The Betrothal of Sontar (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 31)

The Betrothal of Sontar: Collected Comic Strips from the Pages of Doctor Who Magazine
by Mike Collins, Gareth Roberts, Tony Lee, John Tomlinson & Nick Abadzis, Roger Langridge, Martin Geraghty, Jonathan Morris, et al.

Collection published: 2008
Contents originally published: 2006-07
Acquired: November 2008
Previously read: December 2008
Reread: October 2022

This collection spans the entirety of the tenth Doctor and Rose era of DWM, which initiated when "The Christmas Invasion" aired and ran all the way to "The Runaway Bride," and it also includes a (kind of) companion-free storyline from between "The Runaway Bride" and "Smith and Jones," making for a nice sizeable chunk of DWM. Like the comics collected in The Cruel Sea, these are definitely trying to ape the storytelling of the Russell T Davies era on screen, but I also felt there was a more concerted effort to play to the strengths of comics here: more stories that do things so big that they could never have been afforded on screen, or stories with lots of different locations. Overall, it's a pretty pleasing package.

I've read this collection before, way back in 2008 when it came out. This is (part of) what I wrote at the time:

Either way, this collection is a bit of a jumble. The title story by John Tomlinson & Nick Abadzis is fine for the most part, though the resolution is highly disappointing. Tony Lee's "F.A.Q." is an absolute mess, and the usually-dependable Mike Collins isn't up to scratch with "The Futurists"-- it has some nice ideas, but they don't really cohere. Jonathan Morris's "Opera of Doom!" is too slight to be effective. Morris's other effort, "Interstellar Overdrive" is quite fun and mostly faultless, but something always bothers me about stories where our protagonists would have died but for a convenient time loop that lets them do things over (as in Star Trek: The Next Generation's "Cause and Effect" or Deep Space Nine's "Whispers"). It's fun to see the Brigadier in Alan Barnes's "The Warkeeper's Crown", but as I write this review, I can't remember anything else about the story, good or bad. [...] The standouts of the collection are the two "comedy" one-parters: Gareth Roberts's "The Lodger" has the tenth Doctor moving in with Mickey for a week, with hilarious consequences, of course. And Nev Fountain's "The Green Eyed Monster" puts Rose on a reality television show exploring her jealousy of the Doctor's other women-- especially Jackie!

I was curious to see how much my impressions of some of these stories shifted this time around!

from Doctor Who Magazine #365

The Betrothal of Sontar, from Doctor Who Magazine #365-67 (Feb.-Mar. 2006)
story by John Tomlinson & Nick Abadzis, pencils by Mike Collins, inks by David A. Roach, colours by James Offredi, letters by Roger Langridge

This sees the first appearance of the Sontarans in the DWM strip since 1993's Pureblood (and even reuses that story's title term); it's about a group of low-quality Sontarans who run a mining rig instead of getting glorious soldiering duty, a neat look into a different dimension of Sontaran society than we've ever seen on screen. The cosmic maguffin wasn't super interesting, but I liked the two principal Sontaran characters. I'm not sure why in my review above I called this story's resolution "highly disappointing." Like, rereading it I have no idea what my beef was at all.

from Doctor Who Magazine #368

The Lodger, from Doctor Who Magazine #368 (Apr. 2006)
story by Gareth Roberts, pencils by Mike Collins, inks by David A. Roach, colours by James Offredi, letters by Roger Langridge

This was fun; you can see why Moffat picked it up to make it into a tv episode, and though being a 45-minute story gave it more room to breathe, this version has the benefit of pairing the Doctor with a familiar character—and not having to work in an alien threat of some kind. More of a series of vignettes than a story, but a very solid series of them, and the kind of thing that (somewhat ironically) only DWM could do, I think.

from Doctor Who Magazine #370

F.A.Q., from Doctor Who Magazine #369-71 (May-July 2006)
story by Tony Lee, pencils by Mike Collins, inks by David A. Roach, colours by James Offredi, letters by Roger Langridge

I was dreading this one going in. I remembered my negative review from last time around, and having since suffered through Tony Lee's run on IDW's Doctor Who comic book, my opinions of Lee as a comic writer have only diminished. But... I actually kind of liked this? I wouldn't say it's a work of genius or anything—the stories on either side of it are better—but it's fun enough. It has the grounded sensibility of the RTD era, focusing on an ordinary family affected by alien powers, shades of "Fear Her" (a story that I really like). Rose gets some good spotlight moments. The main thing I don't like is the reveal about the teacher who didn't really exist, which seemed kind of pointless. Like, it's spooky, but it doesn't really seem to make a character or thematic point.

from Doctor Who Magazine #373

The Futurists, from Doctor Who Magazine #372-74 (Aug.-Oct. 2006)
story & art by Mike Collins, inks by David A. Roach, colours by James Offredi, letters by Roger Langridge

I really don't know what I was thinking when I wrote my above review, because this story was on fire. Good ideas, great visuals, neat contrasts (black Romans in Britain vs. a fascist Italian state), fast pace—four different key locations in three installments!—nice themes, and above all, good characterization for Rose and some genuine laugh-out-loud jokes. Loved gags about the Silurians, how many people were in the resistance, the use of the resistance, and especially the clever use of the psychic paper. "But Darius... you can't read..." "Oh." I can imagine it playing out perfectly on screen. Rose leading the captured Silurian women in revolt is great, and her voice is captured very well. Exactly the kind of story the strip ought to be doing when the tv show is leading, and the volume's highlight. I don't know how I got it so wrong fourteen years ago.

(Wait... fourteen years ago!?)

from Doctor Who Magazine #375

Interstellar Overdrive, from Doctor Who Magazine #375-76 (Nov.-Dec. 2006)
story by Jonathan Morris, pencils by Mike Collins, inks by David A. Roach, colours by James Offredi, letters by Roger Langridge

I do love time loop stories. They're one of my favorite sf subgenres. TNG's "Cause and Effect," Groundhog Day, SG-1's "Window of Opportunity," Discovery's "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad," Russian Doll season one, Palm Springs, I love them all. I am a total sucker for them. I even love the chronic hysteresis bit in Meglos.

Um, except this one. I think it's a noble attempt. But it has two things going against it, I reckon. One is that the repetition just isn't as interesting when it's solely visual. Here the scenes are all shown from a different angle, but that means you don't really get that uncanny echo that makes these kind of things work on screen. The second is that since it's only two parts, the loop only repeats once, and so it's less a time loop story, and more a story where something happens once, and then the characters get a do-over. It feels cheap, I guess, if it's that easy to get out of the loop. Seeing the iterations is what makes these kind of things fun!

But there are some good jokes and the part one cliffhanger is a good one.

from Doctor Who Storybook 2007

Opera of Doom!, from Doctor Who Storybook 2007
story by Jonathan Morris, pencils by Martin Geraghty, inks by David A. Roach, colours by James Offredi, letters by Roger Langridge

This story is a delight. Quick, fun, good gags. A little too quick, maybe—the fact that people were disappearing into the alien opera house maybe should have been set up better—but I really enjoyed it. The really terrible musician who becomes amazing is a fun character with lots of good jokes.

The Green-Eyed Monster, from Doctor Who Magazine #377 (Jan. 2007)
story by Nev Fountain, art & letters by Roger Langridge, colours by James Offredi

Rose's last appearance in the strip is a good one, bringing Mickey back again and also marking Jackie's only strip appearance. It's a kind of contrived story about an alien jealousy monster and a talk show, but it's all worth it for the incredible sequence where Rose thinks that the Doctor has settled down with her mother. The ending gag of Jackie wanting a second kiss is delightful.

The Warkeeper's Crown, from Doctor Who Magazine #378-80 (Jan.-Mar. 2007)
story by Alan Barnes, pencils by Martin Geraghty, inks by David A. Roach, colours by James Offredi, letters by Roger Langridge

Rose of course stopped appearing on screen way back in July 2006, but DWM seems to have considered "The Runaway Bride" her official cut-off point as the current companion—the first episode without her as a lead, I guess. So here we get a companion-less story to bridge the gap before Martha, and DWM brings back the Brigadier to serve as a temporary companion. Though the Brigadier appeared in the "past Doctor" early of the early 1990s, I think this is his first present-day appearance since The Mark of Mandragora.

from Doctor Who Magazine #380

It's okay. I liked the first part all right, which pulls the Doctor, the Brigadier, and the wrong Mike Yates together; I liked the last part, where the wrong Mike Yates tries to remake Britain. The middle part, though, lost me in the complicated exposition about the relations on the alien planet, and the whole story suffered as a consequence. I didn't really get the ending, for example. It seemed like things ought to have been simplified. The idea of the Doctor meeting the Brigadier for the first time after he himself fought in a war seemed squandered in a single panel. (Shades of Big Finish's own attempt to do this story, Way of the Burryman, which I read Warkeeper's Crown in the middle of, coincidentally.)

Other Notes:

• #367 is one of the rare issues from this era I actually do own; I picked it up to get the free Big Finish CD that came with it. I have no memory of reading The Betrothal of Sontar part three on its own, but I have to imagine it made no sense.
• John Tomlinson previously wrote for DWM way back in 1989, scripting Nemesis of the Dalek. (He also wrote two Who strips for The Incredible Hulk Presents and a prose story from the collection Abslom Daak: Dalek Killer.) At 210 issues, that's the longest gap between contributions for any DWM writer/artist as of 2014's strips. His cowriter here, Nick Abadzis, would go on to the primary writer of Titan's The Tenth Doctor comic.
  
• From #363 to 368, we have three stories, two of which were by Gareth Roberts and got adapted for television! Plus The Love Invasion inspires a scene in "The Unicorn and the Wasp" on screen. Quite a hit rate for him. The Lodger is, however, his last contribution to the DWM strip.
• I was all prepared to admit I was too hard on Tony Lee as a writer, and then I read his behind-the-scenes I comments. I don't know how one manages to write a bad creator's commentary, but somehow he does. Lots of very belabored jokes, with the kind of self-deprecating humour that comes across as false modesty.
• Jonathan Morris gives an incredible amount of detail in his creator's commentaries, down to entire lost scenes from both his stories. I can't think of another DWM graphic novel with this level of detail. Though I enjoyed Opera of Doom! the lost joke about the very slow gondola chase would have been amazing.



from Doctor Who Magazine #377


• The Green-Eyed Monster opens with a caption reading "Quite a while ago...", which confused me at first, but I guess it's meant to indicate that this goes between "The Girl in the Fireplace" and "Rise of the Cybermen," which was broadcast many months prior. Placement notes aren't really the kind of thing DWM typically goes in for, and it didn't even occur to me we weren't going in chronological order prior to that, since I think every strip here could comfortably fit between "Tooth and Claw" and "School Reunion."
• At the time I read this volume, The Warkeeper's Crown was seemingly Alan Barnes's last contribution to the strip, but he is the writer of the current fourteenth Doctor strip, Liberation of the Daleks, that began in issue #584. In between these points, he wrote one million Doctor Who audio dramas for Big Finish and script-edited ten million.
  
• David A. Roach works on literally every story in this volume except for one ten-page strip, more than any other writer or artist... and somehow does not deserve cover billing!

This post is the thirty-first in a series about the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and Marvel UK. The next installment covers The Widow's Curse. Previous installments are listed below:

1. The Iron Legion
2. Dragon's Claw 
3. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume One
4. The Tides of Time
5. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Two
6. Voyager
7. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Three
8. The World Shapers
9. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Four
10. The Age of Chaos
11. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Five
12. A Cold Day in Hell!
13. Death's Head: Freelance Peacekeeping Agent (part 1)
14. Nemesis of the Daleks
15. Death's Head: Freelance Peacekeeping Agent (part 2)
16. The Good Soldier
17. The Incomplete Death's Head
18. Evening's Empire
19. The Daleks
20. Emperor of the Daleks
21. The Sleeze Brothers File
22. The Age of Chaos
23. Land of the Blind
24. Ground Zero
25. End Game
26. The Glorious Dead
27. Oblivion
28. Transformers: Time Wars and Other Stories
29. The Flood
30. The Cruel Sea
    

Review: Doctor Who: Dead Man's Hand by Tony Lee and Mike Collins with Mitch Gerads

Fans of devastating apocalypses should read my review of Series Two of Big Finish's audio series of Survivors over at Unreality SF. I've near seen the original show and never will (Blake's 7 is penance enough for all my sins), but the audios are great.

Comic PDF eBook, 98 pages
Published 2014 (contents: 2012-13)
Acquired May 2014
Read December 2014

Doctor Who, Volume 4: Dead Man's Hand

Written by Tony Lee

Art by Mike Collins, Mitch Gerads
Colors by Charlie Kirchoff, Mitch Gerads
Lettering by Shawn Lee

IDW's Doctor Who ongoing sputters to an end as it began: with a so-so tale by Tony Lee. Which I guess is appropriate, but so much for the superstars promised by this set. The always dependable Mike Collins of Doctor Who Magazine fame on art keeps this one visually enjoyable, at least. But it's typical Tony Lee plotting: what could have been an enjoyable standalone western tale needs to connect all the way back to Lee's first IDW work, resurrecting the not-interesting-to-begin-with villain of The Forgotten; it's like he's taunting me on the way out. Well, so long Tony Lee, and I remain grateful your Doctor Who/Deep Space Nine crossover never came to pass. (P.S. Your shorts, as always, are actually somewhat better than your big stories; "Escape into Alcatraz" is a charming piece of fun.)

Next Week: Time to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who in the first volume of Prisoners of Time!

Review: Star Trek: The Next Generation / Doctor Who: Assimilation² by Scott & David Tipton, J. K. Woodward, et al.

Comic hardcover, n.pag.
Published 2013 (contents: 2012)
Acquired January 2014
Read October 2014

Star Trek: The Next Generation / Doctor Who: Assimilation²

Written by Scott & David Tipton with Tony Lee

Art by J. K. Woodward
Additional Art by Gordon Purcell and The Sharp Bros.
Letters by Shawn Lee, Robbie Robbins, and Tom B. Long

This should be great. This is not great. This is eight issues of people talking about things, thinking about things. Imagine all of the awesome things that could happen in a crossover between Doctor Who and Star Trek. Well, none of them happen here. The variant covers are way more interesting than any of the actions in this weirdly aimless, meandering, suspence-less comics. Some plot threads are just abandoned, while others are tied up in the most trite and obvious ways possible. Characters' facial expression vary from inappropriate to nonexistent. I bought the deluxe hardcover of this book, anticipating it despite the negative reviews. I should have listened, and I should not have wasted my money.

In Two Weeks: The Doctor, Amy, and Rory begin a new era when they visit the Crystal Palace in The Hypothetical Gentleman!

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!

Review: Doctor Who: When Worlds Collide by Tony Lee, Matthew Dow Smith, & Mark Buckingham

Before we get started, I should note that my review of the Doctor Who audio drama The Highest Science is now up at Unreality SF.

Okay, so like I said yesterday, on Tuesdays from here out, I'll be reviewing books in what I call my "reading projects"; books I read on some kind of regular schedule. First up is the series of Doctor Who comics from IDW that I read issue-by-issue over breakfast from June to December 2014. I've already reviewed some of them, but I left off with The Ripper; next up is:

Comic PDF eBook, 90 pages
Published 2012 (contents: 2011)
Acquired May 2014
Read September 2014

Doctor Who: When Worlds Collide

Written by Tony Lee

Art by Mark Buckingham & Matthew Dow Smith
Colors by Charlie Kirchoff
Lettering by Neil Uyetake, Chris Mowry & Shawn Lee

There are two stories here, curiously undifferentiated in the collection. The first, only an issue long, has the Doctor, Amy, and Rory playing soccer with Anglo-Saxons, and it is not as fun as that description ought to imply.

The rest of the volume is made of what I can only assume is the title story. It's one of those tales where time zones get all mashed together, and to be honest, I find those tedious if they have no more substance than that-- Doctor Who long ago passed the point where temporal juxtaposition was innately interesting. Thankfully, this one does have a little bit of something to offer, mainly an army of temporal duplicates of the TARDIS crew, Sontarans on flying carpets, and a robotic dinosaur named Kevin. Also, Matthew Dow Smith's artwork, which is one of the real high points of IDW's Doctor Who stories over all. When Worlds Collide isn't great, but it's an above-average adventure for the range.

Next Week: The Doctor, Amy, Rory, and Kevin return in... It Came From Outer Space!

Review: Doctor Who: The Ripper by Tony Lee et al.

Comic PDF eBook, 90 pages
Published 2011 (contents: 2011)
Acquired May 2014
Read August 2014

Doctor Who: The Ripper

Written by Tony Lee

Art by Andrew Currie, Richard Piers Rayner, Horacio Domingues, and Tim Hamilton
Colors by Charlie Kirchoff and Phil Elliott
Lettering by Shawn Lee and Neil Uyetake

Rory is added to the mix in this next installment of IDW's Doctor Who comics, which sees the ubiquitous Tony Lee back on writing duties. The first story here, the one issue "Spam Filtered" (art by Andrew Currie) is good fun, as the TARDIS is overrun by banner ads and spam e-mails when Rory links his smartphone into its systems. Lee captures the voices of the main cast perfectly, and the story is the kind of delightful thing that really shows off what Doctor Who can be in the comic book medium.

Less successful is "Ripper's Curse" (art by Richard Piers Rayner, Horacio Domingues, and Tim Hamilton), which just never engages; it's all a bit too rote. I did like the bit where the Doctor and Rory figure out where the Ripper's next victim is by hopping forward and asking a tour guide, but Doctor Who already has too many boring takes on Jack the Ripper, and this is just one more; I've never gotten the fascination.

Review: Doctor Who: Final Sacrifice by Tony Lee, Matthew Dow Smith, et al.

Comic PDF eBook, 138 pages
Published 2011 (contents: 2010)
Acquired May 2014
Read July 2014

Doctor Who, Volume 3: Final Sacrifice

Story by Tony Lee, Jonathan L. Davis, Matthew Dow Smith, and Al Davison

Art by Matthew Dow Smith, Kelly Yates, and Al Davison
Colors by Charlie Kirchoff, Phil Elliott, and Al Davison
Lettering by Robbie Robbins & Neil Uyetake

I guess if you cared about Lee's original companions, you'd care about this book, but I don't and I don't. The situation here is contrived by a seemingly-omnipotent and poorly-motivated enemy, solely to teach the Doctor some kind of lesson that I don't really understand the purpose of. The end piles on crazy revelation after crazy revelation. Plus Torchwood is in this, which I guess is good for you if you like "The Time Machination" (I didn't) or if you thought what this story needed were a group of pointless characters to stand around.

There are some short stories in the back, which are decent: some are better in concept than execution, but I like the art in all three (and in the main story, too, actually; Matthew Dow Smith is great at capturing likeness but keeping it stylized). There's a lovely moment where the tenth Doctor dreams of the eleventh.

Review: Doctor Who: Tesseract by Tony Lee, Al Davison, & Blair Shedd

Comic PDF eBook, 134 pages
Published 2010 (contents: 2009-10)
Acquired May 2014
Read July 2014

Doctor Who, Volume 2: Tesseract

Written by Tony Lee

Art by Al Davison & Blair Shedd
Colors by Lovern Kindzierski & Charlie Kirchoff
Lettering by Neil Uyetake & Robbie Robbins

What's with the dreary covers on these collections? Anyway, it was a preview of the first issue collected here that back in the day convinced me I was right about my decision to skip the IDW ongoing. And on reading it in context, it's still awful. Though Al Davison's art in Fugitive was good, his characters are just ugly here, especially his David Tennant and his Matthew (even though he invented Matthew's appearance!). The dialogue is unnatural and awkward, and there are random, forced continuity references.

So, Tesseract completely squanders all the potential I saw being built up in Fugitive. We find out what the deal of the Shadow Advocate is, but it's just not satisfying: when Finch killed her, she was actually flung back into the Time War and she witnessed its final moments over and over again before escaping. Having seen what the Doctor did, she wants to kill him. But the only reason she got flung into the Time War is because after she escaped, she told Finch to send her back! Predestination paradoxes can sometimes drain the drama out of situations, and this is one of those cases: a writer can make a character do anything, no matter how implausible, on the pretext that they had to do it to maintain the loop. And though I kinda like the idea that someone seeing the Doctor use the Moment to wipe out the Time Lords and the Daleks would conclude that he's too dangerous to have around (the Doctor himself reaches that conclusion in "The Parting of the Ways," after all), she just acts like a generic scheming villain, using complicated plots to ensnare the Doctor for no readily apparent reason when she could just kill him multiple times. Also the plot requires a number of people who should know better (like UNIT) to trust the Shadow Advocate against all reason. What is it with the unlikeability of the new-series UNIT commanders? Until Kate Stewart, the show (and its spin-offs) seemed intent on giving us a series of assholes.

The new companions are not great, either. I liked them all right in Fugitive, but Tony Lee can't write them as people to save his life. I get what he's trying to do, but it doesn't work because it lacks all subtlety; Emily is all "I NEED A GUN TO FEEL SAFE" and Matthew is "I DON'T TRUST THE DOCTOR BECAUSE A WOMAN I JUST MET TOLD ME NOT TO." Why does Matthew listen to the Shadow Advocate? Who knows. The Doctor points out that the flaws in her story indicate she's manipulating him, and he basically goes, "She might be a manipulator, but she learned it from you, even though the only person who told me that was her, who we just established as an untrustworthy liar." I can't bring myself to care about either of these characters because there's nothing likeable or interesting about them. Also, Lee seems to keep forgetting they're from the 1920s, as Matthew explains he was too busy to read The Lord of the Rings (and not, perhaps, too from-the-past), and Emily does the "the TARDIS doesn't look like a proper spaceship" bit seemingly obligatory for new-series companions, but I'm not sure really makes sense for someone from the 1920s.

I haven't even talked about the stories here, but I didn't really like either of them. "Tesseract" is flimsy while "Don't Step on the Grass" is just an overcrowded mess of elements that don't work together.

Review: Doctor Who: Fugitive by Tony Lee, Al Davison, and Matthew Dow Smith

Comic PDF eBook, 134 pages
Published 2010 (contents: 2009)
Acquired May 2014
Read June 2014

Doctor Who, Volume One: Fugitive

Written by Tony Lee

Art by Al Davison and Matthew Dow Smith
Colors by Lovern Kindzierski and Charlie Kirchoff
Letters by Chris Mowry, Robbie Robbins, and Neil Uyetake

The tenth Doctor's comic book adventures continue-- like The Forgotten, this seems to be set somewhere between "Journey's End" and "The Waters of Mars." It's comprised of two stories. The first, "Silver Scream," sees the Doctor meeting Archie Maplin (ugh) in 1920s Hollywood, only there's a dastardly plot afoot to drain hopes and dreams from aspiring actresses (of course there is). This is a decent runaround, and Tony Lee does a good job of capturing the voice of the tenth Doctor. The real highlight is the way that Lee and artist Al Davison create some arresting images: the cliffhanger at the end of chapter 1 is divine, and its reprisal is a cool reversal. Then, there's a section done in the style of silent film-- you could only do this in comics! And it's hilarious. One of the two bad guys seems to be dealt with off-panel, but otherwise I enjoyed this.

"Fugitive" is the kind of story I expected to roll my eyes at: the Doctor is captured by the Shadow Proclamation (from "The Stolen Earth") and put on trial, with Brother Lassar a.k.a. Mr. Finch (from "School Reunion") as the prosecutor, and he ends up on a Judoon spaceship (from "Smith and Jones") on the way to the prison world of Volag Noc (from "The Infinite Quest") with a Sontaran, an Ogron, and a Draconian (the events of Frontier in Space are referenced a lot).* But it actually really worked! I don't really see why Finch was necessary, but the rest of the elements come together nicely-- when the Doctor ends up on the run with his fellow prisoners, there's a lot of fun to be had to with the interactions between the four different prisoners, as they move from one deadly situation to another. And the Doctor is made to think about the repercussions of his actions in Frontier in Space in a way that actually ties in nicely with the kind of contemplation the tenth Doctor seemed to be doing late in his life. I wasn't really into Matthew Dow Smith's art at first, as his style is very distinctive, but I soon grew to appreciate it-- he's great at doing action while still capturing the characters, which is a too-rare skill in tie-in comics. All in all, this collection bodes well for IDW's Doctor Who output.

* There's even a Charley Pollard reference, which is maybe completely gratuitous (it would perhaps be less so if it was clear what the Doctor was actually on trial for), but I love Charley so I don't care.

Review: Doctor Who: The Forgotten by Tony Lee and Pia Guerra

Comic PDF eBook, n.pag.
Published 2009 (contents: 2008-09)
Acquired May 2014
Read June 2014

Doctor Who: The Forgotten

Writer: Tony Lee

Artists: Pia Guerra with Kelley Yates, Stefano Martino, and Nick Roche

This is the second of the digital comics I got from IDW's Humble Bundle; I'd avoided it previously because of the seeming fanwank, with the Doctor losing his memory and reacquiring it by recalling nine previous adventures, one for each incarnation. I'll admit it's not as bad as I thought, mostly because the individual adventures are fun, and Lee does a decent job capturing the voices of old eras. Some are too slight to work (those featuring the first and fourth Doctors) but others really work as quick little adventures (the second and fifth Doctors). The only really bad one is the eighth Doctor one, which primarily seems to exist to insist that plot elements from The Invasion of Time played a key role in the Time War. The main plot is not great (some alien is... up to something? and there's the Matrix? I don't know), but it's not really the point of the book, so that's okay. And I'll admit that the continuity references work in the context of a continuity-driven story (unlike in Lee's dreadful "The Time Machination").

The first few issues here are drawn by Pia Guerra of Y: The Last Man fame, and they are gorgeous. Guerra is great at drawing people as people (a surprisingly rare skill in the superhero-dominated comics industry), and her use of light and shadow is fantastic. Which makes it all the more disappointing that the other artists here are, well, not good. I don't know who draws which issue, but the big two-page spread of all the Doctors in chapter 6 is totally compromised by how bad the artist is at likenesses; the second and fifth Doctors look Asian!