“The
Gift” is written by Jamie Delano with
pencils by John Ridgway, inks by Tim Perkins, and lettering by Richard
Starkings. It was released in Doctor Who Magazine issues 123-126 (March-June 1987) and
is reprinted in its original form in Doctor
Who: The World Shapers by Panini Books.
There is a famous panel
of Frobisher the penguin loudly singing in a silly hat while threatening a
crouching man with a rifle and never in a million years did I believe that
image would have come from Jamie Delano but here we are. “The Gift” is the second and final strip
Delano would provide to Doctor Who Magazine, published in the spring of
1987 once again while Colin Baker had already left the role but still featuring
the Sixth Doctor, Peri, and Frobisher.
This is Delano doing outright comedy: Frobisher is bored while the
Doctor and Peri are on a holiday and demands to be taken to a party. The Doctor has several invitations but they
choose the birthday party of the Lorduke of Zazz to attend, Zazz being a planet
obsessed with early 20th century Earth. This means that John Ridgway and Tim Perkins get
to have a lot of fun drawing the main characters (bar Frobisher who according
to The Holy Terror likes to mesomorph a black and white pair of pants
that nobody can really see) in period dress.
The backgrounds are particularly great as Ridgway really gets to flex a
lot of the city stuff before eventually the plot takes a diversion to the
planet’s moon. It’s a gorgeous moon
complete with crazy robots and mad science.
Because the Lorduke of
Zazz has an evil scientist brother in exile, of course the Doctor accidentally falls
for the evil brother’s plan to bring a gift of self-replicating robots which wreak
havoc. This is eventually why Frobisher
is brandishing the gun against the scientist is because he basically has to be
held at gunpoint. Now Delano does leave
Peri a bit in the lurch, mainly she is there to complain about how annoying the
party is but Delano does actually capture a decent amount of what the Doctor
and Peri’s banter would become with further developments to the characters. Delano also loves just creating a bunch of
science fiction sounding names which are particularly fun even if the Lorduke
is particularly outrageous. The entire
plotting of “The Gift” is outrageous, Delano is smart enough to fill four
issues so there’s actually a sense of things moving forward and the
cliffhangers being particularly exciting.
There’s also an addition of pre-credits pages like a more traditional,
full 25 page comic book, something that while the strip doesn’t ever transition
to, does eventually become more modern in terms of comics. It’s clear editorial knew that the Sixth
Doctor was on his way out and were trying to fill out the pages before the
Seventh Doctor made his debut in the autumn.
Overall, “The Gift” could
easily have ended up as a simple bit of fun stretched to bursting, but because
it’s Jamie Delano writing there’s this sense of snappy dialogue and immediate
wit. Outside of the panel of Frobisher
with the gun there are other Frobisher panels that genuinely deserve to be
among those memed and remembered panels.
It’s a great little yarn that is slowly winding down the Sixth Doctor’s
time on the strip. 8/10.
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