The 1969 Annual
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The 1969 Annual These Sixties Annuals have a strapline on their covers: ‘Fascinating stories of the unknown based on the famous television series.’ It’s a charming slogan for these books to adopt, promising in one breath familiarity and cosiness, as well as novelty and strangeness. The relationship between the cover and the contents of the 1969 Annual is a kind of embodiment of this tension between the familiar and the new. The cover illustration depicts a highly dramatic moment in which the Doctor is apparently saving the life of brawny young Scots companion, Jamie, from a marauding Cyberman. Very excitingly, it seems as if the steel monsters are about to gain access to the interior of the Tardis itself. The roundels have turned blood red as if in dismay. Jamie is brandishing what appears to be a Dalek pincer-arm in self-defence and the Doctor is managing to give his brawny companion – even in the midst of all these goings-on – a crafty little cuddle. But the fact is nothing remotely like this stuff happens anywhere in the whole book. No Cybermen, no Yeti (one can be seen giving a despairing shrug on the back cover) nor any villain even remotely familiar from TV series graces the stories inside. This should make the 1969 Annual disappointing, but it’s nothing of the sort. There’s plenty to keep us entertained here. The Stories LORDS OF THE GALAXY The Tardis has brought Dr. Who, Jamie and Victoria to a No Man’s Land in the midst of an interstellar war. A lilac beam lifts them through the cosmic conflict into a space craft belonging to revolting, tusked, musky-smelling alien beings. They are Saurians, like the ancient Earth reptiles, but ones who have a spaceship. Taken before the ten-feet tall Supreme Lizard Haxtl, our heroes are treated as quite a prize. The lizards are very keen on learning more about Earth people and their apparent ability to turn invisible. In this version of the future, Earth pilots its way round the galaxy like a colossal pirate ship..! The Doctor seems very impressed by the idea of the people of Earth becoming ‘Lords of the Galaxy,’ and he tricks the Saurian leader by pretending to become a traitor. FOLLOW THE PHANTOMS In a curious instance of intra-Annual continuity Jamie glares at the detector device that the Doctor invented in the 1968 book. This ‘pet invention’ is supposed to deliver the low-down on each new environment the Tardis lands in, and also on the local population. It’s not saying much and neither is the Doctor. All they can see on the scanner screen is a parade of oddly handsome humanoids and a very strange cloud. They travel in the Doctor’s homemade plane (a ‘Floater’) after the column of marching men but they can’t attract their attention. And then they witness those men marching into the cloud, and the mirage of a city from long-ago… Jamie ends up being whisked into the past, where the natives believe that he has been sent by Otinogg, their god of war. It is prophesied that one such as the young Scot will come to lead the battle against the Scythias. Monstrous slugs, these turn out to be, and Jamie isn’t keen on the prospect of tangling with them. The Doctor pops up in the mysterious cloud just in time to rescue his friend and, when they are safe once more, he pretends to be cross with the brawny young man. But you can tell he isn’t really. MASTERMINDS OF SPACE Our friends from the Tardis find themselves captured by the Masters of Space and Time, who want to leach all the knowledge from their brains. The Doctor fills up his own mind-screen with everything he has ever known and seen, including all the galactic horrors he has encountered – most notably, parrot-men. What his captors are most interested in, however, is his ability to think of absolutely nothing and to still his mind completely. Victoria pities their non-corporeal hosts, who – it turns out – want to find their way back to being flesh and blood creatures again. It’s such a long time since they had ‘organs of living.’ The Doctor is left to consider a whole new universe populated by Victorias and Jamies. FREEDOM BY FIRE (Picture Strip) On an alien world the Kraals are mountain-dwelling plants that have developed a taste for human flesh. The Doctor realizes that the local inhabitants haven’t yet discovered fire since their world doesn’t have seasons and they never get cold (the natives all seem to go about naked but for ragged-hemmed skirts.) Dr. Who invents fire for them and they set about destroying every single one of their enemies. THE CELESTIAL TOYSHOP When they arrive in a place filled with gigantic toys the Doctor declares that he’s ‘in the mood for magic.’ Amongst the bears and trains and soldiers the Doctor gets caught up in an infinitely recursive dolls’ house, and soon the faces of the toys around him start to seem subtly wrong… Things get very trippy indeed before he realizes he’s caught in an ‘intra- dimensional flux’ and he feels compelled to make a ‘frantic search for reality.’ When he gets back to the Tardis he sleeps but doesn’t dream and will always be left with a sense of regret about the wonders he didn’t quite manage to see that day… VALLEY OF DRAGONS They’ve landed in the ‘deep galactic environs’, and apparently on the back of a giant reptile..! When the Doctor suggests they all wear contra-gravity belts in order to fly about the place, am I the only one wondering what’s become of his much-vaunted Floater? They spy on bird people fighting a giant crocodile, and pretty soon wind up having a conversation with one of the creatures (who are really very reminiscent of the hen-like fellows in the 1967 Annual.) The Manti rule over all, however, and it is they who try to feed the Doctor to the dragon. The Doctor pacifies the beast with his pipe-playing, claiming that it is enthralled by the marvellous music he’s making. PLANET FROM NOWHERE Dr. Who and his friends have found a weird, cathedral-like place filled to the brim with dormant humanoids in glass coffins. Picking out the right lever, the Doctor rashly decides to bring them all back to life. As soon as they revive, they start to worship the Tardis trio which, as the Doctor muses, really won’t do at all. ‘You are the gods we never believed in,’ one man in a metallic outfit tells them. They are Salonians, and put themselves to sleep in order to suffer penance for their warlike ways. The Doctor is quite curt with them, accusing them of ‘sleeping (their) cowardly sleep of unconsciousness.’ They are appalled to see everything on their world destroyed, but for the temple where they have been sleeping. Suddenly the Salonians are intent on launching revenge against the Colonians and the Doctor’s feeling a bit silly and guilty for waking them up. ‘How dare they come and obliterate our lovely hemisphere?’ moan the Salonians. The Doctor can’t explain to them that time and erosion have taken away their home. He even weeps with frustration. He feels he is ‘lost’: the ‘most wicked man in the universe.’ He begins to suspect that they are seeing the far future of Earth itself, in which mankind is in the process of wiping itself out. HAPPY AS QEEG The working class of the planet Krill like to go about in rainbow-coloured tights and cloaks, we are reliably informed. Dr. Who has been brainwashed and is quite happy working for his robot masters. He doesn’t even recognize Jamie and Victoria when they come to rescue him! ‘Poor old Doctor Who!’ cries Jamie, slapping a ray-foil helmet over his head. Back in his right mind, the Doctor is determined to ‘smash the rule of the robots’ and free the slaves. At last he finds Qeeg – whose happiness everyone in this Dystopia tries to emulate. Of course he is just a lump of disembodied brain who foolishly challenges the Doctor to a mind duel… which our hero wins, but is left feeling giddier than his favourite Aunt. ATOMS INFINITE (Picture Strip.) Dr. Who has worked out a way to shrink the Tardis in such a way that will allow him to explore inner space, as a change from outer space. He and his friends soon discover that it is a ‘sad time’ to visit the nucleus of an atom. A face inside a tree starts telling them all about the history of this world inside the Uranium atom. ‘Quickly!’ shouts the Doctor. He has a shrewd idea that the whole planet could explode at any moment, which it does. By the end of the story he’s imagining huge galaxies in which our Earth is just the size of an atom. WORLD OF ICE The Doctor has always wanted to explore the snowy world of Pendant. When the Doctor and Jamie return from exploring, Victoria is horrified to find that they have been replaced by lookalike robots. There’s a fracas involving an elongated furry monster, a bottle of perfume, Victoria and the robots: the whole thing observed by badger-like aliens clutching ‘strange, tubular weapons.’ These are the Morogs, who are forced to live underground by the aggressive and robotic Cogwens.