Review: Doctor Who: It Came From Outer Space by Tony Lee, Matthew Dow Smith, et al.

Comic PDF eBook, 138 pages
Published 2012 (contents: 2011)
Acquired May 2014
Read September 2014

Doctor Who, Volume 3: It Came From Outer Space

Written by Tony Lee, Joshua Hale Fialkov, Matthew Dow Smith, and Dan McDaid

Art by Josh Adams, Matthew Dow Smith, Paul Grist, Blair Shedd, Mitch Gerads, and Dan McDaid
Colors by Rachelle Rosenberg, Charlie Kirchoff, Mitch Gerads, Kyle Latino, and Dan McDaid (with Deborah McCumiskey)
Lettering by Shawn Lee and Neil Uyetake

Tony Lee managed to surprise me with the first few pages of this collection, with the prologue to "Space Squid," a cute little montage of adventures with the new TARDIS crew: the eleventh Doctor, Amy, Rory, and Kevin the Robotic Tyrannosaurus. But then it becomes a tedious space station runaround, made worse by Lee's decision to name all the station crew after cast members from Castle, guaranteeing you get knocked out of the story every 2-3 pages. I liked Josh Adams's artwork in the prologue, but in the story itself, it's stiff and overly posed, like he's traced too many reference photos that don't quite fit the circumstances of the story.

Next is "Body Snatched" with the ever-reliable Matthew Dow Smith on art. Seriously, this guy is good, and if any artist gets carried over to Titan's Doctor Who comics, it had better be him. The story itself should be fun-- the Doctor and Amy switch bodies-- but of course it's more a television premise, where you'd get to see Matt Smith play Amy and Karen Gillan play the Doctor, and so it feels squandered here, and the plot that surrounds this is unnecessarily convoluted.

The rest of the book is a set of shorts, which are on the whole entertaining. Lee and Paul Grist's "Silent Knight," a textless story where the Doctor teams up with Santa, is fun. Joshua Hale Fialkov and Blair Shedd's "Run, Doctor, Run," where the Doctor lands on an Escher-like world (though not Castrovalva-like) is gorgeous to look at and fun enough for its length. Matthew Dow Smith (on writing and not art) and Mitch Gerads provide "Down to Earth," a decent tale with gorgeous art of the Doctor and an alien hiding on Earth. Finally, Doctor Who Magazine stalwart Dan McDaid crosses the pond for "Tuesday," a zany alien invasion story framed by a letter from Amy to her mum. McDaid gets these characters, in both writing and art; I'd love to see a full Doctor Who comic series by him.

Next Week: The Doctor, Amy, and Rory must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh, the fundamental things apply, As Time Goes By!