21, later renamed 21 Special Agent, Secret Agent 21, and briefly Mister Magnet, and known in its weekly prose format as Contact 21, was a long-running series published in TV Century 21. It starred Brent Cleever, codenamed Twenty One, at varying times an agent for the Universal Secret Service or a freelance operative.
At TV21's inception, Contact 21 was the letters and competition page of the publication, with the character of Twenty One being used to reply to any correspondence received from the readership as well as set missions for them to complete. Beginning in TV21 21, 21 was spun-off into a comic strip. Initially set in the 2040s, the strip fleshed out the shared universe of the magazine by depicting the earlier years of the World Government and organisations such as the World Space Patrol and World Aquanaut Security Patrol, originally created for the television series Fireball XL5 and Stingray respectively. Although Twenty One was eventually replaced as the steward of the letters page by the personnel of Spectrum as part of the promotion for the new TV series Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, the comic strip survived multiple major changes to TV21 and was only dropped after its numbering was reset in September 1969.
Crossovers with the DWU[[edit] | [edit source]]
As the conceit of TV Century 21 was that all its series took place in a single universe, several 21 stories from its pages crossed over freely with the Doctor Who universe. This included references to 21's characters and ongoing storylines in the prose "cover stories" and "Stop Press" panels at the end of The Daleks.
In the comic strip, the DWU character of World President Nikita Bandranaik recurred in some of the earlier stories while the location of Unity City remained a semi-regular fixture of the series long after its introduction in Duel of the Daleks. Additionally, Andromeda Or Die began a story arc partly set on the planet Astra, originally created by David Whitaker for the First Doctor television story The Rescue. Meanwhile, the 21 short stories were most notable for furthering the story of the 2060s Dalek invasion of Earth, with the forces of the Daleks and the Universal Secret Service explicitly interacting on multiple occasions. 21-branded competitions sometimes featured the Daleks as well, albeit rarely as part of a narrative.
The following 21 stories and features involved DWU elements and are thus covered on this Wiki:
Comic stories[[edit] | [edit source]]
| Title | Issue | Released |
|---|---|---|
| Down With The Director | TV21 42-51 | 6 November 1965 - 8 January 1966 |
| Andromeda Or Die | TV21 58-66 | 26 February - 23 April 1966 |
| The Bitter Cold Dish | TV21 67-75 | 30 April - 25 June 1966 |
| The Long Road Back | TV21 76-80 | 2 - 30 July 1966 |
| Blood Over Unity City | 1966 Summer Extra | 1966 |
| Deadly Fly | TV21 90-93 | 8 - 29 October 1966 |
| An Eye For An Eye | TV21 94-104 | 5 November 1966 - 14 January 1967 |
| Revolution | TV21 125-131 | 10 June - 22 July 1967 |
| Tough At The Top | TV21 132-135 | 29 July - 19 August 1967 |
| The Assassin | TV21 141-145 | 30 September - 28 October 1967 |
| Sharper Than the Serpent's Tooth | TV21 175-180 | 25 May - 29 June 1968 |
| Cold Comfort Camp | TV21 181-185 | 6 July - 3 August 1968 |
| Terror of the Titans | TV21 198-205 | 2 November - 21 December 1968 |
| The Space Pirates | TV21 226-230 | 17 May - 14 June 1969 |
| The Syndicate of the Faceless Ones | TV21 231-237 | 21 June - 2 August 1969 |