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2024 Hugo Awards Progress
12 items read/watched / 57 total (21.05%)

11 April 2022

Doctor Who: The Road to the Thirteenth Doctor by James Peaty, Iolanda Zanfardino, Pasquale Qualano, Brian Williamson, et al.

 Doctor Who: The Road to the Thirteenth Doctor

Collection published: 2019
Contents originally published: 2018
Acquired: March 2020
Read: November 2021

Writers: James Peaty, Jody Houser
Artists: Iolanda Zanfardino, Pasquale Qualano, Brian Williamson, Rachael Stott
Colorists: Dijjo Lima, Enrica Eren Angiolini
Letterers: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

This volume seems pretty pointless. Do new incarnations of the Doctor need "roads" to them? What does that even mean? How can you set up a new incarnation of the Doctor? What it turns out to mean here is three standalone stories about the three previous incarnations of the Doctor, the three who had ongoings from Titan for the previous three years. So we get a tenth Doctor, Gabby, and Cindy adventure; an eleventh Doctor and Alice adventure; and a twelfth Doctor and Bill adventure. Each is fine, but I found the reveals in the tenth Doctor one not very convincing (the monsters look cool but that's it) and the story in the eleventh Doctor one confusing. I don't even remember the twelfth Doctor one. Some Titan writers have done impressive single-issue adventures (mostly the writers on the Eleventh Doctor series), but these are not of them.

Each story is followed by a short back-up featuring the same Doctor, but by the creative team of the upcoming Thirteenth Doctor book and set during an episode of the tv show. In each case, the Doctor sees a hand coming through a time portal, and then does nothing about it, continuing about his business. Having already read the first volume of The Thirteenth Doctor as of this writing, it's pretty pointless set-up, and I don't entirely buy that the Doctor would just ignore each of these time portals and go about his business. Sure, we know it has nothing to do with the events of "The Girl in the Fireplace" or "The Power of Three" or whatever, but how does he? But I do like some Rachael Stott art.

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 Thirteenth Doctor: The Many Lives of Doctor Who

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