‘ONCE UPON A TIME LORD’
Please feel free to comment on my review.
In the Cabinet of Astrolabus with the Sixth Doctor and Frobisher
‘Once Upon a Time-Lord’ is a two-part comic story and it concludes the Voyager and Astrolabus story arc that started in ‘Voyager’ itself. This is also the last ‘Doctor Who’ comic story by Steve Parkhouse.
John Ridgway would go on to draw the rest of the Sixth Doctor comic stories in ‘Doctor Who’, but they would be taken over in terms of the writing by the likes of Alan McKenzie and Simon Furman after this one.
In the story, the Sixth Doctor pilots his TARDIS into the Cabinet of Astrolabus in order to rescue Frobisher. Once he’s there, the Doctor is soon attacked by a dark rider trying to kill him in a forest. 😮
Apparently, it has been confirmed by John Ridgway that the black rider who attacked the Doctor was meant to be one of the Nazgûl from ‘The Lord of the Rings’. This was very unusual to uncover in this.
The Doctor also unwillingly quotes from ‘The Lord of the Rings’ itself. I should know that because I’ve read the book trilogy itself and can recall Ian Holm as Frodo saying the quotes in the 1981 radio series. 🙂
Little Red Riding Hood also happens to be in the forest once the TARDIS arrives. As you can imagine, the Doctor has ended up in a ‘land of fiction’, which isn’t too dissimilar to what’s in ‘The Mind Robber’.
Anyway, the Doctor manages to find Frobisher, who insists he’d take him to meet his ‘friends’. I’m surprised Frobisher wasn’t held under lock and key, as Astrolabus kidnapped him in the previous story.
The Doctor meanwhile doesn’t trust Astrolabus and the cabinet they’re in. He warns Frobisher about the reality not being real. Astrolabus himself is seeing the certain TARDIS duo from inside a carnival.
There are children in the carnival with Astrolabus and he instructs them to put their ‘thinking caps’ on so that they can control the story. There is this element of a meta theme featured in this story. 😐
This is especially when Astrolabus sometimes breaks the fourth wall and he could be Steve Parkhouse telling the story to us as an audience. You’d have to read in-between the lines regarding that.
In ‘Part One’ of the story, it takes an unusual turn, as we read the Doctor and Frobisher as if it were a storybook. Three pages are being written in a different story form with accompanying comic panels.
They use a picture book style with captions instead of speech bubbles. All the captions rhyme and there’s text at the bottom of the page to give us more detail. This is an unusual diversion in a comic.
The three pages of ‘Part One’ displayed like that are also given titles, including ‘Frobisher Eats a Worm’, ‘Frobisher Wishes He Hadn’t’ and ‘He Who Hesitates is Lunch’. It’s pretty unusual indeed. 😀
In the storybook part of ‘Part One’, the Doctor and Frobisher meet Tommy Brock the badger from ‘Peter Rabbit’. Or is it Mr. Badger from ‘The Wind In The Willows’? I’m not entirely sure about this. 😐
On a side note, if ‘Once Upon a Time-Lord’ was adapted into a Big Finish audio, it’d fun to have James Corden voice Peter Rabbit if he ever appeared in the story with the Sixth Doctor and Frobisher.
The Doctor and Frobisher also come across natives in the storybook part of ‘Part One’, They try to cook and eat Frobisher, but he’s soon saved by Tarzan. When did the forest turn into a jungle here?!
Our TARDIS duo tries to find answers in a castle, before a giant troll, thought up by Astrolabus’ children, begins to attack them. This could easily have been the cave troll who was in the ‘LOTR: Fellowship’ film.
The Doctor utters a thesaurus to insult Astrolabus. Knave, varlet, vagabond, caitiff, wretch, rascal, rapscallion, blackguard, shyster, skunk, cur, tyrant, fiend, cad and tergiversatory are the words used.
Old Sixy is a Time Lord full of words after all! Apparently, a group of miniature penguins are seen in the final panel of the comic story. They would appear in future comic stories such as ‘Kane’s Story’. 🙂
The story concludes with Sixy defeating Astrolabus after discovering the star charts he’d stolen in ‘Voyager’ are tattooed all over him. Voyager in the form of a man also comes to sort out Astrolabus.
‘Once Upon a Time-Lord’ has been an enjoyable Sixth Doctor and Frobisher story. I think the stories after this one aren’t a continuous arc, like they seem to be so far with Steve Parkhouse as the writer.
‘Once Upon a Time-Lord’ rating – 8/10
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