November 1985 - Marvel UK monthlies, 40 years ago this month.

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This month in 1985 was great news if you were an aircraft that was tired of flying round and round over the sea, looking for somewhere to land before your arms got tired.

And that's because it was the month in which the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal was commissioned by the Queen Mother.

Elsewhere, in the UK, unemployment for September fell by nearly 70,000, bringing the total to less than 3,300,000.

When it came to board games, in an all-Soviet match, 22-year-old Garry Kasparov defeated Anatoly Karpov to become the youngest-ever undisputed World Chess Champion.

And there was epoch-making news for computers everywhere when the Microsoft Corporation unleashed the first United States release of Windows 1.0.

When it came to music, November launched with Jennifer Rush's The Power of Love still hogging the Number One spot on the UK singles chart. However, even Jennifer's cast iron lungs weren't enough to save her from an attack by Feargal Sharkey whose A Good Heart managed to depose it, before that track itself had to make way for Wham!'s I'm Your Man.

Things were decidedly more soothing on the accompanying album chart, with the month beginning with George Benson's Love Songs ruling the roost before that was gently dethroned by Sade's Promise which then had to make way for The Greatest Hits of 1985 by those always unstoppable Various Artists. 

After their recent jaunt to Africa, the good Captain and Meggan visit the far cooler climbs of the Russian wilderness in which they encounter legendary folkloric character Baba Yaga.

Up against far more metallic opposition is Abslom Daak who gets caught up in a tale the world knows as The Dalek Killers.

Elsewhere, Night-Raven finds himself in not one but two adventures. The first being Showdown and the second bearing the title Midsummer Madness.

And, then, as far as I can make out, Cap Brit's back for a five-page thriller called Playgrounds and Parasites! 

Jon Pertwee may be on the cover but, inside, the star of the show is 5th Doctor Peter Davison who grants the mag an interview!

And that's appropriate because this issue also contains a look back behind the scenes of his serial Resurrection of the Daleks.

We also encounter a look at some of the strange planets the Doctor's visited, uncover an interview with the show's Production Associate Angela Smith and visit a retrospective of the villains of the 1970s.

But all of this, I'm sure, pales into insignificance before the true highlight of the issue. 

Which is that we get the announcement of the winners of The Doctor Who Songwriting Competition!

If two young lads called Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty don't win it, there's no justice in the universe.

As we may have guessed, from that cover, the UK's Number One source for news of sci-fi, Fantasy and horror is, this month, carrying Interviews with various people involved in the making of Mad Max III.

And they're not the only ones, because we also stumble across a chat in which Ridley Scott talks about the creation of his film Legend.

Speaking of which, a man named Martin Asbury talks about visualising scripts for that film - and for Labyrinth and Greystoke.

For fancy people, there's a look back at Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast.

And there's a retrospective of The Man from Uncle.

But the issue closes with a feature upon which I can shed no light at all; The Filing Cabinet of Dr Sally Gary. Just how Expressionist that turns out to be, I cannot say.