By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues
Copyright BBC
Bloody hell, has it really been 60 years since the Tardis first appeared in a junkyard before the first Doctor (William Hartnell) whisked teachers Ian and Barbara on the adventure of a lifetime. I’ve only been around for a portion of that with Jon Pertwee being my Doctor growing up but the older I get the more I realise every incarnation is my Doctor. It has been just one giant roadtrip where we have laughed and cried, had our hearts broken then lifted up by the sheer joy of seeing something new that reaffirms our faith in people. I am so glad I am alive to witness this because Doctor Who rarely fails to inspire me. It is, has been and always will be my first love; firing my imagination to the day I take my last breath when I start my journey to a new dimension. It is part of my being as surely as my friends and family are and my memories of meeting the casrt in real life and stepping through the Tardis doors for the first time are cherished ones indeed.
One of these memories is the launch of Doctor Who Weekly back in the day. It was a comic that still runs to this day as Doctor Who Magazine. But the comic strip would be the main draw so the stories bloody well had to be good. First up was the Iron legion followed by the Star Beast. Curiously enough when we discovered that David Tennant was returning for a special 3 part anniversary special in a story called the Star Beast, my ears pricked up. It couldn’t be the comic strip surely with the Wrarth Warriors and the cute as a puppy Beep the Meep. Suddenly filming footage was released and there they were in th flesh; the Wrarth Warriors and the Meep!!
The quality of storytelling back in the Doctor Who Weekly days was astounding and definitely stayed in the memory of many young fans like me. The Star Beast was one of them. Written by John Wagner and Pat Mills and drawn by the legendary Dave Gibbons, the fourth Doctor lands in the town of Blackcastle where alien forces are gathering. Something is being hunted and the hunters are far from pretty to look at. Some school childrenr Sharon and Fudge have found a little alien they call Meep. He is a white furry creature that you could just cuddle for hours just like a puppy or a kitten.
The Doctor and K9 follow the path of the Meep’s crashed ship totally unaware that he is being trailed by the fierce looking Wrarth Warriors. They attack taking out K9 in the process. The Doctor manages to get the kids and the Meep to safety leaving himself to face the Warriors. He learns too late that the Meep is in fact a criminal and the Wrarth are police force sent to take him into custody.
The Meeps were peaceful once and highly advanced but the radiation from a black sun turned them into savages. The Wrarth are made up of parts of the five most powerful races in the galaxy and the only ones capable of confining the Meep.
Teaming up wuth the Wrarth the Doctor finds the Meep has enslaved the people of Blackcastleincluding Sharon via the black star drive that fuels his craft in order to repair his ship. The town of Blackcastle is almost pulled into a black hole when Beep the Meep activates his ship’s drive. The Doctor manages to stop the Meep and return everyone to normal as the Meep is taken into custody by the Wrarth Warriors.
It is a timeless story of not judging by appearances and to get to know the person inside rather than assuming they are good or bad based on how they look. The comic strip did what the television show had never done up to that point. Sharon became his first black companion as she joined the Doctor and K9 on their travels. The dialogue is so sharp and witty totally capturing the essence of the fourth Doctor. It also uses what the show always did best ; put the extraordinary into our normal to scare the life out of us. Here Fudge’s mum, bewildered by what her son and Sharon are doing with this creature and man in the funny scarf is told by the Doctor that there are aliens at the bottom of her garden. Only in Doctor Who could that line sound perfectly normal.
The Wrarth Warriors are a great new alien. Their ferocious appearance belays their inner sense of right and wrong as upholders of the law. The fact they have detachable limbs make them great fun and hopefully the television version will keep their badass ways intact. Sharon is a great foil for the Doctor in a way similar to other companions; she has tasted the adventure now wants to swim in it. She is as tough and mouthy as they come but sees in the Doctor a way to escape dreary Blackcastle life.
I bought the collected editions of these stories when they were relased and they still to this day as fresh and exciting to read. Big Finish also turned this story into an audio play and released it as part of the classics collection comic books. The Meep did make a return but in a less dramatic way in a cameo in 1991’s Party Animals. The Star Beast 2 debuted in the 1996 Doctor Who Magazine Yearbook where his quest for revenge was ended when the Doctor used black star energy to trap him in a kid’s movie, For the Love of Lassie. In a parallel world Doctor Who is a television programme which the Meep tries to take over and beam black star energy across the planet to enslave everyone. He was defeated by the eighth Doctor and companion Izzy. He appeared as a hallucination in A Life of Matter and Death.
To end, what a great way to celebrate the comic strips by going live action. It has been done before when the novel Only Human became the Family of Blood two parter so in Russell T Dvies hands this should be a blast. Of course I should point out that the Meep appears in the trailer for the third story, The Giggle and not the Star Beast one. Curious, very curious…..Maybe with the arrival of Beep and the Wraith Warriors on screen we might get the classic tale the Dogs of Doom. Werewolves and Daleks anyone?
The Time Warriors and Beyond 