Doctor Who and the Star Beast [COMIC/1980.2.14 ~ 4.3]

★★★★☆

  It's incredible how well Doctor Who Magazine comic writers were able to capture the Fourth Doctor of the Graham Williams years. Here he is,spouting nonsense over nonsense and somehow making the most sense out of all the characters... prancing about doing the most random of activities... cracking hilarious one-liners while facing mortal peril... you can see why I have no choice but to gobble all this up like a hungry schoolchild. There's practically nothing to dislike here; you've got a charismatic and fun Doctor, an equally pleasant bunch of charactes (even the kids are bearable this time around), an incredibly memorable villain and a story that's willing to blow the scale to gargantuan proportions. What other franchise could justify a cute furry animal/intergalactic war criminal almost blowing up the entire Earth for his giant spaceship, hotly pursued by large insect-like warriors who act as space special forces? Dr. Who is at its best when it displays boundless imagination, and DWM comics at their infancy was the textbook definition. 

  This has so many 'blink and you'll miss it' moments, golden moments, and what's great is that they're not really missable because you can always flip back the page and read the panel again! Dave Gibbons gives the illustrations such a grand scale and a sense of fine detail at the same time, making the reading experience all the more sublime. Like The Iron Legion, there's a sense of all the stars aligning to make something truly special in The Star Beast. It feels like event Dr. Who, like a truly wonderful piece of work that effortlessly entertains and opens the imagination. Plus, it has humour that would make a politician laugh. Beep the Meep also happens to be one of the Doctor's best foes, so it's always worth goign back to his introduction. I'm overjoyed to say that The Star Beast is a brilliant comic and an equally brilliant Dr. Who adventure (it's a shame the BBC rejected Pat Mills and John Wagner when they first submitted it as a TV script -- imagine how this would've been made for Season 17)... and I'm through the roof that they're adapting it in the new series for the 60th anniversary.