“Claws
of the Klathi!” is written by: Mike Collins
with art by: Kev Hopgood and Dave Hine, and lettering by: Zed (a pseudonym for
Richard Starkings). It was released in Doctor Who Magazine issues 136-138 (April-June 1988) and
is reprinted in its original form in Doctor
Who: A Cold Day in Hell! by Panini Books.
The claws of the title “Claws
of the Klathi!” are not literal, they’re not even metaphorical, it’s just to
sound evocative. Sounding evocative is
perhaps the best analysis of Mike Collins’ second Doctor Who Magazine
strip. This entire story has some fairly
intriguing big picture ideas: aliens at a freakshow during the Great Exhibition,
giant robots committing murders at the docks, and a group of scientists who
meet during the full moon to discuss experiments. Any one of these ideas could very much take
up the premise of an issue of the Doctor Who Magazine strip at this time
and actually give the readers the first good Seventh Doctor strip. Even with Collins being given three issues of
the magazine to tell the story you could do these ideas justice, but in
execution there really isn’t anything deeper than the initial idea. The plot itself ends up being something not
so much standard for Doctor Who: aliens have been captured by Victorians
and are trying to escape with the twist that the two Klathi are actually evil. That twist is where everything becomes
surface level analysis, Collins is uninterested in examining the nature of the
freak show and its place in Victorian society.
It just isn’t there. The
Victorian setting reads more like Collins having an idea for a backdrop because
of the freak show idea, it’s integral to the story but doesn’t actually
contribute to the plot. The freak show
is just a reason to have some violence done on our sympathetic alien, which
should give the story at least a little bite but every other character
including the Doctor barely reacts to it.
Even at the conclusion when the Klathi Danq and Yula are defeated it
just reads as something that has happened with no emotional stake.
The characterization of
the Doctor, despite being written after Sylvester McCoy has had a season air in
the role, is weak. This is not a
Terrance Dicks style generic version of the Doctor, he is more a cypher who
arrives and vaguely wants to help out seeing someone in trouble, but only after
being accused of theft for a page or two to add some drama. If I didn’t know better I would think that
Collins started this story for a different Marvel UK strip and converted it
into a Doctor Who strip. It does
not help that in this story the pseudo-companion shares more character traits
with the Seventh Doctor as characterized in Season 24 than the Doctor here. Nathaniel Derridge is portrayed as an upper
class gentleman and scientist who bumbles around, creating spoonerisms of
colloquial phrases and having an eye for justice. This is something that I have to ascribe to
Collins and not artists Kev Hopgood and Dave Hine despite the possibility of
the Marvel method being used to write “Claws of the Klathi!”. It isn’t like Collins hadn’t written for Doctor
Who before, his previous effort was “Profits of Doom” which was a great
Sixth Doctor strip, so he should have a handle on at least the Doctor’s
characterization. Hopgood and Hine do at
least make “Claws of the Klathi!” interesting to read, the art is particularly
good and stylized in a way to evoke Victorian illustrations while maintaining
the late-1980s house style.
Overall, “Claws of the
Klathi!” is another poor entry for a period of Doctor Who Magazine
comics that seem to lack a solid sense of identity. It does reflect where the show was at during
Season 24 as a period of transition, but unlike the show this is not a story
that gives the Doctor any sort of character or assurance that the transition
will be going somewhere. 4/10.
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