Doctor Who magazine comic strips ready for screen adaptation
Doctor Who Magazine has been publishing original comic strip adventures since 1979, creating a vast library of stories that exist outside the television canon and explore characters, eras, and ideas the show has never touched. These strips feature every incarnation of the Doctor, from Tom Baker's cosmic wanderer to Jodie Whittaker's compassionate traveller, and they often venture into genres and time periods that television budgets cannot easily accommodate. Australian fans have long appreciated these hidden gems, particularly through the ABC's decades-long history of airing the programme and its ongoing availability on the broadcaster's iview streaming platform.
Despite featuring some of the most imaginative writing and striking artwork in the entire franchise, the vast majority of these strips remain unadapted for animation or live action. The reasons are partly financial, partly creative, and partly a matter of rights and editorial priorities, but the appetite for new screen interpretations of classic material has never been stronger. Below is a look at the categories of strips that feel overdue for a visual reinterpretation, beginning with a comparison of the eras, styles, and creative teams that define this rich tradition.
| Era | Notable Strips | Lead Artist | Adaptation Potential |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1979-1984 | The Iron Legion, Doctor Who and the Star Beast | Dave Gibbons, Pat Mills | High gothic and steampunk |
| 1985-1996 | The Highest Science, The Pit, Nature of the Beast | Andrew Cartmel scripts | Strong cosmic horror |
| 1996-2005 | The Forgotten, The Power of Thel, The Junkyard | Various writers/artists | Niche revival stories |
| 2005-2014 | The Widow's Curse, Hounded, The Crimson Hand | Slashing Through Time | Modern action thrillers |
| 2014-Present | The Luddites, Stockbridge, Time and Time Again | New creative teams | Experimental narratives |
The roots of the magazine strip tradition
When Doctor Who Magazine launched its first ongoing comic strip in 1979, the publication was responding to a gap left by the show's inconsistent television output during that period. Writers like Pat Mills and artists like Dave Gibbons brought a fresh energy to the character, crafting stories that could be produced with limited budgets but unlimited imagination. The strips quickly became essential reading for fans across the United Kingdom, and they found an eager audience in Australia through imported copies sold in specialty shops in Melbourne's CBD and Sydney's Haymarket district, as well as through the network of fan clubs that distributed copies interstate.
These early strips established visual templates and storytelling conventions that would influence the show for decades to come. The stark black-and-white artwork of The Iron Legion and the vibrant colour experiments of later strips proved that Doctor Who could thrive in print as a serious dramatic medium. Australian readers in the early 1980s would often pool resources to share imported issues, a practice that built community networks that persist in modern Doctor Who Australia Facebook groups and the regular panel discussions at Supanova events in Sydney and Melbourne.
The editorial team at the time took risks that television could not, introducing concepts like alternate timelines, morally ambiguous companions, and sustained horror narratives. Strips such as The Star Beast and The Destroyer introduced alien races and villains that would later be referenced obliquely in televised stories, creating a continuity that rewards long-term readers. This layered world-building represents exactly the kind of rich source material that modern streaming adaptations thrive upon.
Gothic and cosmic horror from the classic era
The strips produced during Tom Baker's final seasons and Peter Davison's tenure leaned heavily into gothic horror and cosmic dread, genres that the television show occasionally visited but rarely sustained across full episodes. Stories like The Stockbridge Chronicles by Steve Dillon introduced recurring characters and locations that felt like small-town England invaded by the uncanny, a setting that recurs throughout British genre fiction and resonates with Australian audiences who appreciate stories of isolated communities facing impossible threats.
One particularly striking example is Seasmoke, a strip by Andrew Cartmel and Dan Abnett that reimagined the Doctor as a haunted figure on a windswept coast. The tone recalls classic ghost stories that British and Australian bookshops still stock prominently, and the visual opportunities for fog-shrouded cliffs, shifting shadows, and a sense of vast uncaring sea are immense. Australian animation studios have proven capable of similar atmospheric work in recent years, and an adaptation could sit comfortably alongside productions classified by the Australian Classification Board for mature audiences without losing its poetic, melancholic edge.
The Highest Science, another landmark strip from this era, took the Seventh Doctor and Ace into a region of space where the laws of physics themselves became the antagonist. The philosophical weight of the story, combined with its striking visual design, made it a favourite among readers who felt that television never quite captured the Doctor as a figure of genuine cosmic scale. Animation offers the perfect medium to realise these ambitious concepts, allowing for imagery that live action cannot produce without prohibitively expensive effects work.
The experimental 1990s and early 2000s
The 1990s strips under the editorship of Gary Russell embraced more experimental structures, including self-contained psychological pieces, anthology formats, and meta-commentary on the show itself. Nature of the Beast, written by Jonathan Morris, explored the Doctor's darker impulses in ways the family-friendly television series never could, presenting a character wrestling with the cost of his actions across centuries. These stories often demanded sophisticated storytelling techniques that print could deliver through panel composition, pacing, and the reader's imagination, but which animation could elevate with motion, colour, and sound design.
The shift toward the 2000s brought strips that grappled with the new series continuity while honouring the magazine's heritage. Writers like Scott Gray crafted intricate mysteries that wove through the Twelfth Doctor's era, often touching on themes that Australian audiences first encountered through SBS broadcasts of classic episodes in the 1990s. The opportunity to adapt these intricate narratives for screen lies in the rise of premium streaming, where audiences expect complex, serialised storytelling and reward ambitious world-building.
Strips like The Forgotten and The Power of Thel demonstrated that the magazine could tell stories on an epic scale, with sprawling casts and multiple settings that would translate well to limited television series formats. The Junkyard, meanwhile, offered a more intimate tale that demonstrated the strip's capacity for quiet character drama. Together, these stories represent a body of work that has waited patiently for recognition, and modern audiences hungry for substantive science fiction would welcome their arrival on screen. Fans interested in how television has handled recent anniversary material can explore The Power of the Doctor: A Fan's Guide to the 2022 Centenary Special for context on how the franchise balances nostalgia with new narratives.
Modern strips waiting for recognition
The strips published since 2014 have pushed the format in new directions, embracing diverse creative voices and tackling contemporary issues through the lens of science fiction. Stories like The Luddites by Scott Gray addressed technological anxiety with a sharpness that felt timely, exploring tensions between progress and tradition in ways that resonate with Australian viewers who have witnessed rapid technological change in their own workplaces and communities. The strip's grounded approach made its science fiction elements feel urgent rather than escapist.
Strips featuring the Fifteenth Doctor have explored identity and belonging in ways that connect with younger Australian viewers discovering the show through ABC iview and other streaming platforms. The magazine has consistently championed new talent, bringing in writers and artists from diverse backgrounds who bring fresh perspectives to the character. This commitment to renewal ensures that the strips remain relevant and continue to produce material worthy of adaptation.
One underexplored category is the anthology-style strips that appeared in special issues and summer publications. These often featured one-off tales by guest artists and writers, producing gems that slip through the cracks of continuity discussions but offer complete, satisfying narratives in their own right. An anthology animation series could draw from this rich well, offering fresh interpretations of the Doctor without the constraints of ongoing continuity. The appeal of such an approach mirrors the success of streaming platforms showcasing adult animation, which have proven that short-form animation can sustain sophisticated storytelling for grown-up audiences.
Bringing the strips to Australian screens
Australia has a unique relationship with Doctor Who, shaped by decades of ABC broadcasts and a passionate fan community that organises events in Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane. The country's classification system, administered by the Australian Classification Board, has generally been welcoming to the show's occasional forays with the spectre of 2019's classification reform debates and the franchise's earlier appearances on SBS. Local audiences have demonstrated an appetite for the franchise beyond the mainstream episodes, embracing the expanded universe through Big Finish audio dramas, novels, and these very comic strips.
A dedicated adaptation of these comic strips could find a natural home on Australian screens, whether as a co-production with BBC Studios or as a locally produced animation leveraging the country's growing studio infrastructure in Melbourne and Adelaide. The local appetite is proven through the success of Supanova Comic Con events, which regularly draw Doctor Who guests of honour and celebrate the magazine strips alongside the television episodes. With streaming platforms increasingly hungry for distinctive science fiction content and Australian audiences actively seeking out new takes on familiar properties, the time feels right for these printed adventures to finally step out of the page and onto the screen.