Funny / Doctor Who Magazine

The comic strip

• Beep the Meep is a walking, talking CMOF waiting to happen. Imagine a creature that looks about as cuddly and furry as a Furby... with a Hitleresque desire to conquer the galaxy with his Black Star radiation. Now imagine it trying to do so by repeatedly playing The Woobie. And then picture it as it goes Ax-Crazy with his guns.
  • And there was the time the Doctor trapped him inside a Lassie movie.
  • And the audio story where he tried to market a TV show starring himself for the purposes of brainwashing his viewers into his own private army.
    • To start with, the Doctor had already wrecked his mind control machine. The advance listings for the show were... too big a clue to ignore. Beep loses what little composure he has when he realizes he's been supervising and editing months of brainless Glurge Addict television for nothing.
    • The Doctor thwarts Beep's plans, but most of the action was transmitted live on national TV. Cue the cancellation of Beep's show, and a deluge of people asking for a sci-fi show with this mysterious Doctor...
    • The theme song for Beep's show simply must be mentioned. Picture "It's a Small World After All" with lyrics by Jeffrey Dahmer:
      Let the streets run red! Spread our message of pain!
      When they beg for their lives, use the pliers again.
      No need to ask why - do it for the Most High.
      You are Beep's friend - CONQUER ALLLL!
    • But the biggest insult comes near the end, as the Doctor confesses he actually never found the mind control machine - for a few, precious minutes, Beep had his army... only to lose it almost immediately by revealing his true colors just a few minutes too early.
• Once upon a time, there was this issue where Izzy and the Eighth Doctor, in pursuit of Beep, entered our universe. Yup. In Britain. Yup. In London. Yup. Near BBC Television Centre. Yup. Izzy gets to meet Tom freaking Baker. Yup. Tom Baker gets to scare Beep into submission. By talking. Yup. The Doctor gets to read Doctor Who Magazine. And we get to see his expression. (This was written to mark the 20th anniversary of the magazine, which launched in 1979 — so that's the temporal setting.)
• Happy Deathday, which marked the franchise's 35th anniversary, had the then-eight incarnations of the Doctor fighting to defeat a lesser-known Guardian of Space and Time - The Beige Guardian. From the Wildean Wit Enforcer ^note  a parody of the Raston Warrior Robot which beats people into submission when it hears bad puns , to the Fourth and Seventh Doctors talking about their different allergies while casually ignoring the horde of monsters approaching, to the Third Doctor pummelling a couple of drunken Sontarans, to the Fifth recognizing a shapeshifter by their sweat, to the First and Eighth launching a stick of dynamite to the Guardian while he's lamenting how he used to be bullied by the other Guardians for being a loser... CMOF from beginning to end.
• Planet Bollywood has the Doctor and Amy land on a planet where everyone participates in Bollywood-style musical numbers... including them. Hilarity Ensues as the Doctor must fix a malfunctioning Shiva-like cyborg called "the Muse" in order to defeat a fleet of singing Ganesh-like aliens. Even more hilarity ensues as both the Doctor and Amy have multiple CMoF musical numbers. One particularly hilarious number comes from Amy, where she complains about the Doctor's overuse of Technobabble – through song!
• In "Fire and Brimstone", Ascended Fangirl Extraordinaire Izzy Sinclair has a momentary Squee over her first ever encounter with 'space people' — and promptly turns to them, does the Vulcan salute and announces "Klaatu barada nikto. We come in peace." Behind her, the Doctor face palms.
• In Ophidius, when the Eighth Doctor is captured and about to be executed (again), he protests that in his culture there is no greater disgrace than to be killed like that...
  The Doctor: I DEMAND TO DIE NAKED!
• The Daft Dimension is a 3-panel gag strip that's been running since Twelve's tenure began, mostly featuring Affectionate Parody of recent episodes. Highlights include:
  • The Doctor's original plan to defeat the Mire was to use the electric eels to power his guitar for a battle of the bands.
  • The reason the fabled Singing Towers of Darillium sing? The Second Doctor's wandering about them playing his recorder.
  • "What if the Doctor had chosen another instrument?" Cue him playing a xylophone while standing atop a tank, struggling to get a harp out of the TARDIS, and playing "Clara" on a one-man band. ("I think it's called 'Clara'." "What?" "'Clara'!" "What?" "'Clara'!")
• "Hunters Of The Burning Stone"
  • After rescuing Ian and Barbara, Ian is less than convinced the young man standing before him could be The Doctor. For his part, The Doctor isn't in an altogether good mood for not being recognized.
  Doctor: Oh, thank you, Ian blinking Chesterton, still stubborn as a mule, still denying the truth even when it's dancing the rumba on the top of his thick skull!
  Ian: The real Doctor's insults were far more articulate than that!
  Doctor: Give me a minute, I'll find my Thesaurus!
  • Later, when The Doctor tells Ian about how it was his positive influence that convinced him to take on more human companions during his adventures.
  Doctor: After you left, I began taking other human companions with me.
  Ian: You didn't kidnap them all, I hope.
  • As The Doctor and Ian confront the Prometheans, The Doctor starts going into a speech...only for Horatio to interrupt him mid-sentence by swooping in for a poorly timed Big Damn Heroes moment.
  Doctor: (as a pair of grapplers catch him and pull him to safety) WAIT I WASN'T FINISHHHED!!!
• During the climax of "Power of the Mobox", Ryan attempts to bluff his phone as a deadly weapon, and was succeeding until it started ringing. The icing on the cake is that his ringtune is the Fireman Sam theme.

Other features

• The 2007 Series Survey included the category "Most like to get rid of"... which received a handful of votes for the Kandy Man. The feature on the results politely suggested to those people that it might be time to move on.
• One feature has a... very abridged recounting of the events of "Trial of a Time Lord", featuring the Valeyard being childishly petty in his attempts to get the Doctor (including accusing him of stealing jeans from Topman), and Flavia's exasperation with them both.
  • "Gentlemen, I am attempting to arbitrate a tribunal, not break up a catfight outside GAY in the wee hours of the morning."