War-Game

War-Game (not to be confused with The War Games TV story) begins with the Doctor and Frobisher playing a game, which I can only presume will continue the time-honoured narrative device of games standing as a symbolic representation, or metaphor, for the events of the story itself.

In this case it is a game of the Doctor's own devising. As he puts it:

"I adapted it from an Earth game called Chess. Gave it an added dimension, you might say..."

I suspect this probably means the Doctor is making the rules of the game up as he goes along in order to win against Frobisher.

Derp!

Frobisher looks very surprised when the Doctor declares "checkmate" against him, although it later transpires that the Doctor has done this 23 times so maybe he shouldn't be.

The TARDIS arrives on a primitive planet but the scanner detects "traces of sophisticated electronic activity" which makes the Doctor want to investigate and so gets the plot underway.

Frobisher remembers he can shapeshift for a change and disguises himself as Conan the Barbarian, although even in comic format they don't expect they can afford to get Arnold Schwarzenegger in to play him.

They spend a couple of pages wandering around a settlement that seems to be based on a 1960s telefantasy version of the Middle East, like something straight out of Danger Man or Mission: Impossible, until they get captured and sold as slaves.

The manny that buys them is Achmar, who works for "Kaon, lord of the seven provinces" and he takes them to his lord while hinting that Kaon knows about the TARDIS, or "the blue box in which you arrived" as Achmar calls it.

When they get to Kaon's castle, it turns out that Kaon is a Draconian.

This is presented as a big deal, deserving a whole page for just the one picture, and it is the cliffhanger ending to the first part of War-Game. Kaon isn't actually referred to as a Draconian yet, but the little text at the bottom of the page says

Next: Draconian measures!

which is an attempt at a funny play on the word "Draconian" meaning both "excessively harsh and severe" and "a Doctor Who alien not seen in the TV series since 1973." However this is just the comic having a little joke with us, as the next story is actually War-Game part 2.

Kaon tells the Doctor and Frobisher his backstory in a page where his face is surrounded by flashbacks where the action spills out of the panels - a stylish way of dumping a lot of exposition on us.
In brief, his spaceship crashed on this planet many years ago and he persuaded some of the locals to make him their chief by being better at fighting than them. The only other Draconian on the planet is his daughter Kara, who has been captured by Vegar, a rival chief. He wants the Doctor to help him rescue Kara using the TARDIS, which the Doctor agrees to since it will mean less violence than if Kaon sends his henchmannys to attack Vegar's mannys.

Kaon sends Achmar to lead a diversionary attack to distract Vegar away from their rescue attempt, which Frobisher compares to the Chess game from the start of the story. The Doctor, however, is not happy that those mannys are being sacrificed like Chess pawns.

"That was Chess, this is real..."

he says.

When some guards catch them, Frobisher tries becoming giant but only gets stabbed in the leg for his troubles. Maybe this is why he doesn't shapeshift into useful things to solve the plot all the time - he's a bit rubbish at it really!

Eventually they fight their way to the room where Kara is being held captive. Kaon fights Vegar while the Doctor and Frobisher free Kara. Vegar and Kaon kill each other, and Kara decides to stay on the planet to be chief in the place of her father.

War-Game is a strange story to find following directly after Once Upon a Time-Lord... (which made maximum usage of the comicbook medium) because it is so very much like the TV series of that era: the Doctor and Companion taking ages to get to the plot, a returning old monster/alien, the Doctor being sidelined in his own series, and violent scenes leading to almost all the guest characters ending up ded.

I wouldn't have been at all surprised to see the credits read "Written by Eric Saward, Produced by John Nathan-Turner." In fact it was written by Alan McKenzie, who here is to Eric Saward what Eric Saward was to Robert Holmes.