Identity Parade

Doctor Who Adventures, which we buy monthly / fortnightly / weekly (depending on frequency, which fluctuates) for Thomas, runs a series of Where’s Wally? type pictures containing the Doctor hidden amidst an army of Sontarans, a clan of Ice Warriors or a gathering of permanently frozen Weeping Angels. They are quite fun to do, and the resulting collections – titled Where’s The Doctor? and When’s The Doctor? – have kept many a small child content on long car journeys, at least in our house. Well, it’s only a matter of time before they get into Big Finish.

But the current issue has something else entirely – although I can’t lay my hands on the previous issues to find out whether this is the first in a series or a continuation of one. It carries an unavoidable New Who bias, but I was pleasantly surprised by how many nods there were to previous Doctors – well, one or two in particular…

 

(Sorry about the folds. I miss the office A3 scanner.)

It’s Coal Hill School, so of course education is the name of the game. That’s why the Krillitane appear (although where on earth is Sarah Jane?), that’s why there are so many Daleks, and that’s presumably why Romana is wearing her St. Trinian’s outfit. I am particularly pleased by the inclusion of Michael Sheard, who I always felt was underused in Classic Who.

Notes:

1. I know that there probably aren’t that many in the target of audience who’ve actually seen ‘The Robots of Death’, but calling it a “scary robot” is incredibly lame. It’s a Voc. Even my six-year-old can use Google.

2. “Oh,” said Gareth. “That’s meant to be Ace!  I briefly thought it was Ewan McGregor hitting a Dalek with a lightsaber.”

3. Is the Angel wearing dark glasses for any reason other than because it’s summer? Is there some sort of adverse quantum effect? Perhaps Angels who wear sunglasses can’t see other Angels (in the same way that a pair of Ray-Bans is apparently all you need to protect a vampire from sunlight exposure).

4. “Also,” said Gareth, “I briefly wondered why Sergeant Major Zero was floating between Missy and Tom Baker.” I was going to say that those Toclafane were disproportionately large, but footage from ‘Last of the Time Lords’ has convinced me otherwise. Still, there are similarities.

Anyway, I did think it would be fun to do an annotated version of this picture, identifying as many of the characters as we can, for the benefit of the uninitiated or people who could have sworn they recognise such-and-such but can’t quite figure it out. As of 16 April, this list is mostly complete, but I’ll upload expanded / corrected versions as and when people tell me stuff I’ve missed, and the ones I’ve got wrong.

You’ll note that I haven’t labelled most of the obvious ones, with the exception of the different Dalek factions (the bronze Daleks are, as far as I can see, just bronze Daleks). I can’t work out whether the kid in the bottom right corner – standing next to the soldiers – is anyone significant or just another pupil. The same applies to the girl in the window next to the Cybershade. And there’s a creature in that lower right window – just above the Dalek – which is on the tip of my tongue.

Otherwise, we have:

1. Barbara Wright
2. Ian Chesterton
3. Lunar spiders
4. Krillitane
5. Is that a Star Trek mask? Ben, that’s got to be you.
6. Twelfth Doctor
7. Adipose
8. Snowman
9. Jeremy Baines
10. Raston Warrior Robot
11. Renegade Daleks
12. Teller
13. Judoon
14. Auton
15. Special Weapons Dalek
16. Abzorbaloff
17. Kid reading Doctor Who Adventures
18. Missy
19. Toclafane
20. Fourth Doctor
21. John Smith
22. Cybershade
23. Tritovore
24. First Doctor
25. Susan Foreman
26. Courtney Woods
27. Romana (II)
28. Mr Bronson* / Headmaster
29. Slitheen
30. Skovox
31. Ace
32. Empty Child
33. Kate Lethbridge-Stewart
34. Osgood
35. Ood
36. Adric
37. Turlough
38. Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
39. Clara Oswald
40. Voc Robot
41. Mondas Cyberman
42. Space Pig
43. Dalek Sec
44. Scientist Dalek
45. Imperial Dalek
46. Zygon
47. Mummy
48. Scaroth

* Grange Hill fans only.

Meanwhile, Joshua got a Horrible Histories magazine, which had no mention of Doctor Who whatsoever.

Well, more or less.