Sally Martin, who had been a local “Space Invaders” champion on Earth, was transported to the planet Serbos, to help clear up some of the troublemakers who had descended on the planet since uranium was discovered there.
Ozz a small alien comes to earth to search for his brother, who came to Earth to survey the planet but has not returned. On earth he crosses paths with, Sheena Wallace a young entertainer.
Tessa Worth had found a time-travel machine in the shape of a giant rabbit, named Flopear. When she pressed a button she didn’t realise that she would be taken to the Planet Xargo, where Flopear was originally built as a birthday present for the mean tempered Princess Meana. Eventually she is able to get back to Earth, Even after she returns home, she continues to spend time travelling the universe with Flopear, as part of her job as Deputy to a Universal Dictator.
Other Appearances:
Annual Appearances
Summer Specials
Nola Black an alien with mind controlling powers arrives at Bickston High School, on some secret mission. Only Sandra Walsh is immune to Nola’s powers.
Sally Jordan befriends a stray dog , Mojo, who turns out to be a talking dog from the Milky Way.
Other Appearances
Mirra is from the Planet Santos and comes to Earth to convince people to visit her planet on their summer holidays.
Plot
Susan Brown lives with her parents, her older brother Phil and younger sister Linda. They are a close family, helping each other out and sharing everything. That is until one night something strange happens. First Susan hears and accident on the road, she runs out to investigate and finds a puppy on the road and a car driving away. She settles the puppy in the shed, as he seems to be terrified of the house. The next morning she gets up and can’t find any of her family. She finds one of the rooms locked and her family reappear acting peculiar.
Her father tells her he has new scientific equipment in the room that can’t be meddled with and that is why it is locked. The family continue to act strangely, they don’t joke or talk naturally. Instead they seem cold and their speech is stilted. Her mother finds it interesting that Susan thinks they talk strangely, and after this conversation Susan sees them watching a TV programme about learning English. When she raises concerns with a family friend, already the speech patterns are loosening up. Susan feels very alone and tries to find the secret of the locked room herself.
She gets an opportunity to search the house when the family leave looking for samples, for an experiment. She finds a furnace with a very high temperature gauge in her father’s office and she also finds a false eyelash in her parent’s room. Later when her father and Phil are using the furnace she burns her hand on the office doorknob and passes out. She wakes up locked in her room (with bandaged hand) and gets another chance to investigate as the family are missing again.
Finally she gets into the locked room through a trapdoor in the attic. What she finds in there are her parents, Phil and Linda lying unconscious in the room. Fearing they are dead Susan cries, and her tears un-paralyses her real family. The fake family were actually copies made by miniature aliens that crashed outside their house. They have collected all the metal they needed to repair their ship and fly away. The copies of themselves just melt away.
Thoughts
This is one of my favourite stories, I mean who couldn’t love a story where the explanation for a family acting strangely is because they are copies being controlled by miniature aliens! It is a good sci-fi story, the mystery of what has happened to the family is interesting. Also what the secret of the locked room is, is quite intriguing, I would have guessed some alien technology or something similar at first. In my first reading I assumed the family were being mind controlled rather than copies (which has been the case in other stories like “The Face in the Crystal”). Also nice change to to see there aren’t sinister motivations, the aliens are just trying to get home and have no interest in taking over Earth.
So it is a nice pay-off to see what is in the locked room and I do love the image of the little spaceship flying away afterwards. Though one flaw is the ending seems to be full of expository dialogue. First the explanation of why Susan’s tears free the family, then the father’s theory of what has been going on from the aliens crashing and why they locked them up. Also conveniently the clones melt away clearing up any last bit of evidence. Still other than that it is a solid story.
There is a lot great imagery in the story and also the contrast of the family and alien family is handled well. It could have been interesting to see the aliens in their actual form, but I think it works well with just having them fly away, and not interact with the family after they are free. It was good to see them try to fit in, and adjust to human life while they are working on their repairs. The real Mrs. Brown was relaxed and a bit scatty, whereas alien Mrs. Brown tries to follow advice from housekeeping magazines, to try and be the best mother. As Susan was out of the house when they took it over, they were not expecting a fifth member of the family. Although they are cold and wooden to Susan and don’t want to her to interfere with their plans, they don’t actively set out to hurt her. Fake Mr. Brown bandages up her hand when she is hurt and Mrs. Brown tries to follow housekeeping’s advice in being a mother to Susan. Good characters, intriguing mystery and some nice sci-fi explanations.
Plot/Thoughts
So what do you do if your best friend is potentially an alien? This is the problem Dawn faces when she becomes friends with her new neighbour, Stella Starr. Previous to becoming friends with Stella, Dawn is the only girl in her class that doesn’t have a best friend. She is friends with the other girls in the class but when it comes to partnering up for assignments she is left out on her own. So she is feeling quite lonely and at night she sees a shooting star and she wishes she had a best friend. Conveniently the next day a family move in with a girl Dawn’s age. Dawn is pleased to make friends at first though she notices Stella has a weird sense of humour and things don’t seem to add up right with her family.
Stella doesn’t know about pop groups or soaps, when she says things that make Dawn suspicious, Stella pretends she is joking. Mrs. Starr plants some flowers that grow overnight and are like nothing Dawn has been before. When Dawn and Stella are babysitting and the baby is sick, Dawn’s mother appears after “sensing” something was wrong. In class Stella makes up chemistry solutions that have never been heard of.
So Dawn keeps noticing these strange things about Stella and her family. When she finds a piece of paper with Junsta written on it and Stella says that is where they lived before, she decides to research it. She discovers Junsta is the name of a planet so the Starrs must be aliens. Why would aliens need to keep a scrap of paper with their home planet name written on it, were thay afraid they’d forget?
So Dawn doesn’t freak out at this revelation, like its scary that alien exists they could be invading, or wow this is interesting aliens exist and cool I have super powered best friend. Instead her biggest worry seems to be she doesn’t want to be friends with an alien because she’s weird.
Seems ungrateful to me. She was upset about not having a best friend, then she gets one and just because she’s possibly an alien she is going to drop her. Stella has been really nice to her and Dawn doesn’t seem to be afraid of Stella’s alien powers, more worried that other people will think she’s weird too. So she begins to avoid Stella. Stella finally confronts Dawn she explains all the strange instances and tells her Junsta was the name of their old house not town so Dawn is relieved to hear this.
So yes the big reveal Dawn was right all along! So the story is pretty lighthearted. The art is simple, a bit cartoony at times and matches the tone of the story well. There isn’t any fear or tension that there might be aliens and they have hidden agendas to take over the world by blending in first. Instead its more of a girl suspecting her friend is an alien because she’s odd. I think it would have been more of a twist if it turned out she was just an odd girl. It’s not the most adventurous storyline, and it doesn’t live up to older more bizzare alien stories. I wouldn’t consider it to be a top classic strip or very memorable, but it is still nice to see that aliens still pop up in issues from the 90s.
I also wonder if the alien, Stella Starr, is a variation on the older Mandy character of the same name. It may be just a nod of recognition or maybe its the common name for aliens, the Starr being obvious reference to being from the stars.
Anna Doyle had been commanded by The Stranger, an alien being, to collect autographs of various people in a special book. Having signed, the person would then be transported to the planet Zakron. Anna agreed to help as long as The Stranger completely cured her brother Jamie of a serious illness.
