Culture Shock! by: Grant Morrison with art by: Bryan Hitch and letters by: Zed

 

“Culture Shock!” is written by: Grant Morrison with art by: Bryan Hitch, and lettering by: Zed (a pseudonym for Richard Starkings).  It was released in Doctor Who Magazine issue 139 (July 1988) and is reprinted in its original form in Doctor Who: A Cold Day in Hell! by Panini Books.

 

Leave it to Grant Morrison to provide the first good Seventh Doctor comic story.  Their final work on Doctor Who is “Culture Shock!”, a single issue comic story that has the biggest issue of being only eight pages long.  The idea of telling a story from a cell culture that is an organism in symbiosis is actually a great one.  This is a premise that could not be done on television for Doctor Who for obvious budgetary reasons, even with the resources of the revival, but the format of a comic strip means the sky is the limit.  Bryan Hitch is on art duties for this script and his style does mean that the organism is one that looks fantastic, especially since half of the story is just from this perspective.  The big problem with “Culture Shock!” is that it’s too short to do too much interesting as note.  The twist is that the culture is one attacked by the virus and the Doctor just so happens to have an antiviral on his person so it can continue living, the Doctor even helping it get to the ocean.  The twist feels like it could have been a cliffhanger that could pivot to the Doctor finding a solution in a second or even third installment, but Morrison keeps it brief.

 

The Doctor, however, is a character that Grant Morrison has just latched onto in an interesting way.  “Culture Shock!” was released before Season 25 began broadcasting, but Morrison latches onto the idea that the Seventh Doctor is a tired incarnation of the character.  He has been traveling a long time, seen practically everything that he could possibly have wanted to see and is briefly contemplating stopping everything and going back to Gallifrey.  It’s almost Morrison voicing their complaints with the state of the show, because it is about to be cancelled in two years, the Doctor has lost whatever companion he had been traveling with.  Yet, “Culture Shock!” ends with the Doctor going off to have more adventures because he was shocked by something new.  It’s an interesting outlook to take and almost a comment on where Doctor Who Magazine is as well because there is a clear need to give the Seventh Doctor an identity.

 

Overall, “Culture Shock!” isn’t anything special, being held back by being a singular story, but after several dud stories it’s nice to have one with actual ideas behind it and something to say despite it having to just shout it out very quickly.  6/10.