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Comic Book Review


Book Cover

Doctor Who
The Eleventh Doctor #2.15

 

Writer: Si Spurrier and Rob Williams
Artist: Simon Fraser
Colourist: Gary Caldwell
Publisher: Titan Comics
RRP: UK £2.65, US $3.99, Cdn $4.99
Age: 12+
32 pages
Publication Date: 21 December 2016


With a trail of temporal devastation in his wake, and casualties mounting among his companions, can the Doctor find the truth at last about his Time War crime? Will that truth, once won, prove to have been worth the cost?! The Squire has shot Abslom Daak, fatally. Alice and the Doctor can do nothing but stand and watch as their former companion puts her deadly plan into action. All hope is lost. This is the final chapter, the conclusion to the Eleventh Doctor’s second year…

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS!

After such a well-controlled year-and-a-bit-long storyline and such an excellent build-up over recent issues, I’m sad to report that the final chapter of the Eleventh Doctor’s second year with Titan Comics is disappointingly deus ex machina.

Abslom Daak and River Song are resuscitated by medical technology – though the former’s resurrection from lethal injury has its poignant and amusing moments. The Doctor is shown to be a manipulative old so and so – which we knew already, and has been discussed in previous issues of this saga. Meanwhile, the Malignant, Daleks who are on the verge of becoming gods, are noticeably inactive and all but forgotten about during nine explanatory pages towards the middle of this issue.

The Then and The Now is used in a way that presumably the Doctor could have used it all along, instead of running away from it for several issues… but here’s the clever bit: the Doctor was unaware of the circumstances behind the creation of the transtemporal bounty hunter until Alice was returned by it from the Time War. Or so he claims – it is entirely possible that the Doctor is lying when he says, “Oh, I’m sure I can remember nothing about that, Alice.”

Maybe I’ve just been spoiled by the quality of the previous last year’s finale, which was riveting, moving and utterly satisfying. From a lesser comic-book series, what transpires in this issue might have been enough, but from the master craftsmen Si Spurrier, Rob Williams and Simon Fraser, I expected something more.

Following the final page of comic strip, which rewards Daak appropriately, there’s a tribute to his co-creator Steve Dillon, who died far too young in October 2016. I’m sad to report that, too.

6

Richard McGinlay

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