Les docteur est morte, vive les docteur!
Creative Staff:
Story: Robbie Morrison
Art: Alice X Zhang and Dave Taylor
Color: Hi-Fi Color Design
Letters: Comicraft
What They Say:
Offering shocks, surprises, and galaxy-shaking revelations, seasoned TARDIS pilot Robbie Morrison (Drowntown, The Authority, 2000AD, Nikolai Dante) and New York Times-bestselling artist Dave Taylor (Batman: Death by Design; 2000AD) mark the start of their first five-issue run by diving headfirst into the console room and pulling all the levers they can – spinning the new Doctor off to his most challenging destination yet!
Freshly regenerated and with a new head full of unanswered questions, the Doctor (as played by Peter Capaldi) whisks Clara Oswald (as played by Jenna Coleman) away to a strange and distant world.
Clara thought she was in for an evening of marking essays on the Metaphysical Poets, followed by going out on a date – or at least trying to. You know, normal stuff.
Instead, she’s facing down exotic flora and fauna in her best dress, backing up the Doctor on a trek through traumatically alien undergrowth – and she doesn’t even know what the Doctor is searching for, or what will try to kill them should they find it!
New Face! New Doctor! New Beginning! Get in on the ground floor of this amazing ongoing series!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The Doctor has regenerated. Gone are the bow tie and fez and in are waistcoats and a grouchy, no-nonsense attitude. Based on Peter Capaldi’s portrayal of the Twelfth Doctor, this version is older, caustic, and still just as brilliant and heroic as before. In this adventure he and Clara travel to Isen Vi, “Home to the coldest, crispest, snowiest snow in the universe” so Clara can learn how to ski. However, when they arrive, the planet is a jungle, terraformed under the demand of Kano Dollar, the richest human in the 25th Century. Naturally, something has gone wrong with the process, and naturally, the Doctor delights in finding out just what that something is.
Thanks to a friend, I’ve been able to see a couple of episodes of Capaldi’s run as the Doctor. Those episodes felt very much like the writers and actors were feeling out this new incarnation, so it was difficult to get a clear fix on who he is other than older and grumpier than Matt Smith. That carries through to this comic, where the Doctor seems to be much more brusque and combative than his previous lives. This Doctor is decidedly less charming than before, but there is a certain joy in seeing him not suffer fools. If I were a Time Lord, I probably wouldn’t put up with them, either, so I can identify with that.
The plot of the issue is standard Who: The Doctor takes his companion to some distant and fantastic place or time, either ends up in someplace else or finds that the destination is not what it should be, he investigates what’s going on, and finds some alien menace at the heart of it. Morrison hits all of the right beats, but it feels a bit flat to me for no particular reason that I can identify, especially in the first few pages where the Doctor goes off on a standard rant. The content is fine, but the words don’t sing with the type of manic, hyper-intelligent energy that has come to define the Doctor. It could be that Morrison is trying too hard to replicate what the actors are doing, and without the actors to speak the lines, the words fall short. It would be interesting to see how this would play out if Capaldi were reading the lines. The issue does pick up, however, when The Doctor and Clara are taken aboard the terraformer’s ship. It seems like the comic finally finds its rhythm there, which gives me hope that the next issue will be smoother and more consistent.
Similar to the writing, the art is a bit inconsistent. While Zhang and Taylor do well drawing Capaldi’s Doctor, Clara often looks generic and bears very little resemblance to Jenna Coleman. They also have difficulty with body language, camera angles, and panel placement. Many times—especially in the talking scenes—the Doctor is placed center in the panel and practically looking at the reader. Background characters are also drawn just standing around with no sense of personality at all, and in general there is a real lack of motion or dynamism to the scenes, robbing it of the breakneck pace that Who is known for.
In Summary:
I’m a pretty big Whovian, so I was excited about picking this series up to review, but even as a fan, I have to say that this was an underwhelming first issue. It’s not that it’s bad, per se, it’s that it’s rather generic. I almost feel like the comic is trying too hard to replicate the feel of the show and because of that it neglects the strengths of the form. I’m hoping that it will pick up and the writing and art will find its rhythm and sense of self, but right now, I’d say skip this issue. Not recommended.
Grade: C
Age Rating: 12+
Released By: Titan Comics
Release Date: October 15, 2014
MSRP: $3.99
