In his 2018 book Strange Stars, music journalist Jason Heller discusses how science fiction played an influential role in the early years of rock star David Bowie’s legendary career. Attracted to Robert Heinlein’s Starman Jones at the age of six, the then David Jones became a staunch fan of not only sci-fi literature but BBC serials like Quatermass and – more significantly – Doctor Who.
“The main character, known only as the Doctor, periodically died and was reborn in a new incarnation that barely resembled the one that came before,” Heller explains. “An act of metamorphosis that Bowie would employ, again and again, to equally mythic effect throughout his career.”
Doctor Who may have been a reflection of the future David Bowie, but what if David Bowie himself had been the product of science fiction? Instead of simply being a fan of Doctor Who, what if a young David Jones had actually met the Doctor and travelled through space and time with him before returning to the England of the early 1960s and the start of his career?
That is the premise that writers Al Ewing and Rob Williams set out to explore during “Year One” of the Doctor Who comic book series published by Titan in 2014. Featuring the Eleventh Doctor – portrayed on screen by actor Matt Smith – and a librarian assistant named Alice Obiefune as his traveling companion, the duo become a trio in the third issue with the addition of John Jones, a Bowie stand-in who would transform from 1960s nobody to rock and roll megastar.
Alice Obiefune met the Doctor shortly after the death of her mother, a period of grief and internal turmoil for the young librarian assistant. While cleaning her mother’s apartment, Alice stumbles upon a record collection featuring the complete works of Delta Blues guitarist Robert Johnson, as well as an album entitled Abanazar’s Madness by John Jones that features a cover eerily similar to those of David Bowie from the early 1970s.
“The ultimate pop star, she used to tell me,” Alice says to the Doctor. “She saw him loads of times. He played his early shows around here, you know. Just a couple of streets away, in a club they knocked down. That must of been something to see.”
With a blue police box TARDIS that can travel through space and time at their disposal, the Doctor whisks Alice away from the twenty-first century to the early 1960s so that she can witness the emergence of the future Chameleon of Pop, Tall Pale Earl, and Xavi Moonburst for herself. What they find, however, is a drably dressed musician who insists that the stage microphone hasn’t been turned despite the fact that it is indeed functioning.
“He has less stage presence than any human being that’s ever lived,” Alice laments after the show. “John Jones, it turns out, has no talent whatsoever!”
Overhearing the derogatory remarks, Jones tries to muster the courage to respond as he follows Alice Obiefune and the Doctor into the TARDIS, where he remains unnoticed until the three of them are transported to Mississippi and the year 1931. Taken by surprise when John Jones finally confronts them, the Doctor quickly analyzes him with his sonic screwdriver to determine how the TARDIS could have had a stowaway without him knowing.
“He’s an aberration,” the Doctor explains to Alice. “His cells, something’s strange there, the way they react to light. Constantly changing. It’s like the world hasn’t noticed him. Yet.”
That would change when the 1960s came to an end in the real world and John Jones finally returned from his adventures in the Doctor Who comic book. While in Mississippi, for instance, he meets the legendary Robert Johnson. Sensing a lack of guitar playing talent and songwriting ability in Jones, Johnson offers to give him lessons.
In the following issue, the Doctor, Alice and Jones visit a space station in the future. John Jones has already begun his transformation by then, no longer drab in appearance but casually dressed and sporting a hairstyle more reflective of the 1960s. Being in space and circling a planet far different from Earth, meanwhile, allows the seeds of future songs to take root as well. “It’s like I’m sitting in a tin can, far above the world,” John Jones begins to sing. “Not-planet-Earth is orange, and there’s nothing I can rhyme with orange.”
The lyrics are obviously derived from “Space Oddity,” David Bowie’s first big hit. Bowie recorded the initial demo of the song in January of 1969 and his record label released it on July 11 in the hopes of cashing in on the upcoming Moon landing of Apollo 11. Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey had been released the year before and its influence on David Bowie was far greater than a mere parody of its title. He saw the film multiple times, usually stoned, and was already a fan of sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote the initial story that 2001 was based on.
Bowie had previously ventured into science fiction songwriting on his first album with “We Are Hungry Men” – which takes place in a dystopian future where Earth’s population has skyrocketed – but it was Space Odyssey that showed how his love for sci-fi could be used as inspiration.
“Bowie’s fixation on that film involved more than just its trip-augmenting mystery,” Jason Heller explains in Strange Stars. “He was setting himself adrift in a universe created by a sci-fi author he’d already come to admire, and who’s alternately awe-inspiring and terrifying visions of humankind’s future had begun to shape the young songwriter’s view of the world. And worlds beyond. With a sci-fi song in the form of ‘We Are Hungry Men’ under his belt, the works of Clarke and Heinlein embedded in his brain, and barraged by constant news of NASA’s rapidly accelerating Apollo program, something dawned on Bowie. Maybe he should write a song about space.”
When John Jones first stepped out of the TARDIS and onto the previously mentioned space station, he found himself confronted with something totally unexpected. “Oh, look,” he said to himself. “There’s flies. Flies from the stars. I’ll call my next band that.” On February 10, 1972, the real-life David Bowie debuted his own new band – which he dubbed the Spiders from Mars – at the Toby Jug pub in London. The occasion also marked the first time that Bowie deliberately transformed himself into a new identity, telling the audience that his name was now Ziggy Stardust.
“His hair was chopped at severe angles and dyed bright orange, the color of a B-movie laser beam,” Jason Heller writes in Strange Stars. “He wore a jumpsuit with a plunging neckline, revealing his delicate, bone-pale chest, and his knee-high wrestling boots were fire-engine red. Bowie had never been conservative in dress, but even for him, this was a quantum leap into the unknown.”
In the tenth issue of Al Ewing and Rob Williams’ Doctor Who comic book series, a group of children are telling each other stories on a planet where imagination has been deemed illegal. Despite their efforts of being cautious, they are suddenly disrupted by a voice in the shadows. “Unlike you kids, I know when to go out… and I know when to stay in… get things done,” the unseen stranger tells them – quoting the song “Modern Love” from Let’s Dance – before leaping into the light. “Yes, children, you are quite correct to be agog. It’s me… Xavi Moonburst! And I’ve got a new career in town.”
Although not dressed exactly as David Bowie in his Ziggy Stardust debut, John Jones is just as flamboyantly attired nonetheless with blue pants featuring zig-zagged red lines at the waste and feathered wings on his back. Shirtless, the now red-haired future rock legend also has an orange star painted on his face with his left eye serving as center. He might not literally be Ziggy Stardust, but it’s obvious that Xavi Moonburst is related to him.
David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust persona also gave rise to a new form of rock cosplay. Multitudes of fans began dressing up as Stardust at Bowie concerts, much like Star Trek fans dressing as their favorite characters from the original television series. Residents of the planet where Xavi Moonburst first made his appearance do the same as a way to protest the authoritarian rule of their imagination oppressors.
“Fan fiction, Jones me old mate,” the Doctor tells John Johns. “Brilliant, isn’t it? Keeps ideas alive. I love a bit of cosplay.”
David Bowie had other personas over the years besides Ziggy Stardust, from Aladdin Sane to the Thin White Duke. Over the course of thirteen Doctor Who comic books, John Jones paid homage to many of them with the ever-changing outfits that he wore. Like all companions who have traveled with the Doctor, however, John Jones’ adventures in time and space inevitably came to an end at the exact point where it began.
“I want to thank you, Doctor,” he says afterwards. “The things I’ve seen! But I only ever wanted to be a songwriter.” No doubt the real-life David Bowie would have said the exact same thing.
Anthony Letizia