Egyptian Escapade

The 1st Doctor TV Comic strips are rather endearing, both in storyline, characterisation and artwork but the 2nd Doctor ones are utterly atrocious.  Egyptian Escapade is, unfortunately, not an exception to the rule.

Firstly, the artwork is awful.  It’s scratchy and indistinct and no pleasure to look at.  Secondly, the storylines have clearly been written by someone who might have overhead something about Doctor Who once, in a pub, when they’d had a few pints – something about a bloke in a police box with a couple of kids travelling through time?  Finally, the Doctor is written as a completely different character to that seen on TV.  What kids of the day thought about this we might never know, but surely they were more discerning and critical than this rubbish would suggest.

Egyptian Escapade is a particularly egregious example of TV Comic’s failings with the 2nd Doctor.  The story sees the TARDIS pitch up in the middle of a fracas between British troops and Arabs loyal to their leader Mahadi.  The TARDIS is captured by the Arabs (with the Doctor, John and Gillian still inside) and put in Mahadi’s treasure cave.  Leaving his companions in the TARDIS, the Doctor heads off, disguised as an Arab, to warn the British of an imminent attack by the Arabs.  This done, he pretends to perform magic, scares off the Arabs and heads back to the TARDIS which is, fortunately, the only bit of treasure the Arabs haven’t taken with them when fleeing!

Aside from a penchant for dressing up (as an frolicking, camp Arab) this 2nd Doctor is nothing like the TV version.  The most blatant difference is that, on two separate occasions, the Doctor explicitly identifies himself as British (worrying what the Arabs will do to himself, John and Gillian if they find them).  But it also his attitude to events, siding with the British without even a second thought for right or wrong in the situation he finds himself in.  To be fair, the British are only ever seen to be playing cricket (which, obviously is all they ever did in occupying countries full of savage, ignorant foreigners) and the Arabs are only ever seen attacking, or planning attacks, but this is, of course, a very simplistic and Empirical view of British-World relations.  But then, to a large extent, this sort of racism was still very much alive and normalised during the 1960s.

The Doctor’s use of a utility belt and a smoke and light show to scare off the Arabs at first seems a little bit ‘Batman’ but actually, if you consider the 3rd Doctor’s tricks to scare of Irongron and his men in The Time Warrior, it doesn’t actually seem quite as out of place.

John and Gillian are completely useless.  As I mentioned in my review of Pursued by the Trods, John and Gillian were often left behind in the TARDIS whilst the Doctor went off to have an adventure.  This is exactly what happens here.  I don’t think the two children are even named and have hardly any dialogue, even in the frames where they do appear.  Their characters may have been twee and jolly-hockey-sticks-esque in their 1st Doctor days, but at least they did something and had some character, however simplistic.  Here, they may as well have stopped including them as they contribute absolutely nothing to the story and the Doctor, save for one concern about what the Arabs might do to them if captured, doesn’t ever seem particularly worried about them – certainly, on his return to the TARDIS at the close of the story, he is evidently more delighted at the fact the TARDIS is safe and sound than the fate of his grandchildren inside (and note, the TARDIS is still on its side, so John and Gillian are stuck inside a machine where the walls are the floor and they probably can’t actually do anything except sit tight till the Doctor deigns to return!)

Historically, this is quite interesting because, like with the Doctor Who Adventure strips I’ve often reviewed, we have the Doctor visiting a less well known period of history.  Mahadi is a real historical figure, properly Muhammed Ahmad, an Sudanese Arab who revolted against Egyptian rule of Sudan.  The British troops became involved as the Egyptian government was largely controlled by the British.  The events depicted in the comic strip are only vaguely based on real events, but ultimately the various skirmished in real history did build up to the Battle of Khartoum in 1898.  The only named British character is General Harvey, although he seems to be fictitious.  The rest of British troops aren’t even given believable dialogue.  When the TARDIS materialises in front of them, one reacts as if he’s a peasant from the Middle Ages muttering about wizardry and magic, whilst another declares it has come from space (I’m not sure the Victorians thought much about ‘space’ – most of their focus on other worlds came from the spiritual).

A terrible story, appallingly written, badly characterised and with horrendous artwork this is a low point for the early comic strips.