The World Shapers by: Grant Morrison with pencils by: John Ridgway, inks by: Tim Perkins, and letters by: Richard Starkings

 

“The World Shapers” is written by: Grant Morrison with pencils by John Ridgway, inks by Tim Perkins, and lettering by Richard Starkings.  It was released in Doctor Who Magazine issues 127-129 (July-September 1987) and is reprinted in its original form in Doctor Who: The World Shapers by Panini Books.

 

When I looked at the first of three Doctor Who Magazine comic stories by Grant Morrison, “Changes”, I had only read All-Star Superman.  Since then I have dived into their run on Batman (I’m about 1/3 of the way through that) and their run on Action Comics (2/3 of the way through that) and they have rapidly become one of my favorite writers.  At the core of their work is this complete sense of humanism and improvement of the human race, they’re perfect for writing both Superman and Batman as characters (and I’d adore to see what they’d do with Wonder Woman).  “The World Shapers” is Morrison executing a perfect Doctor Who story over 24 pages packed to the brim with ideas on how the universe works, how Time Lords work, what a noble sacrifice can actually look like, and almost unintentionally where the Doctor is going once he regenerates.  On the last point, Morrison obviously had no idea where the Doctor was going nor how Sylvester McCoy would play the role, they were likely writing this before McCoy was even cast and probably didn’t know that this was going to be the last Sixth Doctor strip when it was commissioned.  Yet, this is a strip that provides this perfect, almost melancholy ending for what the universe is doing.  The ending of the strip is not actually the fairly iconic death of Second Doctor companion Jamie McCrimmon, but actually the Doctor leaving in anger because the Time Lords refuse to stop the Cybermen as they wished to the Daleks in Genesis of the Daleks.  The Cybermen are fated to become the universe’s salvation, ascending to beings of pure thought and benevolence.

 

This idea is transhumanism taken to its logical conclusion: taking humanity to a point where they can exist in their purest form.  It’s a philosophy at the center of all Morrison’s writing and is executed here fascinatingly with this rather dark idea that the Time Lords are wrong for sacrificing so many lives to see this play out.  The Cybermen are dangerous, The Invasion is directly referenced and the Time Lords’ continual interference with Jamie’s memories clearly put the framing as wrong even if the transhumanist idea at the center of the story is something that is an ultimate good.  The Time Lords are revealed to fit into this transhumanist idea, when a Time Lord reaches the end of their regeneration cycle their bodies decay, an idea that would eventually make it into the television story “The Name of the Doctor”.  It also serves the narrative purpose of seeding the idea of transhumanism into “The World Shapers” before the titular world shaper element even enters the picture.  The entire first issue is laying down exactly what this plot is going to be and how Morrison is reflecting on much of the mythic history that Steve Parkhouse had laid out in his entire run, specifically “The Tides of Time” and “Voyager”.

 

The actual idea of a world shaper or worldshaper depending on how master letterer Richard Starkings is writing it out, it’s what has gone wrong and begun to shape the Voord of Marinus into the early Cybermen.  Marinus is explicitly Planet 14 which Morrison implies will become Mondas and eventually made its way to the Earth.  The idea “the Voord becoming Cybermen” sounds ridiculous, especially for 1987 when nobody would have seen The Keys of Marinus since original broadcast, though the novelization was released in 1980 and reprinted in 1986 (though wouldn’t release on VHS until 1999).  Jamie’s actual appearance is used as a natural extension of The Two Doctors, Morrison going full in on Jamie traveling with a Second Doctor working for the Time Lords, but left in Scotland for 40 years and thought of mad by having his memories of traveling with the Doctor returned to him.  Seeing the Doctor, Peri, and Frobisher returns nobility to the man and it is genuinely tragic.  This entire story is a tragedy around the Time Lord’s attempt to allow something good in the long game.

 

Overall, “The World Shapers” is without a doubt the perfect parallel to “Voyager” and the perfect end to the Sixth Doctor’s time in the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip.  It is at its heart Grant Morrison, through and through, and that’s why the entire story works so damn well.  Whatever follows this is going to be tough to really judge, especially since it will be a year before the Doctor’s character meets the trajectory laid down here.  10/10.