It’s time for another dip of the toe into the wonderful world of Doctor Who short stories and we are going right back to the very beginning of this medium. One of the things that I love about Doctor Who is that I am never going to run out of stories. There are more novels, short stories, audios, comic strips and TV stories than I am ever going to have time to read, watch and listen to. It’s a fact I came to terms with a long time ago. I suppose if, in 10 years, the TV series if finished forever and Big Finish has gone belly-up that maybe, just maybe, I may get to the end but I really don’t see that happening. When it takes me, on average, 2-3 months to read a novel and I look at my heaving bookshelfs; when I realise I have just listened to #156 in the Main Range of Big Finish audios and they’ve just released 201; and when I realise that the Main Range is just the tip of iceberg; when I look at the numerous Short Trips collections; the IDW comics; the Titan comics; the non-fiction….eek! And when I realise I’ve owned the first ever Doctor Who annual for years (at least 20; it was one of the earliest annuals I got a hold of) and never read any of the stories in it….well, now is a good a time as any to put that right, even if I’m just going to tackle one of its six stories.

As most fans know, the merchandise released in the 60s on the back of the TV series’ success often only has a passing resemblance to its source material. TV Comic probably took the most liberties and I expected these annual stories to bear similar hallmarks. However, I was surprised to find the level of continuity between this story and the TV story it is a sequel to: The Keys of Marinus. The Doctor even feels quite like Hartnell’s portrayal. I know it is rumoured that David Whitaker may have had a hand in the stories for these annuals and to some extent I can see this to be possible. The Doctor is companionless but is presented as an explorer and an intellectual. He doesn’t have a bag of tricks as his TV Comic incarnation does and relies on his wit and intelligence to escape the situation he finds himself in. There are a few character beats which don’t quite ring true but overall it is much closer to Hartnell’s portrayal and the TV original than I had expected.

The Doctor arrives on a water planet and finds the native population have been forced into slavery by the Voord. We are apparently thousands, if not millions of years after those events and yet the Doctor eventually discovers that the Voord are in possession of two Keys of Marinus and two of Arbitan’s travel dials. This stretches credulity somewhat, even if it does tie the two stories closely together. There isn’t actually a huge amount of story; the Doctor sees the native ‘Fishmen’, he sees and is captured by the Voord; he talks to their leader; he breaks the Voord’s hold over the Fishmen (by realising the strange antennae on their heads are a telepathic organ; actually a part of their body it seems!) and then he escapes. The Doctor never interacts with the Fishmen and just slips away in the TARDIS pondering on events and some unanswered questions.

What struck me most about this story, though, was how elements of it reappear in Domain of the Voord, the Big Finish Early Adventure. In that story the Voord have also invaded a watery planet, enslaved its populace and are revealed to be telepathic. The ‘main’ Voord in both is shown to be more powerful than the sundry Voord minions and with his defeat, the other Voord become weaker and more easily overcome by the locals. Domain of the Voord is a remake of The Fishmen of Kandalinga! It cannot be coincidence that Andrew Smith, its writer, has included so many elements from the annual story. He makes regular appearances at conventions and the next time I manage to get to one (I haven’t the time or money to go to very many of them) it will definitely be a question I want to ask him if he is in attendance.

With Domain of the Voord providing a natural bridge to The World Shapers and The Fishmen of Kandalinga linking so closely with The Keys of Marinus, there is actually a rather coherent storyline of the Voord from The Keys of Marinus to the Worldshapers via Domain of the Voord and The Fishmen of Kandalinga.

I was surprised by how faithful to the TV series this story was bearing in mind its vintage and it was a pleasant diversion. It has also made me want to read the other stories in the annual which feature returning aliens such as the Zarbi, the Menoptra and the Sensorites.  As a side note, I actually used the PDF version of the annual available on The Web Planet DVD (as my hardcopy was in a box under two other heavy boxes in our slowly collapsing garage). It was actually quite pleasant reading this as an e-book but I did miss the smell of that paper.