Radio Times #[1996-06-01]
The Radio Times dated 1–7 June 1996 contains the opening episode of 'Dreadnought' — the very first instalment of the Eighth Doctor strip and, by extension, the first appearance of the Eighth Doctor in any spin-off medium, making it his second-ever appearance in any format after the TV Movie that aired just one week earlier. Published in Britain's most widely read television listings magazine rather than a specialist comics title, it brought Doctor Who sequential art into millions of living rooms at a moment when the programme's future on screen was deeply uncertain, functioning as a soft continuation of the television revival. The issue also marks the debut of companion Stacy Townsend, the strip's original creation whose story arc would eventually feed directly into BBC Books' Eighth Doctor Adventures novel line. As the comic debut of the Eighth Doctor, it also holds the distinction of being the first Doctor since the Fourth to make his comics premiere outside Doctor Who Magazine.
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BBC Magazines commissioned the weekly half-page strip as a direct tie-in to the 1996 Doctor Who TV Movie starring Paul McGann, with Radio Times acting as the in-house BBC listings magazine and natural promotional platform for the broadcast. Writer Gary Russell — already well known to Doctor Who fandom through his editorial work on Doctor Who Magazine — scripted all five completed stories, while veteran DWM artist Lee Sullivan provided the artwork, with colours by Alan Craddock and lettering by Elitta Fell. Sullivan has recalled that the tight format — each episode needed a title, recap, new story content, and a cliffhanger compressed into roughly half a dozen panels — made it 'a very exacting project.' The strip was originally planned to run to around sixty weekly episodes, but a change of management at Radio Times led to the gradual downgrading and eventual cancellation of the magazine's science-fiction page, forcing the run to end prematurely with the improvised two-part coda story in March 1997.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published in Radio Times (BBC Magazines), issue dated 1–7 June 1996; this is the first episode of the ten-part story 'Dreadnought.'
- Marks the comic debut of the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann) — the first Doctor since the Fourth to make his comics premiere outside Doctor Who Magazine.
- This issue constitutes the first-ever appearance of the Eighth Doctor in any spin-off or non-television medium, published one week after the TV Movie aired on BBC One.
- First appearance of companion Stacy Townsend, a 23rd-century space-freighter worker introduced as the Doctor answers the Dreadnought's distress call amid a Cyberman attack.
- Written by Gary Russell; art by Lee Sullivan; colours by Alan Craddock; lettering by Elitta Fell.
- 'Dreadnought' features a new, sleeker Mk VIII Cyberman design created by Lee Sullivan, later reused in the BBC webcasts and in other Sullivan-drawn Doctor Who comics.
- Stacy Townsend and the companion introduced in the second strip, Ice Warrior Ssard, were subsequently carried over into Gary Russell's BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Placebo Effect — one of the earliest examples of the Radio Times strip feeding directly into the novels line.
- The strip ran for 42 weekly episodes across five stories; a planned sixth story ('Deceptions') was abandoned when new management at Radio Times cancelled the science-fiction page, and the stories have never been reprinted in an official collected print edition.