The early 1990s had been a period of expansion for Marvel UK, but by 1995 both they and their American parent company had seriously overreached themselves. With the Marvel UK line of original comics having collapsed, the company was sold off by Marvel to Panini Publishing, who have retained the rights to publish reprints of Marvel material in the UK ever since. As part of the deal, Panini also took over Doctor Who Magazine, although Marvel's licence with the BBC still being in force meant that DWM kept the Marvel UK logo on its cover until the end of 1999.


Art by Martin Geraghty from 'The Land of Happy Endings', DWM #337.

The eighth Doctor's comics debut in DWM came in issue #244 in October 1996, in the story Endgame. Ironically, given that by now DWM was a Marvel UK publication in name only, this story was heavily rooted in past Marvel UK continuity, seeing the return of the village of Stockbridge and U.F.O spotter Maxwell Edison, both of them unseen since the fifth Doctor's era. It also gave the Doctor a new companion in drifter Isobel 'Izzy' Sinclair, who would go on to have one of the most bafflingly complex life journeys of any companion, including spending more than two years stuck in the body of an amphibious alien, the amoral Destrii (who would eventually replace her as the Doctor's companion once they'd been body swapped back). Other highlights of the eighth Doctor's mammoth run in DWM (which lasted from October 1996 to March 2005) included the long awaited return of shadowy time agent Shayde, an apparent regeneration for the Doctor in the now infamous story Wormwood which ran for five months in 1998, and the rather unexpected return of the long absent but fondly remembered DWM character Kroton the Cyberman, who actually joined the Doctor and Izzy on their travels from #284-296 before even more unexpectedly ascending to godhood as the new Centre of the Omniversal Spectrum! Kroton's return was courtesy of writer Scott Gray (who has now probably written more Doctor Who comics than anyone) and artist Adrian Salmon, but the bulk of the eighth Doctor's era in DWM (most of which was written by Gray) was drawn by Martin Geraghty, who was responsible for 17 of the 30 serials published over the eight and a half year period; he is now generally regarded as the definitive eighth Doctor comics artist. He is also the artist who, in the rather surreal strip The Land of Happy Endings, briefly brought back TV Comic companions John and Gillian, but I'm sure that wasn't his fault.

One final word on the "Wormwood Doctor" of 1998; while he eventually turned out to be merely a deception perpetrated by the real Doctor to defeat the alien Threshold, this fake regeneration was originally intended to test the waters and see if the readership would accept a new Doctor unique to the magazine, since by now it was reckoned that the chances of the Time Lord ever returning to TV played by Paul McGann or by anyone else were now pretty slim. Luckily, DWM were wrong about that, but it is perhaps only fitting that physically, the fake "ninth Doctor" was deliberately patterned by Geraghty on one of the people who more than anyone else helped keep the franchise alive during the "Wilderness years", head of Big Finish Productions and now voice of the Daleks Nicholas Briggs...

The life threatening condition was that he'd been shot by a street gang. He'd have recovered if the attending surgeon hadn't inexplicably failed to notice that he wasn't human; as it was, he died and regenerated.

The TARDIS has actually gone through a number of redesigns over the years, the first major one being in 1976, and then again in 1983. It's capable of reconfiguring its own internal architecture, so the admittedly drastic change in the TV movie actually didn't pose a problem in terms of continuity with the show's past. Did you ever catch McGann's brief return to the screen in the Night of the Doctor mini-episode in 2013?

The TARDIS was actually regarded as being in some way alive and able to exert an influence over its interior from very early on; it's first demonstrated in the two parter The Edge of Destruction in 1964, which was only the third serial. It has been referenced far more often in the new series, though.

I think the McGann movie control room probably owes a lot to this one, the "secondary control room", from Tom Baker's third season.

It is. Sadly, it only lasted one season-I gather the set was somehow damaged while in storage after that, so the following season they went back to the old white one by necessity (and without any in-story explanation). Interestingly, it appears that whichever control room is in use becomes automatically mapped onto the exterior doors; the Doctor at one point explains to Sarah Jane Smith that this is "the old control room", which he had forgotten about, but they are then able to exit the Police Box directly from its main door rather than needing to go back to the one they'd previously been using.

You may actually be the only person I have ever heard complain that there was too little explanatory dialogue in the TV movie. Most people complain that it was dragged down by the weight of past continuity...

I suspect that may actually be true. Certainly, having done over 75 audio stories, McGann himself has probably played the Doctor in about as many individual stories as Tom Baker.

To the mainstream TV audience, he's the forgotten Doctor, but the eighth Doctor has been a fan favourite for twenty years now, and for my money, Night of the Doctor, which showed his ultimate fate, was the undoubted highlight of the 50th anniversary year (it is actually up on Youtube, if you fancy checking it out). And thankfully, his audio adventures are continuing with the Doom Coalition series.

Thing is, it's not being made for America; it's just being made primarily for a young British audience that is now pretty much used to the kind of shows that are made for America (see also: Sherlock). Essentially, this is what the BBC feels the target audience will respond to, because it' what they were already watching elsewhere, mostly in the form of US imports. The kind of TV drama we grew up with is basically a thing of the past, so I think the key to enjoying it is to manage one's expectations. I hated the whole Russell T Davies/David Tennant era-it was a huge shock to the system and it just never felt like Doctor Who to me. But I've loved pretty much all of what Steven Moffat has done with the show since taking over in 2010, with the last series (Capaldi's second) being up there with mid 70s Tom Baker for me, I really felt it was the best in decades. It's still not classic Who, but it's just as legitimate in its own way. It's TV of its time, which is what Doctor Who always was. There are huge differences between 60s Who and 80s Who, after all...