Doctor Who Adventures continues its grand tradition of setting stories in obscure historical periods with this little tale involving a dragon attacking a Chinese town.  The 11th Doctor and his latest comic strip companion, Decky Flamboon, arrive to find that a dragon, usually revered and worshipped by the Chinese, is causing terrible hurricanes to destroy the local town.  Teaming up with a local man, the Doctor realises the dragon is actually a robot-controlled alien spaceship and uses some fireworks (with sonic boosting) to destroy the ship.

As with all Doctor Who Adventures comic strips this is a simple tale dressed with some interesting visuals.  The ‘it’s really an alien/alien spaceship, not a legendary monster’ plot is fairly old hat and has been done in DWA before – Malthill Way, In the Stars and the Reign of the Stone Monkey (which was also set in China) for example.  But what DWA does is provide a fun setting and a little bit of history (in this case, fireworks and their Chinese origins).
Quite why the alien spaceship looks like a Chinese dragon is not explained (in the same way it wasn’t in Reign of the Stone Monkey) but the fact it is a robot-controlled one seems a bit like a plot convenience so the Doctor can just blow the thing up.  It reminds me of when Battle of the Planets was mucked around with by the Americans to make sure all the scenes with enemies being blown up left, right and centre were explained to be robots or automated ships so as to not upset the impressionable youngsters watching.

The other bizarre aspect of this comic strip is Decky Flamboon.  I didn’t regularly buy DWA but did occasionally get it for my eldest when they were younger if there was a good free gift or if they'd been worthy of a reward.  Consequently I missed the issue where Decky was introduced.  He was the result of a reader’s competition for a new comic strip companion (presumably to fill the gap between Amy and Rory’s departure and Clara/Oswin/Oswald’s arrival).

In the past DWA have run two similar competitions (alongside quite a few design a monster ones too) to create a new companion.  They resulted in history student and distant relative of Jamie, Heather McCrimmon and Austrian teenage exchange student, Wolfgang Ryter.  Both these characters were fairly run of the mill – humans on board for a wonderous trip round the universe.  Decky is immediately different seeing as, for starters, he is a six foot lizard with an enormous tail – a Brancheerian apparently.  He is also a shapeshifter which allows him to take on human (or whatever he wants) form but seems to spend most of the strips I’ve seen as his lizard self.  It also seems, from the smatterings of clues I can pick up from the strips I have read, that the Doctor is trying to get him home to his own planet.

I don’t think ‘alien’ companions always work (although I’ll make an exception for Ssard, the Ice Warrior, from the sadly curtailed Radio Times comic strip from back in the day).  DWM did it well with Izzy/Destrii but even then, when Destrii herself came on board she used a device to make her look human in a couple of strips.  Majenta Pryce, whilst green and scaly, was still more human than Decky and even the aforementioned Ssard found it fairly easy to hide under a hood.  Decky is a bit too out there for me – and it saddled with a stupid name as well.  But, as this is a child’s creation and I am sure the winner was over the moon when their creation won, who am I to take that away?

Welcome to the illustrious Companion’s Club, Decky Flamboon.