Characters Inspired By Dan Dare
Characters inspired by or based on Dan Dare have appeared throughout British popular culture. One example is Wing Commander Leyton in British Summertime by Paul Cornell, which juxtaposes the utopian future portrayed in the original comics with the Britain of today. The Doctor Who New Adventures novel The Dying Days by Lance Parkin features a British astronaut named Alexander Christian, named after an earlier, unpublished version of the character.
In 1971, British comedian Kenny Everett satirised Dan Dare with his own space hero, Captain Kremmen. Everett was a fan of Dan Dare in his childhood and made references to this in his own science-fiction stories.
In the 1980s, Private Eye published Dan Dire, Pilot of Future?. Dire was based on politician Neil Kinnock, the question being whether he'd ever become Prime Minister. Dire's enemy was the Maggon, a combination of the Mekon and Margaret Thatcher.
In the early 1990s, the British satirical TV show Spitting Image ran sketches called "Dan Quayle, Pillock of the Future?", poking fun at the US Vice-President.
Marvel Comics created a Dan Dare-esque character in their Captain Britain line in the 1980s. The character was Roy Risk, one of the British heroes killed by The Fury.
In the late 1990s, following the Labour Party's ascent to power, the Saturday edition of The Times printed a strip by political cartoonist Peter Brookes called "Dan Blair; Pilot for the Foreseeable Future", the major characters represented by noted political figures. This ran from September 1997 until January 1999.
In his Afterword to Ministry of Space, Warren Ellis lists Dan Dare as one of the inspirations for the story, in which Britain forges an ambitious space programme in the decades following World War II. Sir John Dashwood, the central character of Ministry of Space, is a cynical version of Dan Dare himself.
Captain Jack Harkness, the Doctor Who and Torchwood character, has several similarities to Dan Dare. The script for the episode "The Empty Child" in which Captain Jack makes his first appearance describes him as having "the jawline of Dan Dare, the smile of a bastard".
Dare makes brief appearances in the steampunk comics Scarlet Traces: The Great Game (where he and Digby are officers in the British invasion of Mars; Mercurians, Treen, and Theron are also briefly seen) and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier (where, along with Jet Morgan and Jet-Ace Logan, he is one of the first pilots in the post-Ingsoc space program).
Captain Eager in the film Captain Eager and the Mark of Voth bears several resemblances to Dan Dare but is now older, a little out of condition and slightly damaged by the passing of time.
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