studio robb: As mentioned at the intro to "Retirement", I was tasked with
coming up with two of the objects being searched for in the scavenger hunt. The
first of those two objects, "The Sundial", begins in this story. What I
*didn’t* mention (only hinted at), was that when told I had to come up with the
two objects, I decided to use that as a "bargaining chip" to bring in an old
character from the series, none other than The Doctor’s First Companion, Susan.
L. J. balked at
first, and understandably so, as "Retirement" was her story, and Susan
certainly wasn’t part of it. But I really pushed to get Susan in this comic.
For those
unfamiliar with "Doctor Who", Susan was a very cool and (in my mind) tragic
character who was The Doctor’s granddaughter (though there are some who dispute
that fact). She had an exotic "glow" about her, and in the first episode it was
very clear that she had very high intelligence...and was pretty lost in 1963
English society. Unfortunately, for who-knows-what-reasons, her character
devolved to a screamy, whiny, blithering character who
was always in need of rescuing and seemed more afraid of aliens than the two
humans, Ian and Barbara (they were teachers at the English High School Susan
attended briefly). In the end, actress Carol Anne Ford, who played Susan, had
enough and asked to leave the show...so the writers repaid her by giving her an
absolutely awful exit story called "The Dalek Invasion"...reading the current official BBC site on Doctor
Who, it would seem the current producers agree.
Basically, there was a Dalek war on earth, and at the end of the story, Susan announces she’s leaving The Doctor and when asked why, she says she's fallen in love with this guest-character, David Campbell...say what?! Throughout the story there are contrived hints that Susan's tired of her current situation and that she envied others who stayed in one time and strove to build a better world. But...love? For some reason, the writers of that story seem to think that David's hitting Susan in the face with a fish that he just caught was the sign that they were falling in love. I dunno...maybe that's a prelude to a romance, but in the grand scheme of things, was that enough for Susan to leave her Grandfather and the life she's known? well, the writers felt so, so leave her Grandfather she did.
To say the Susan’s
farewell was "terrible" doesn’t even begin to describe that scene to me. But thanks
to "the magic of comics", I saw an opportunity in my
own way to make things up to Ms. Ford by including her in this story. So I
pleaded and begged L. J. to include Susan in the story, and eventually, she
acquiesced...and I must say, she did a *brilliant* job incorporating Susan into
the story. I’ve told her many times, and now I’ll say it her in a public forum:
"thank-you, L. J., for making Susan the character she was *meant* to be!
Oh, and BTW,
remember the newspaper in the previous chapter? It announced that this story
takes place 50 years after the Earth-Dalek war...and
when Susan left The Doctor.
Page 2: Notice
Ace’s "circling hand" that goes out side the frame...when the story was prep’d for Xeroxing (this *was* the late ’80s, remember!),
editor Jay Ritchie accidentally cut off Ace’s hand! He realized his mistake,
and glued it back on, but if you looked closely in the DWIS version, you can
see the line of attachment...so you could say that the version you’re reading
right now is the *uncut* version!
Page 4: I remember hating drawing the rain for
the "Farnus" scenes...but looking at it now, I guess I
did an okay job dealing with it...on the other hand, after making a big stink to
include Susan, I did an *awful* job drawing her...but she does get better...eventually...
L.J. Scott: This was the first episode where I, the writer, was to include other people's stuff in what I was writing. A first for me, and I think it turned out all right. While most of the time, studio robb's writing contributions were mainly ideas that I would then scratch my head and flesh out, this is one of the few examples where I got direct lines from studio robb and just pasted them into my script; Essentially the clue and what it meant.
Also, after a formally formatted first episode, this episode shows studio robb beginning to think out side of 'the box'. Or 'boxes' I should say as I would script them as side-by-side, row-by-row frames, studio robb very effectively arranged some of the key scenes into triangles, frameless frames, and even the nice complete view of the console with two different frames taking place on each side. I think these 'out of the box' moments added a sense of style and quality that really helped heighten the moments. And this was just the beginning!
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