Review: Doctor Who: Sin Eaters by Cavan Scott, Adriana Melo, and Cris Bolson

Collection published: 2017
Contents originally published: 2017
Acquired: January 2020
Read: July 2021

Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor, Vol 4: Sin Eaters

Writer: Cavan Scott
Artists: Adriana Melo & Cris Bolson

Colorist: Marco Lesko
Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

This is the last volume of The Ninth Doctor, making it the first of Titan's Doctor Who ongoings to draw to an end. As a result, it has to tie up all the various threads Cavan Scott has introduced since the series began. It consists of two stories. The first, "Sin Eaters," is about the Doctor, Rose, and Tara investigating a space prison that extracts people's bad thoughts and injects them into separate bodies; the Doctor goes undercover as a criminal, and Rose as an inspector. I thought the central premise of this one was pretty silly, and Doctor Who stories about evil Doctors rarely convince me, because evil Doctors don't act very Doctor-ish, and just act like the kind of stupid bad guy the Doctor stops all the time. The last chapter of "Sin Eaters" switches perspective to Jack, and shows us some flashbacks of his time as a Time Agent, with a small appearance by the Doctor. It was fine, and mostly serves to set up the next story.

"The Bidding War" is about a con being played on the TARDIS crew, to capture and auction off the Doctor's memories. Again, it was fine. It feels rushed, like the series was cancelled earlier than expected... but it had fifteen issues, so surely Scott should have known "Year One" was up even if he had expected to get a Year Two, and Titan Who comics usually reset at the end of each year. Some of the explanations for what we saw at the year's beginning don't entirely convince, and I think the incessant continuity references interfere with this comic's attempt to recapture the tone of the 2005 series.

Having read the whole series now, I'm not really sure what the point of Tara, the new companion (a 1970s UNIT nurse) was. She never really seemed to do much (these stories already have three leads), and I never got a real sense of her personality. Her writing-out here is pretty perfunctory. And again, having a companion who is friends with Harry Sullivan really cuts against the 2005 vibe. This was probably the weakest of Titan's ongoings; at least The Tenth Doctor has had the occasional enjoyable story for all its flaws.

Also, what's up with the right side and bottom of the cover of my comiXology edition? Why is there that weird mirroring?

I read an issue of Titan's Doctor Who comic every day (except when I have hard-copy comics to read). Next up in sequence: The Twelfth Doctor: Time Trials: The Terror Beneath