Anyway, as usual I'm going to be looking at a pair of comics from Titan's line of Doctor Who titles, so let's crack on. Spoiler shields at the ready...
Fourth Doctor mini-series #5 (of 5):
"Gaze of the Medusa" Part 5. Writers: Gordon Rennie & Emma Beeby. Artist: Brian Williamson
I last looked at this series way back in August 2016, so it's worth a quick recap of the key events of the previous four issues:
The Doctor and Sarah Jane had travelled to Victorian London. While walking in the foggy streets, they encountered strange giant cyclops creatures and Sarah Jane was captured while the Doctor was rescued by amateur "Chonologist" Professor Odysseus James and his daughter Athena. Sarah Jane was brought before the mysteriously veiled Lady Frances Carstairs who showed her a number of modern looking statues, including - scarily - one of Sarah Jane herself !
Via her late husbands archaeological digs, Lady Frances had obtained the "Lamp of Chronos", a device which opened a portal into a different era. However she apparently encountered something nasty lurking in that past time period that was now slowly changing her physical form to stone. Hoping to use the TARDIS occupants knowledge to release the creature and regain her humanity, she schemed to capture the Doctor as he approached her mansion with his new friends on a rescue mission. Unfortunately in the ensuing scuffle the Lamp of Chronos activated and sent Sarah Jane and the Professor back in time to a cavern in the fifth century B.C.
While the Doctor and Athena were stuck in Victorian London trying to figure out a way to get them back, Sarah Jane and the Prof explored the underground cave system they were stranded in - only to discover that they were being stalked by a snake-like monster. Pursuing them relentlessly through the tunnels, it finally turned it's gaze on to poor Sarah Jane and transformed her into an immobile statue.
Managing to re-activate the Lamp of Chronos using the power of the TARDIS, the Doctor and Athena stepped into the past - swiftly followed by Lady Carstairs and her one-eyed Scryclops henchmen. Coming across the injured Professor who was slowly turning to stone himself, the Doctor realised that they were actually in a prison for an alien parasite known as the "Medusa", which fed on the life energies of its quantum locked victims over centuries. Saving Athena from the rampaging Scryclops, the Professor sacrificed himself and crumbled to dust, allowing Athena and the Doctor to confront the Medusa. However suddenly the pair were surrounded by a green glow which the Doctor identified as a transmat beam and they rematerialised in front of...something huge.
Cue the cliff-hanger scream...
So having caught up, what does issue five hold in store?
The Doctor and Athena arrive inside what appears to be a futuristic looking spaceship. Looking up - and up, and UP - they can see the seated form of an enormous bearded humanoid - a staff across his lap and a circlet upon his brow. Athena thinks that it's the god Zeus, but the Doctor tells her it's really just a hologram. Suddenly a booming voice makes him realise that it's beginning to wake up.
Meanwhile, Lady Carstairs is finally granted an audience with the hideous creature she has served for so long. Revealing her partially turned to stone face and that she was the one who had sent fresh beings through the time portal for the Medusa to feed upon, she begs it for a cure. The monster just laughs mirthlessly and declares that their "pact" was all a ruse - a lure to get Lady Carstairs into the past so that it could complete the transformation and use the poor bereaved woman as a vessel to escape it's prison.
Back in the alien ship, the Doctor tinkers with the computers, and via a series of images the hologram avatar divulges the secrets of the prison vessel, the Medusa and it's original captors. Using it's mental abilities the alien criminal controlled the menial Scryclops creatures so that they rose up against their masters and caused the ship to crash on Earth - burying itself deep beneath the surface of Ancient Greece. It may have broken free of it's jailers but the Medusa is still trapped within the ships bio-metric limitation field - unless.....with sudden horror the Doctor realises it's nefarious plan - that bodily possession is it's way out.
Completing the transfer of it's consciousness, the Medusa transmogrifies the body of Lady Carstairs into a humanoid reptilian hybrid. It's free to escape the underground prison and travel to the Victorian future. Free to feed. Realising that it's primary purpose has been thwarted, the prison ship's hologram initiates a self destruct sequence. The Doctor convinces the hologram intelligence that only he can stop the Medusa, and the Time Lord and Athena are swiftly trans-matted back outside to the caves. Avoiding the falling rock as the cave system shudders under the energies building within the ship, they race back to the portal. The Doctor knows that shutting it down is the only way to save the future.
Stumbling back through the time gate into the Professor's lab, the Doctor manages to destabilise the temporal field and temporarily trap the Medusa before she can follow after them. He tries one last time to reason with her but it's to no avail - she is consumed with a need to feed on the "lesser species" and nothing will get in her way. Before the unstable Lamp of Chronos expires, the prison ship in the past suddenly and violently explodes, bringing down the ceiling on the Medusa, its green blood oozing out across the cave floor. Throwing the Lamp through its own portal, the Doctor traps the fiend in the past. Forever.
Between panels, the Doctor apparently uses the TARDIS and some of the Professor's equipment to reverse the quantum process and restore Sarah Jane (and others) to full health. Reunited at last and strolling through sunny London they meet up with Athena and her Navy Doctor fiancé, Lieutenant Albert Sul.....oh I think you can all guess who he is by now. It seems there is a wedding to attend. Someone's great-grandparents are getting married....
So at the end of all that, what did I think? Well on the whole it was very enjoyable. I think I've said before that the Doctor's characterisation is pretty much spot on. Yes, if I'm being particularly fan-boyishly nit-picky there are a few plot holes - like where exactly did the Lamp of Chronos come from in the first place? plus,which race of alien idiots captures a villainess who can control minds without putting appropriate safeguards in place? - but those are fairly minor in the scheme of the whole thing. The plot actually hangs together really well and I was genuinely surprised at the way Lady Carstairs was used in the end.
I'm less happy about the treatment of Sarah Jane Smith. She's totally side-lined as a statue for most of the storyline in favour the plucky yet uninteresting Athena. It's such a waste of a well-loved character. I'd much rather SJ had been in the thick of it working things out and helping the Doctor - especially as we all knew that she was in no real danger anyway and would be fine by the end of issue five. That's the perennial problem with doing any kind of story with past companions - you can't have any real surprises. Having said all that and been so critical, I guess maybe the writers were thinking "we've only got five issues and everyone knows what Sarah Jane is like anyway, so let's create a new female lead with whom we can have a dramatic and emotional character arc". That kind of works.
As a new monster for the Doctor to face, the Medusa is not going to go down in Who legend as particularly memorable or have fans crying out for a return appearance (although there is a slight hint that her story is not completely over). She was not particularly nuanced, being more evil for evil's sake - so very traditional for Classic Doctor Who then. If she was to come back it might be nice to find out exactly why she was imprisoned in the first place. Plus there is still the mystery of what happened to the race of god-like aliens that the ship hologram was so patiently waiting for.
Moving on to the art, I think I've just about got to the point of being able to look past Brian Williamson's photo referencing that I was so disparaging of in past reviews - although there's no disguising a re-use of that handshake pose - even if he does flip the image. It's only really jarring when you have two panels next to each other where one looks *exactly* like Tom and the other looks nothing like him. In other areas the humanoid form of the Medusa is what you would expect - all green skin and forked tongue. Brian's alien "god" designs are pretty good too, and there is a glimpse of some interesting looking tech. If I was being very kind I'd say that there is a bit of a Brent Anderson vibe going on with some of his art, which is no bad thing. Maybe Brian just needs to move away from illustrating characters that have to look like well known actors and develop his own style a bit more. As an aside, I'd also be interested to know why there was such a long delay between issues four and five and if that was art or script driven. I say this because the artwork starts out much stronger than it finishes.
All told I think the mini series was a conditional success - a three and a half out of five if you must. Knowing the rate Titan are pumping them out I'm sure that it's almost a given that we will get more Fourth Doctor adventures, so when we do, I think I'd like to see a more original villain, better use of the companion, less reliance on the well trodden Victorian trappings of the televised series and perhaps a different artist. Let's see what they can come up with.
--------------------
Twelfth Doctor # 2.9
"Playing House" Part 1. Writer George Mann. Artist: Rachael Stott
Cast your mind back to last month's issue, and after solving world peace on The Twist with his rock concert, the Doctor has invited guitarist Hattie for one trip in the TARDIS. As I feared, the issue opens with the pair jamming in the console room. Thankfully it's cut short by the TARDIS alarm. Something is leaking dangerous amounts of temporal energy on 21st Century Earth and the TARDIS obviously wants the Doctor to investigate.
Outside the ship is a windswept moor and an eerie mansion looking like something straight out of a Hammer horror movie. Of course the Doctor wants to explore, while Hattie's *not* so keen. Using his trusty sonic screwdriver the Doctor gains entrance to the house and inside they discover a veritable treasure trove of antiquities. Suddenly the door slams shut and no amount of sonic-ing will budge it. They're trapped.
Deciding to take a further look around (as if they had any choice), the pair discover that the house is absolutely huge - with a seemingly endless series of varied rooms, courtyards and even an observatory. What's more the clock just struck fifteen and there is a curious tapping on the windows coming from an ethereal looking figure. It's enough to unnerve even a Time Lord.
The clock strikes fourteen and suddenly Hattie spots a pink-clad little girl. She chases after her until the child vanishes through another locked portico. Hearing a voice calling out, they step through one more door and suddenly find themselves in a green woodland confronted by a woman who thinks this is *her* house and who has lost her family in the labyrinth. Retiring to a vast library, the woman - known as Holly - reveals that things started to go crazy after a visit to an antiques fair. Her children started seeing strange things, the house expanded and eventually both the kids and her husband vanished into its depths and cannot be found anywhere except as ghostly images.
The Doctor is distracted from the story by the chiming of the clock. It's now striking thirteen and is obviously counting down to something. What's more the tapping is back and so are the flying things outside. The Doctor identifies the vapourous beings at the windows as "Spyrilites" - scavenger creatures from the temporal void that feed on Artron energy. If they are here then something is *very* wrong and everyone is in danger.
So what does the Doctor do? He lets them in of course ! But instead of feeding on the time travellers, the host of Spyrilites swoop off through the mansion in search of a greater energy prize - with the Doctor and his companions in hot pursuit. Tracking the entities through ever more elaborate and unusual spaces they finally the ghostly forms feeding at the heart of the house - and the Doctor realises where he really is...
Okay, I'll come back to the story in a moment because I really want to give praise to Rachael Stott's artwork this time round. The plot requires her to draw a myriad of different environments across it's 20 pages and she is more than up to the task. I particularly like the use of large circular panels to depict the various surroundings the Doctor and Hattie find themselves in. There is one double page spread of this with a backdrop of a map of the house that has a lot of lovely little Easter eggs. Apparently the mansion has a comics library, a room of puppies and even a treat for Harry Potter fans. Plus what exactly is a "Psicord room" ?
But it's not just detail packed backgrounds or innovative panel layouts that impress. I've praised Rachael's figure work before, but her depiction of the Doctor just gets better and better. There are no static talking heads here - each image has the Doctor being expressive in one way or another. There is a real sense of dynamic movement - whether it's him leaping across a room to examine something or the slop of tea in a cup as he gesticulates wildly. Elsewhere, the design of the Spyrilites is appropriate, give they are really just pale ghosts, but there is a subtle hint of the nasty in their skull-like faces and the tendrils of void-stuff that swirl around them.
I'm sincerely hoping that the script continues to give Rachael plenty of opportunities to show her artistic talent - and speaking of that script, how does it fair against George Mann's other efforts?
Well, the notion of an infinite house is not really a new one - having been used to great effect by authors such as Tad Williams in his "Otherland" series or Guy Adams's "The World House" - but it's still a fun one. To be honest it won't take you as long as the Doctor to work out what is going on here - I think I'd made the leap by about page nine. That's not to say it's not an enjoyable journey. There *are* a couple of bits of clunky expositional dialogue - especially one sentence which is so clearly a set up for later in the story that George may as well have put up a big flashing neon sign with a klaxon saying "important plot point here".
You can't deny that he knows how to write for the character of the Twelfth Doctor though. My favourite section was the conversation with distraught mum Holly and immediately afterwards. where the Doctor comes across perfectly as inquisitive, arrogant, forceful, totally unpredictable - yet undoubtedly kind.
It's obvious that George is a man who loves Doctor Who and loves playing around with and adding to the lore of the show - witness his War Doctor novel and various comics mini series. The Spyralites are an admirable idea - even if we already have Chonovores, Vortisaurs and Reapers coming from the vortex. The conclusion of this episode also may open things up for him to do something new with other well known motifs. My problem is, George has let me down badly before (just last issue in fact) so I'm not especially hopeful of an innovative conclusion. Maybe the concepts he's playing with will spur him on to up his game.
Just a quick note on the variant covers and the only one of note this month is from Stephen Byrne - an Irish artist best known for work on the "Plants vs. Zombies" franchise - and there is a definite feel of that game in his cover. However he has just been announced as the artist on DC's 'Rebirth' of "The Ray", so he's obviously a talent to watch.
--------------------
Right. That's definitely enough from me. More next month - same bat-time. Same bat-channel.
Come on - we all know there really is only one Batman. And his name is West...