Don’t miss this thrilling TARDIS chase through Earth’s atmosphere – in pursuit of no ordinary comet! Tracking the Entity’s signal from the Berlin Wall in 1976 to Rome, 312AD, the Doctor, Alice Obiefune, John Jones and ARC stumble into an ancient mystery that will forever change the course of human history! But the burden and dangers of a life aboard the TARDIS start to hit home for Jones – will this be his farewell tour? And has the Doctor truly been forgiven for the horrors he committed as the chief executive officer of SERVEYOUinc? Only time will tell...

Despite being touted in Titan’s publicity as “a brand-new story arc”, there’s quite a bit of baggage in this comic. The TARDIS crew are searching for the alien Entity, which is actually the body to which ARC is the brain, and the Doctor is experiencing feelings of guilt for what he was forced to do as the CEO of the evil SERVEYOUinc (rather like Captain Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation after he became Locutus of Borg). Fortunately, all of this back-story is explained in the “Previously…” recap at the front of the comic, for the benefit of those who, like me, have missed a few issues.

The scientist in me raised an eyebrow at the depiction of the ‘comet’ being pursued, which is hot and fiery rather than cold and icy. Thankfully, the Doctor soon decides that, whatever this thing is, “it’s definitely not a comet.” Jones theorises that it could the object that kills off the dinosaurs, but the Doctor points out that his theory is out to the tune of about 200 million years. Actually, the dinosaurs died out around 65 million years ago (200 million years ago is when the Triassic–Jurassic extinction event took place, and allowed the dinos to dominate the Earth), though clearly the Doctor is speaking in very general terms. Had he been more specific, he might have mentioned that the Cretaceous–Palaeogene extinction event was really caused by a time-travelling spaceship from the year 2526 – now, that would have confused Jones!

Other aspects of the plot resemble a grab-bag of memorable moments from the television show, including the Doctor and Jones escaping from angry German soldiers (as in Let’s Kill Hitler), being exposed to the merciless vacuum of space (as in The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe), a visit to the Roman Empire (as in The Pandorica Opens) at a crucial point in its history, and a certain alien race emerging dramatically from out of the haze…

It took me a while to get back into the swing of things after missing a few issues, but this one sets things up nicely for a thrilling adventure.

7

Richard McGinlay