Once Upon a Time-Lord (comic story)

Once Upon a Time-Lord
Doctor:	Sixth Doctor
Companion(s):	Frobisher
Featuring:	Voyager
Main enemy:	Astrolabus
Main setting:	Cabinet of Astrolabus
Key crew
Publisher:	Marvel Comics
Editor:	Ian Rimmer
Writer:	Steve Parkhouse
Artist:	John Ridgway
Letterer:	Annie Halfacree
Release details
Number of parts:	2
Printed in:	DWM 98-99
Release date:	7 February - 7 March 1985
Reprinted in:	DWMAC 4, Voyager, Voyager, DWC S3 4, Doctor Who Classics Volume 4, Doctor Who Classics Omnibus Volume 2
Format:	Comic
DWM comic stories
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Next →	War-Game

You may be looking for the graphic novel of the same name.

Once Upon a Time-Lord was a Sixth Doctor comic published in Doctor Who Magazine. It is notable for having several pages written out in story form with accompanying comic panels. With its end, it concluded both the Voyager and Astrolabus themes that had started in the Sixth Doctor's second strip, Voyager.

Summary

On the trail of Astrolabus, the Sixth Doctor and Frobisher find themselves in a land of make-believe where nothing is real.

Plot

Part 1

The Sixth Doctor heads into the Cabinet of Astrolabus to retrieve Frobisher. As the Doctor exits the TARDIS, he is attacked by a dark rider who attempts to kill him, but who rides away after the Doctor ducks. The Doctor finds Frobisher, who insists the Doctor come and meet his "friends", but the Doctor resists, saying that he doesn't trust Astrolabus, and warns Frobisher that he believes that the reality they are in isn't real.

Meanwhile, Astrolabus watches them from inside a carnival, where children watch the Doctor and Frobisher. Astrolabus instructs them to put on their "thinking caps" so that they can control the story.

In the forest, with their lives now reading like a storybook, the Doctor and Frobisher meet Brock, who gives Frobisher a worm. They soon come under attack, and the natives try to cook and eat Frobisher. However, Frobisher is saved by Tarzan.

After escaping, Frobisher feels like he's not in control, and the Doctor urges him to try and find answers in the castle. Meanwhile, Astrolabus urges the children to think up "something really dangerous", and sure enough, a gigantic troll begins attacking the Doctor and Frobisher, and they make a run for the castle

Part 2

To be added.

Characters

• Sixth Doctor
• Frobisher
• Astrolabus
• Voyager
• Little Red Riding Hood
• Brock
• Tarzan

Worldbuilding

• The Doctor is forced to quote The Lord of the Rings: "By Elbereth and Luthien the Fair, you shall have neither the Ring, nor me!"
• The Land of Make-Believe registers no signs of life whatsoever aboard the TARDIS.
• Frobisher is noted, by the Doctor, to have been raised as a guttersnipe in a Xenon slum.
• Knave, varlet, vagabond, caitiff, wretch, rascal, rapscallion, blackguard, shyster, skunk, cur, tyrant, fiend, cad and tergiversator are words which the Doctor applies to Astrolabus.

Notes

The colour reprint of this comic.

• Once Upon a Time-Lord features a number of implicit pastiches and homages to other media. These include allusions to the Black Riders of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Little Red Riding Hood from the Brothers Grimm, Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan, and, more loosely, Star Trek and William Shakespeare's Hamlet.
• Three pages are devoted to a wholesale homage of Rupert Bear's presentation style. Six identically-sized square panels are captioned with rhyme. At the bottom of the page, a small instalment of prose retells the images in greater detail. These pages each have the subheading: "Frobisher Eats a Worm", "Frobisher Wishes He Hadn't" and "He Who Hesitates is Lunch".
• Upon their escape from the Rupert Bear pastiche, the Doctor and Frobisher leave a panel whose signature is partially obscured to read, "HOGAR". An homage to Tarzan's comic artist Burne Hogarth.
• Once Upon a Time-Lord was also the name of a documentary broadcast by PBS in 1983.
• Alongside Ridgway's little penguins, this story's final panel also has a cameo from Parkhouse and Ridgway's character C.Y.R.I.L., a fictional "editor droid" for Marvel UK who had a back-up strip in Star Wars Weekly beginning earlier in 1984.

Continuity

• The Doctor journeys into the Cabinet of Astrolabus to find Frobisher after he was kidnapped by Astrolabus. (COMIC: Polly the Glot ^[+]Loading...["Polly the Glot (comic story)"])
• The Doctor has previously been to a land where fictional characters were real. (TV: The Mind Robber ^[+]Loading...["The Mind Robber (TV story)"])
• The Doctor is still haunted by thoughts of Voyager's threat to end all of existence unless his star charts are returned. (COMIC: Voyager ^[+]Loading...["Voyager (comic story)"])

External links

• Once Upon a Time-Lord at the Doctor Who Reference Guide