What did the writers know and when did they know it?: Doctor Who and the Rocks of Venus

So we are back from our holiday edition break and the Doctor has thankfully lost that Charlie Manson look. Indeed, he appears all friendly and winks at us readers. But his open eye reminds me of the Master in Deadly Assassin and so that portrait just has an odd feel for me.

This is the longest TV comic yet for the Third Doctor - 7 parts of 2 pages each. Epic!

It begins with the Brigadier and the Doctor in the back of a UNIT limousine heading deep into the Scottish Highlands. Their destination is a highly secure facility where they meet its director, Professor Logan, who looks like he should be in the "Land of Confusion" video. Logan has surreptitiously sent a manned mission to Venus which has returned with rock samples that prove there's life on the second stone from the sun. Are astronauts who go to Venus properly called Venerealnauts?

The Doctor brings a sample of the Venusian rocks to UNIT's lab where the bonnie lass Liz Shaw is thrilled and amazed at the discovery. Her Time Lord mentor, however, is sure they're fakes.

Never one to put off confrontation, the Doctor goes to Logan's home, a well-appointed and well-maintained castle that is highly expensive, and tells him straight up that he's been to Venus at least five times and there are no rocks there akin to the sample he was given. Logan laughs off the Doctor's accusation and tells him to go away. No one would believe his outlandish allegation.

The Doctor begins to return to the big city when he has an epiphany. Doing a MacGyver routine, he hastily assembles a device from parts taken from Bessie which can put people into suspended animation. He infiltrates Logan's facility but is eventually captured. Logan, tired of the Time Lord's interference, has the Doctor strapped into a rocket which is launched - destination Venus.

There's a panel showing the Doctor in that chair where he looks like Davros. It's uncanny. I suppose his visage is being distorted by the force of the rocket's thrust similar to the facial distortion seen in Spies Like Us but he really looks like the creator of the Daleks.

But our hero won't be defeated so easily. He manages to escape his bonds and turn the craft around onto a course for Earth. Logan likes his castle. No, he loves it. He is so castlephilic that he lets the Doctor live and vows to give a full confession to the authorities so that the Doctor doesn't crash the capsule into the villain's precious castle. 

I can never recall exactly when we understood that Venus is totally inhospitable to aikido instructors. Let me see here...It seems that by 1967 we apes understood that the temperature and air pressure were just too great for even a Time Lord to traipse around in. Yet Doctor Who writers kept up the charade. Either that or they made up some tale as to how Venus got so bad. For a series that began as something to impart some knowledge to kids, it sure lost its way when it comes to Venus.

Logan is a good, cartoonish villain. As an engineer, he gets points for giving his rocket self-destruct mechanism a big handle with "EXPLODE" in big letters.