Heliotrope Bouquet

Issues #181 and #182 of Doctor Who Magazine presented us with the short story Heliotrope Bouquet, split into two parts. It was accompanied by reprints of ‘Spider God’ and ‘The Fires Down Below’, which were replacing the abandoned ‘Evening’s Empire’ comic strip. The story was published in December 1991 – January 1992.

Story – Dan Abnett (Dabnet!)

Illustrations – Lee Sullivan (Lullivan!)

Senior Editor – John Freeman

No Doctor in this one, but there is the crew of the Sunjammer yacht, Heliotrope Bouquet II. There’s Sym Costain, a delivery pilot who at the start of the adventure is taking the yacht back from Davia to the Plaides for it’s rich owner. His hired help consists of Misha Devlin, a pale young ‘semiotics consultant’ with curly red hair and Goff, who is a sullen man and possibly a secret agent.

There is also the Station Master of Soarpath Junction, whose name is Haydnn.

The Downline Express is two months overdue at Soarpath Junction, a space station on the desert world called Looking-Glass. Haydnn the Station Master is very worried about it. Costain, Goff and Misha are more annoyed, as they want to be on their way. They decide to leave Looking-Glass and fly on in the Sunjammer, which they are supposed to be transporting to the Plaides.

As they leave, the Station Master is killed by a Cyberman.

In space, the crew of the Heliotrope Bouquet come across an enormous firefight, which at first they mistake for a meteorite storm. Something collides with the Heliotrope. Goff reveals that he is a secret agent and goes to investigate, brandishing a large gun.

Misha and Costain observe the firefight more closely and see that it is a massive battle between Daleks and Cybermen.

Sorry –

A MASSIVE BATTLE between DALEKS!!!! and CYBERMEN!!!!

Cyberleader Klaytch excelled at playing the Air-piano

Goff explores the mid-deck bays of the Heliotrope, musing that many people don’t believe in Cybermen and Daleks these days. Goff discovers a pod containing a battle damaged Cyberman. A second, intact, Cyberman attacks him and he blasts it to shreds with his recoilless automatic gun firing depleted uranium cutters in a liquid Teflon hydrostatic. However, the damaged Cyberman takes him from behind and knocks him out.

Costain is taking the Heliotrope away from the fight, when the door to the bridge opens and Goff comes in, followed by the Cyberman. Goff tells them to turn around and head back to the battle. The Cyberman introduces himself as Cyberleader Klayt, Chief officer of the Cybership K’voon. The Cyberleader kills Goff, as the man’s purpose has reached its end.

Costain and Misha turn the Sunjammer around, but do it at high speed. The Cyberleader is unprepared for the G-forces and it knocks him from his feet. Misha uses her concealed anti-personnel laser to blast the Cyberleader’s head open. As they head off to their rendezvous, Misha reveals that she is also a secret agent – a far better one than Goff!

Daleks! And Cybermen! Fighting in Space! But, being true to the TV series, we hardly get to see it. All the action takes place on the Sunjammer, with only a brief glimpse of the battle.

Ooo! Mrs Knickerbocker's exploded!

With all the spies, guns and secret agents, it’s very much in the Eric Saward camp of storytelling.

There’s some fabulous art accompanying this story, dramatic shots of exploding Daleks and Cybermen being thrown around. Even better is Lee Sullivan’s two-part cover that adorned DWMs #181-#182. It’s a full colour representation of the space battle with Daleks and Cybermen exploding all over the place. Whoop!

Heliotrope Bouquet is a crashing explosion of an awesome epic, or at least that’s what the artwork would have you believe. The story itself is a slim piece of generic space piracy. The Cybermen don’t behave in a particularly Cyberman way and the Daleks are hardly in it.

It’s fun for what it does, there are some explosions and a big space battle. But it takes ages to get into the action. The first page is full of description of Soarpath Junction, Looking-glass and the main characters and it’s very easy for the concentration to fail. It needed to be tighter and to hook the reader from the opening paragraph with Cybermen vs Dalek action. Or alternatively, it could have kept the villains as a surprise, but the long, slow build up to their arrival doesn’t work when you already know they’re going to be in it. Daleks vs Cybermen had been proudly announced on the cover, but it never turned up in the story.

In short: We were robbed!

This is the second time that the Daleks and Cybermen have met in any official branch of Doctor Who fiction. Their first match was in the Ultimate Adventure stage play from 1989, when the monstrous alien forces teamed up to defeat Margaret Thatcher.

A few of the characters have familiar-sounding names. "Costain" is the name of an engineering consultancy. "Goff" is not only the name of East Anglia’s premium petroleum supply company, but also a faction of the Orks in Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40,000 Universe, for which Dan Abnett has written many, many, many books.

Heliotrope Bouquet is a ragtime tune that was composed by Scott Joplin in 1907, developed from a tune by Louis Chauvin. Sadly, the ragtime theme only extends as far as the story’s title.

Lee Sullivan’s cover art was made available as a poster in DWM #182.