Doctor Who Classics “The Deal”

So, for the last three stories in this omnibus, writing falls to one Steve Parkhouse.  I’m not familiar with his work, but a little online research (his Wikipedia entry) shows a decent resume of comics.  I just can’t say I’ve read any of them or even heard of the stuff he’s best known for, probably because that work didn’t quite cross the Atlantic.

There’s still nice Dave Gibbons artwork though.

The TARDIS materializes on a planet with a damaged gravity field, causing a small spaceship to fly off and crash somewhere.  The TARDIS has the bad gravity field.  Not the planet.  The planet might have other problems.  But the TARDIS caused the crash.  I think.  Regardless, before the Doctor can go look to help the passengers, they attack him.  Said passengers are a heavily-armed soldier type and his small, spider-like robot helper.  The robot, called Spider, tries to mesmerize the Doctor and empty his pockets, but this is the Doctor.  He can handle such things without any real problem.

But see, soldier types with a quick trigger finger are usually involved in some sort of war, and when a second ship shows up and starts shooting, it isn’t long before the soldier forces the Doctor into the TARDIS and gets him to play with the wonky gravity field before stepping off and blowing up the other ship.

It is then that the Doctor realizes the guy’s a psycho who keeps shouting stuff about “the deal”.  I am not sure why it took the Doctor that long.  Seemed kinda obvious to me.  Regardless, he fixes the TARDIS and leaves the man to his fate of getting blown to bits.

It took the Doctor a little too long to realize the crazy man shooting at him before they’d even exchanged names, something that never really happened since the guy didn’t listen long enough to hear much of anything the Doctor had to say, was maybe too dangerous to spend any real amount of time with.

Oh well.  This book is almost over.  Two more stories to go, and then, well, something new.