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

26 January 2022

Doctor Who: Branches by Alex Paknadel, Rob Williams, I. N. J. Culbard, Ivan Rodriguez, JB Bastos, and Luiz Campello

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor: The Sapling, Vol 3: Branches
 
Collection published: 2018
Contents originally published: 2017-18
Read: September 2021

Writers: Alex Paknadel & Rob Williams
Artists:
I. N. J. Culbard, Ivan Rodriguez, JB Bastos & Luiz Campello
Colorists: Triona Farrell,
Thiago Ribiero & Stefani Renne
Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

The ninth and final volume of The Eleventh Doctor contains two linked stories. The first, by Alex Paknadel and I. N. J. Culbard, brings the Doctor, Alice, and the Sapling to a primitive planet where the Doctor was friends with its ruler—only the planet is highly industrialized and the Doctor doesn't remember the ruler. Paknadel's story is enjoyable, packed with great ideas, and Culbard's art is, as always, the best.

The second, by Paknadel, Rob Williams, and a host of artists, wraps up the ongoing Sapling storyline with the return of the forgotten silence. It has some great moments and good callbacks—I got chills at the return of an element from Alice's very first story way back in vol 1, and the way they defeat the villain was clever—but this title has set a very high bar for itself, and "Year Three" was not as strong as the first two years, and neither was its finale. The story didn't feel as personal to our protagonists, and the Sapling never really emerged as a character. Good stuff, and still the best of the Titan ongoings, but it seems best that it ended here.

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 Lost Dimension

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