The Good Soldier (comic story): Difference between revisions

{{Infobox Story SMW

|enemy= [[Leader (The Good Soldier)|Leader]]

|setting= {{il|[[United States of America|United States]], [[1954]]|[[Earth]] orbit, [[1954]]}}

|writer= Andrew Cartmel

|letterer = Glib

|publication= [[DWM 175]]-[[DWM 178|178]]

|release date= 13 June - 5 September 1991

|cover date= 10 July - 2 October 1991

|reprint = The Good Soldier (graphic novel)

|reprint2 = Cybermen: The Ultimate Comic Strip Collection

|format= Comic

|epcount = 4

|series2        = [[Interweaving with the New Adventures|''DWM'' "New Adventures order"]]

}}{{comic stub}}

[[The Doctor's TARDIS]] pulls into a service station in [[1950s]] [[Nevada]], in the shape of a vintage Cadillac. A squad of soldiers, led by Colonel [[Rhodes (The Good Soldier)|Rhodes]], are nervously anticipating an attack by flying saucers, but instead their unknown enemy lifts an entire section of the desert out of the landscape and transports it to a waiting shuttle, which in turn takes it to a much larger warship. [[Cyberman|Cybermen]] dig up through the ground and attack the service station, killing most of the soldiers; only the Doctor and Ace escape. The other survivors are taken prisoner, and Rhodes is electronically brainwashed to believe that he is fighting the Red Chinese; thus conditioned, he shoots and kills the rest of his squad. The Cybermen decide that he is a suitable acquisition, and wire him into their warship's control pod. The Doctor explains to Ace that the Cybermen intend to use this ship to attack Earth, but first they need an aggressive, warlike pilot. He steals one of the interface mechanisms the Cybermen used to connect Rhodes to the ship, and Ace uses it to interface through the TARDIS to the shuttle which brought them here. The Cybermen pursue the escaping shuttle, and when an escape pod is launched, the Cybermen use a tractor beam to bring it back aboard the warship - but the Doctor and Ace are still on the shuttle, and the escape pod contains an overloading reactor. The reactor explodes, destroying the warship, and delaying [[1986 Cyberman invasion of Earth|the Cyberman invasion]] until the historically accurate [[1986]].

* [[Colonel]] [[Rhodes (The Good Soldier)|Rhodes]]

* [[Reserve reactor]]

== Worldbuilding ==

* Rhodes remembers fighting in [[Korea]] during [[December]] [[1950]].

* A poster in the diner advertises an adaptation of [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]]'s play ''[[Richard III (play)|Richard the Third]]'', retitled as ''[[Tricky Dicky!]]'', starring [[Howard Keel]], [[Sonia Hieny]] and [[Mickey Rooney]].

* Ace asks the Doctor if she can get a [[curry]], but he says they had not been imported into the US at that point in time. She asked a similar question at [[Gabriel Chase]] in [[1883]]. ([[TV]]: ''[[Ghost Light (TV story)|Ghost Light]]'')