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Comic Book Review


Book Cover

Doctor Who
The Ninth Doctor #5

 

Writer: Cavan Scott
Artist: Blair Shedd with Rachael Stott
Colourist: Anang Setyawan
Publisher: Titan Comics
RRP: UK £2.65, US $3.99
Age: 12+
32 pages
Publication Date: 02 December 2015


Did we really just read last issue’s staggering cliffhanger? Abducted, the Doctor and Jack discovered that the Unon wish to fill the power vacuum left behind by the Time Lords. After being blackmailed into helping the Unon fix a chaotic temporal breach, the Doctor thought he was making headway with his negotiations. That’s when Rose teleported in, along with a squad of Lect, and threatened the Doctor with a giant Lect cannon! Has one of the Doctor’s beloved companions flipped sides? In the final conflict between the Unon and the Lect, will one of them take the Time Lords’ place as guardians of the universe…?

The end of the previous issue, which gave us a gun-toting Rose Tyler, foreshadowed the kick-ass companion that we would see at the end of Series 4. Has she gone bad? No, of course not! She has the best of reasons for her actions, as soon becomes clear.

In a further throw-forward, we see brief views of Jack’s future, as his fate is observed by the Unon oracular seer Evja while the Captain is imprisoned in a sub-dimensional void.

The Unon’s ultimate weapon is revealed to be an entropy engine, a piece of Dalek technology left over from the Time War. From the appalled Doctor’s description of the device, it sounds like a development of the Time Destructor used in The Daleks’ Master Plan, though it isn’t named as such: “It creates a bubble around the planet, speeding up time. Everything inside crumbles to dust within minutes.”

There’s a nice speech from Jack about the virtues of the Doctor towards the end of the issue, but after such a long build-up, the story is over rather abruptly, with just one page of happy ending after the big explosion.

This is the final episode of Weapons of Past Destruction and the last issue of the Ninth Doctor comic book, at least for now. The Titan Comics website tells us: “If you want more – you have to let us know!!!” Well, I would like some more, especially since there are so few Ninth Doctor adventures out there, but please try and give us a stronger storyline next time.

6

Richard McGinlay

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