The Mark of Mandragora (comic story)

The Mark of Mandragora
Doctor:	Seventh Doctor
Companion(s):	Ace
Featuring:	Frost, the Brigadier
Main enemy:	The Mandragora Helix
Main setting:	London, 1999
Key crew
Publisher:	Marvel Comics
Editor:	John Freeman
Writer:	Dan Abnett
Artist:	Lee Sullivan and Mark Farmer
Release details
Number of parts:	4
Printed in:	DWM 169-172
Release date:	27 December 1990 - 21 March 1991
Cover date:	23 January - 17 April 1991
Reprinted in:	The Mark of Mandragora, The Good Soldier
Format:	Comic
DWM comic stories
← Previous	Distractions
Next →	Party Animals
DWM "New Adventures order"
← Previous	Fellow Travellers
Next →	Under Pressure

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

The Mark of Mandragora was a Seventh Doctor comic strip published in Doctor Who Magazine. It served as a sequel to the television story The Masque of Mandragora, and featured the return of the Mandragora Helix.

Summary

to be added

Plot

to be added

Characters

• Seventh Doctor
• Ace
• Captain Muriel Frost
• Stranks
• Sergeant Jasper Bean
• Lynodd
• Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart
• Magog
• Locksley

Worldbuilding

• The Brigadier is at a Geneva summit.
• UNIT are trying to negotiate greater powers with the UN.
• By the late 1990s, London had become known as "swinging London" again, having not held the name for thirty years.
• The Doctor says that he has been redecorating the TARDIS.
• When the lightning falls and the Doctor takes out his umbrella, he sings the lyrics to Singin' in the Rain.

Notes

• Throughout the story, a number of epigraphs are contrasted against the events within the panels. These are from: Francis Bacon, Essay on Death; William Shakespeare, Othello and Antony and Cleopatra; John Donne, Song; and Alfonso, King of Castile.
• Ace's earrings are the Starfleet insignia from Star Trek.
• Nicholas Courtney gave permission for the use of his likeness in this and the prelude story Darkness, Falling, on the condition that the Brigadier only appeared for a few frames.
• The story was presented colourised in the graphic novel The Mark of Mandragora.

Continuity

• Ace briefly encounters Magog, last of the Malvelius, still trapped in the Doctor's TARDIS and pleading for release. (COMIC: Doctor Who and the Iron Legion)
• The Brigadier recognises the Seventh Doctor from the "last time [he] saw him" during the Carbury Incident. (TV: Battlefield)
• The Doctor states that the Mandragora Helix aligns with Earth every five centuries. (TV: The Masque of Mandragora)
• Frost states that UNIT have been operating under a greater degree of public transparency since aliens became a public fact after the Gantic invasion (COMIC: Invaders from Gantac!) and the Availlon fiasco. (TV: Battlefield)
• Due to UNIT's new public and global position, Frost sows the seeds for the later organisation Foreign Hazard Duty, to operate in a secret position. (COMIC: Echoes of the Mogor!)

External links

• The Mark of Mandragora at the Doctor Who Reference Guide