Dr Who Annuals

I used to get a Dr Who annual every Christmas as a present, along with an Oor Wullie or Broons book and a selection box of narcotics. This was in the days before Dr Who was cool. When the budgets were small and the sets wobbled. When the monsters were made from bubble wrap sprayed green and carpet remnants.

The annuals contained comic strips and articles about the "behind the scenes" TV people and the inspiration, the sheer sweat and bloody toil that went into bringing each adventure to the screen. Frequently there was a feature which attempted to show the scale of the Solar System by representing each of the planets as a piece of fruit, e.g. if the Earth was a plum, then Jupiter would be an orange ten feet away and Pluto would be a pomegranate seed in the next village. Here are some of my favourite covers of said annuals... 

I actually bought this annual in a jumble sale at Portpatrick Church Hall many moons ago. I like how the design reflects the fragmented personality of the Third Doctor as portrayed by Jon Pertwee. Oh yeah.

Here the Fourth Doctor is telling a bored Dalek about the Gallifreyan lady he's just spent two blissful weeks with on the planet Shada. "She's got two wonderful attributes: enormous enthusiasm... and a great set of coordinates. Honestly, the things she can do with a sonic screwdriver."

WTF is going on on this cover? I mean, really... no wonder the good Doctor has got such a pained look on his fizzog. A mini-me is legging it across his head and that helicopter looks like its becoming entangled in his barnet.

The Fourth Doctor has a quick fag (Romana hated smoking) before getting back in The TARDIS and regenerating into the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison). This annual was produced before PD's first story proper (called Castrovalva, in case you're interested) so they didn't have any pictures of him in costume and had to use a BBC publicity photo, hence he looks more like Tristan Farnon than Dr Who on this cover. There was a comic strip in this annual which featured the new Doctor called 'The Key to Vaga'. The drawings of Adric (a repellent, swotty companion who got on my 8-year-old goat big style) were strangely more realistic than the Adric on the TV.

And, lest we forget, the most rubbish Doctor of them all - the Sixth Doctor Colin Baker, who appears to be wearing the Dr Who logo as if it was a hat and at a jaunty angle to boot. What a way to mark 21 years. Sheesh...

B.R. 23/03/2013

(see also Dinner with Davros and K9 Blues)