when a soldier catches her whispering and points a gun at her. She has learnt how to drive and can handle a large American Cadillac. Jerome Wyler was born in 1936, Dade County, Florida. At the start of the story, he eats liquorice, he’s frightened of thunderstorms and has never kissed a girl. The Deal The TARDIS has landed in Nevada in 1954, unexpectedly turning into a big Cadillac to blend in with the background. The Doctor and Ace drive through the desert in the TARDIS, arriving at a petrol station called the Nevada Star where army soldiers are examining an exotic field gun. While Ace flirts with the soldiers, the Doctor talks to Colonel Rhodes about some expected ‘visitors’. Ace goes for a walk when she finds that the Nevada Star serves no food. She is astonished when she finds that the Nevada Star and the ground for about a hundred meters around it have been sliced out of the earth and are now floating through space! She rushes back to the Doctor and they all hide inside the Nevada Star.
The disc of earth docks with a saucer shaped space vehicle. This, in turn, docks with a vast warship. Colonel Rhodes briefs his men, telling them that a flying saucer incident has occurred. Across the road from the garage, a group of Cybermen dig up through the soft ground.
The Cybermen are accompanied by large metallic bugs that drag a large, cube shaped cannon towards the garage.
When Ace asks if the cannon can move by itself, the Doctor shouts for everyone to get down, but Colonel Rhodes orders his men to ignore him. There is a huge explosion as the Cyber-cannon-man blasts its way into the Nevada Star. The soldiers’ weapons are ineffective, so they resort to the exotic field gun. Ace reconnects the wire to the gun and it blasts the Cyber-cannon-man to smithereens. All but a few of the soldiers are dead. Amongst the dead is Jerome Wyler from Florida. The Doctor and Ace head down the Cybermen access shaft to the main warship. The Doctor explains that the Cybermen attacked Earth in 1986, but they would have moved sooner if they’d had the right weapon. The warship is this weapon. The Doctor sabotages a light-bulb, which scuttles off on long metallic legs to be repaired. Colonel Rhodes imagines he is shooting Communists in Manchuria, but he is actually under Cyber-control and shooting his own men. The Cyberplanner orders that he is installed in their warship. His legs are removed so he can fit in the Cyber control pod. A small, circular device to link Rhodes’ mind directly with the ship is placed on his forehead. The Doctor’s sabotaged Cyber-light-bulb also steals a control device.
Back at the Nevada Star, the Doctor rigs up the Cadillac TARDIS with the control device. It only accepts a human mind, so Ace has to use it. She orders the shuttlecraft to disconnect from the Cyber Warship. The Cyberplanner orders that they pursue and destroy the shuttlecraft.
Ace, controlling the shuttlecraft, narrowly escapes a missile attack. As the Cyber Warship chases them, she orders the Reserve Reactor to send itself into a critical state and load itself onto an escape craft. As the Cyber Warship approaches, the escape craft launches. The Cyberplanner orders Colonel Rhodes to ignore the shuttle and go after the escape craft. They pull the escape craft in on a tractor beam. As the Reserve Reactor goes into meltdown, the Cyberplanner calmly reports to Mondas the loss of the Warship. Ace and the Doctor drive off into the Nevada sunset in the Cadillac TARDIS. Ace is no longer hungry, but her carburettor needs some work and her fuel line is hurting a bit. TV Action The Cybermen that appear in this story are similar to the ones from The Tenth Planet, although they have the hooverball and piping of the Cybermen from The Moonbase. The Cyber Warship bears the Cyber-head logo that memorably appeared in Tomb of The Cybermen. Aside from that they have all kind of variant Cybermen and bug like Cyber-creatures that have never been seen on TV. This story is a shade too violent for television, but if it was suitably expanded could have fitted into the way the show was developing at the end of Season 26. The Doctor is dark and mysterious with no sign of joviality whatever. Ace is troubled and psychologically scarred, becoming increasingly alien and detached. 4-Dimensional Vistas OK – the biggest problem I have with the art in this story is the way Ace’s lips are drawn. Last time we had Polly’s enormous nose; now Ace is blessed with a kisser that would make Mick Jagger jealous. There must be a way to draw a girl’s lips that doesn’t make them look like two bananas. I’ve just been looking at some photos of Sophie Aldred. While she does have full, well-rounded lips, they don’t look as unnatural as they do in The Good Soldier. In real life, they blend in with her face and look quite attractive. In the comic strip there are occasions where they look spot on, but sometimes the big lips thing jumps off the page in a very disturbing way. I love the alternate Cybermen designs in this story. The Cyber-cannon-man is maybe a bit over the top, but the Reserve Reactor with the Earthshock-style Cyberman face is spectacular. The Cyber Warship doesn’t seem quite right to me, it doesn’t look as if it’s cut from the same technological cloth as the Cybermen and their entourage of bugs and weapons. There is, however, one absolute classic moment where the Cybermen first dig through the sand. It’s a thrilling cliffhanger and totally unexpected. The leering menace of the Cyberman staring at the service station and the Cyberman hand right in the foreground create a memorable and well-framed image. It more than makes up for the lips. End of The Line This is one of those stories that are exciting to follow, but disappointing in retrospect. Although the artwork is very different from Cartmel’s previous story Fellow Travellers, the story style is the same. The dialogue is sparse and there are numerous gaps in the narrative. Quite often this works well as it hurries the story along and encourages the reader to fill in the gaps. On the other hand, it means that the characterisation is non-existent. Ace shows no reluctance to merge herself with the Cyber-shuttlecraft. Although the Army troops are massacred, nobody shows any remorse or seems to care. Colonel Rhodes has had some bad experiences in Manchuria, but it’s never made clear why he sides with the Cybermen so easily. Is he drugged? Is he hallucinating? Or is he… back in time? The first instalment is fabulous. Everything is dark and mysterious; the Doctor seems to know what’s going on; then we get the dramatic pull back to show the service station flying through space. It pulls back even further as the disc of earth docks with a shuttlecraft; and then a warship; and then the Cybermen turn up. It’s a brilliant set-up, exactly the kind of sci-fi thrill that we want from Doctor Who. It’s typical Cartmel, in that it’s striving to be adult but not quite getting it right. It’s too mired in adolescence and violence. The Good Soldier is entertaining and memorable, but it’s not a particularly good story. Follow That TARDIS! "The Good Solider" was originally a novel by Ford Madox Ford, set immediately before the first world war. Colonel Rhodes looks a heck of a lot like Commander Louis B Frederic from the Tom Baker comic strip, Spider God. PEP magazine features Nevada’s own miss Amy Flagg, Sweet young thing from the Atom State. It costs 40 cents. The Doctor and Ace re-visit the Cold War America of 1957 in the New Adventure novel, First Frontier by David A McIntee. This book also features a flying saucer, a Cadillac and a service station. And Professor Bernice Summerfield, who we shall be hearing more of in due course. Kieron Mullens, who may be a hospital porter, phoned Doctor Who Magazine from Bristol to give them the scoop on the comic strip. ‘Of course at the moment any form of "New Adventures" are welcome, but I can’t say I’m ecstatic at the way they’ve been handled so far. I’ve just read The Good Soldier: 3 and I’m eagerly awaiting the next part for all the wrong reasons! Is there really any point to all this? Do we really need another ‘Early Cybermen’ story? My answer to the last question would be yes, if only this was of the calibre of the World Shapers, which, given Andrew Cartmel’s previous story (Fellow Travellers) is all the more surprising. He has obviously tried to capture a lot of the atmosphere of said story, but it seems ‘rushed’ without actually going anywhere. The other failing seems to be the artwork. Don’t get me wrong, I like Mike Collins’ and Steve Pini’s work, but it’s more suited to ‘comic’ stories like Party Animals rather than those relying on tension. John Ridgway would have been a good choice. ‘The same goes for The Mark of Mandragora, which, although a generally excellent tale, was let down by some of Lee Sullivan’s panel layouts. Otherwise he’s proved to be a very capable Who artist and his competent visualisation of Troughton’s Doctor has me thirsting for more. Any chance…?’ If that wasn’t enough, Malcolm Stewart of Cambridge paused from being Master of Balliol College to ask us: ‘Am I the only who who thinks that Andrew Cartmel’s comic strips are remarkably like the TV stories he edited? First Fellow Travellers plundered shamelessly from Ghost Light. (A spooky house revealed to be the Doctor’s home – apparently the original premise for Marc Platt’s story – a nursery, animal skeletons and stuffed birds.) Even Ace’s wielding of the hockey stick had echoes of the Remembrance baseball hat scenes. Now though, we have The Good Solider and Cartmel, has borrowed the human computer idea from Remembrance – a part human, part mechanical war strategist. I know you can’t keep a good idea down but this is ridiculous!’ I want to use dashes as much as Malcolm does – but generally I try to restrain myself. There’s an interview with Andrew Cartmel where he mentions The Good Soldier. ‘What I like best in that strip is the gruesome cyber-interface stuff, while this guy has to rewire him and his legs have to come off. I like gruesome man-machine interface, it's quite cyberpunk.’
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