As we move into Spring and into the 1980’s proper, I though it was time to brighten up this gloomy old thread, throw open the windows and let some light in. And so now in glorious Technicolor – Peter Davison’s debut in the Tides of Time.
So, some scene setting, it is February 1981 and Doctor Who Monthly issue 61. I am 12, but still young enough to still be running down to the newsagent to excitedly buy my comic each month. The cover of the comic (sorry magazine) famously declared that Peter Davi(d)son was the Doctor, overlaid over a rather boring photograph from Four to Doomsday, so boring they could have used it one of infamously tedious Davison Target book covers. The new Doctor wearing, well as Terrance Dicks would put it Edwardian cricket garb or as the actor Peter Davison puts it – a sea of beige. The Tides of Time, however was anything but dull.
The story opens with the Doctor playing cricket in the village of Stockbridge, where he seems to have been spending quite a bit of time, the story references him having set up home there – and Stockbridge as a base for the first 3 stories (Stars Fell on Stockbridge, The Stockbridge Horror) works really well. Despite what the actor supposedly thought, Dave Gibbons captures him beautifully here, in what unfortunately would be one of his last strips for the Doctor. As the bowler runs in and releases the ball it turns mid-air into a World War II hand grenade, whilst in the 1940’s a grenade turns into a cricket ball and the adventure begins. Roman soldiers appear in the woods and the Doctor is charged by a medieval Knight on horseback. The story is almost Steven Moffat-eque in its restlessness – switching from Stockbridge to Gallifrey, to the matrix in a series of increasingly surreal images before returning to ruins of the church in Stockbridge for the denouement. The speed of movement means that this never becomes dull and the surreal aspects never start to become weary.
Beside the new Doctor, there are two heroes of the piece – Shayde, a shadowy Time lord agent, with a black sphere for a head and Sir Justin, a medieval Knight that the Doctor meets in the woods in Stockbridge. Justin makes for a pleasantly uncomplicated companion for the Doctor – brave and resourceful. He takes everything in, almost without question, seemingly regarding everything as a miracle. The contrast with the crowd surrounding him in Castrovalva is palpable. Sometimes it is just amazing how well the show works when the Doctor is paired with someone who wants to be there, has a spirit of adventure and doesn’t whinge. Shayde will become an intriguing ongoing character in the strip and provides some memorable images here – appearing out of shadows and at one point having his head removed.
The main thrust of the story concerns a demon Melanicus breaking through into our universe and taking over the Event Synthesiser (a sort of giant bio-mechanical musical organ) from the Prime Mover, which governs the flow of time. Arrayed against him are Rassillon, who uses the Doctor and Shayde as direct field agents and the other ‘High Evolutionaries’, including Merlin. Now I am not a huge fan of wizards and fantasy, but it all does work well here in this context and Merlin’s involvement is mercifully brief. The middle section, takes the Doctor and Justin to Gallifrey and the matrix and from there into the domain of Melanicus, a surreal landscape involving the Doctor meeting a giant rubber duck and the TARDIS journeying down a giant plughole, before arriving in a fairground, where the Doctor meets someone who looks very like Zoe and culminating in a rollercoaster ride into an image of hell!
Earth is plunged into a war between timezones – tanks against horses against fighter jets. After a journey into a white hole to meet the higher evolutionaries who link their minds to temporarily halt time. The Doctor and Sir Justin arrive back at the ruins of the church in Stockbridge. After Shayde shoots Melanicus on the roof of the church, Sir Justin bravely dies, plunging his sword into Melanicus, through the stained glass window of the church and falling in the process. Time is set back onto its correct path and the Prime Mover installed back in charge of the Event Synthesiser.
The story ends with the Doctor reading the inscription from Justin’s memorial at the church in Stockbridge:
‘The Journey has not ended here,
For his spirit claimed,
By death-knells chime,
Lies waiting still,
To cross once more a sea of stars,
And Sail the Tides of Time’
As he wonders who knew to inscribe the memorial, the ghostly shape of Merlin appears behind him. And then back to the cricket match, the fate of the universe hanging on the same ball from the first page. This time the cricket ball is jus that and the Doctor hooks it for four runs, to a boundary where Shayde lurks watching in the shadows.
As an alternative introduction to he new Doctor the Tides of Time is just fantastic – blending the epic with the mundane life of an English village. I normally dislike fantasy and wizards, but here those elements are blended with science and the outright surreal and make far more sense in a comic strip setting. I rather like these events impinging on the Doctors life in the village as an English gentleman of leisure – this is addressed in a later strip (the Stockbridge Horror). I also like the story being explicitly tied into remembrance – the memorial for Justin and the name revealed at the end – St Justinians church and the legend of George slaying the dragon. Even better is the doubt that Justin ever existed – the Doctor isn’t sure whether he was alive or just a consequence of the disruption to time – a statue brought to life. He certainly felt real, more real than the Doctor TV companions at this point. Exciting, clever, often surreal and strangely moving, the Tides of Time is a great introduction to the new Doctor.
A Journal of Impossible Things 