This time is going to be slightly different - I'm playing catch-up with my Twelfth Doctor comic reviews, so I'll be covering issues 12 *and* 13 of the latest Year Two series. Don't worry, it will still be my usual in depth look, just two for the price of one. Plus I'm also branching out to take a listen to a series of audio stories concerning that secret organisation that's outside the government and beyond the police. Yes it's "Torchwood". But first - comics !
"Terror of the Cabinet Noir" Part 2. Writer Robbie Morrison. Artist: Mariano Laclaustra
We ended part one with the Doctor in 1695 in the company of the gutsy Julie D'Aubigny and narrowly escaping the grip of the sadistic Captain Verlock, who seemingly cannot die and appears to have some kind of moving blackness leaking from his eye sockets. Verlock is in turn employed by his eminence Cardinal Richelieu - whom the web of time says should have died 50 years ago. It's clear when Verlock reluctantly reports the Doctors escape back to the Cardinal that both men know far more than they should, since they talk of extraterrestrial technology, teleporters and DNA traces. Furious, the Cardinal sets his tame gargoyle creatures off to track down the pair of fugitives.
Meanwhile in the TARDIS, the Doctor analyses the black liquid left on Julie's sword from when she stabbed Verlock and identifies it as sentient dark matter fused with human genetic material. Wanting to find out more, he materialises the ship inside the 'Bibliotheque Mazarine' - Paris's foremost library. Confronted by the curator, who brandishes a large gun, the Doctor uses the psychic paper to convince him that they are really an angelic visitation from God and the frightened man begins to spill all he knows about the rise of Richelieu.
Via another flashback in the same scratchy sepia style as we had last issue, the Doctor and the reader learns that the zealous Cardinal created an infallible intelligence network - the Cabinet Noir - to intercept any correspondence that he deemed suspicious. All alchemical documents were housed in a secret "Black Library", never to be used - that is, until Richelieu decided to forestall his own imminent death and began to experiment with "necromancy". Opening a portal to a hellish dimension, he welcomed it's occupants into our world and since then has secretly ruled Paris with a cruel hand while not ageing a day, all the while waiting for his ultimate victory.
Just as he hands the Doctor the keys to the Black Library, the curator is killed by the arriving gargoyles. Julie D'Aubigny's taunts goad them to attack and a frantic battle ensues. It is only when Julie uses the curators gun to blast the head off one of the monsters that they are revealed as robotic automatons. Automatons that can breath fire !
Dodging the bolts of flame, the Doctor discovers the door to the Black Library and drags Julie inside. Searching through astrological charts, he finds something important, but suddenly the gargoyles are back in force. In retaliation he uses the power of the sonic screwdriver to augment Julie's powerful opera singing voice, and the resulting shockwave shatters the creatures into pieces. As the Bibliotheque Mazarine is engulfed in flames, the pair escape back to the TARDIS. Those charts revealed that in two days time there will be a solar eclipse, plunging everything into shadow. That's when The Darkness will ,ale its move.
We then cut to the Palace of Versailles, where King Louis XIV is busy playing outdoor chess. Bursting in, the Doctor and Julie try to warn him that Richelieu is an "agent of a foreign power" with plans to seize control of France. The imminent 'Celebration of the Sun King' needs to be cancelled. Suddenly the King's eyes start to bleed blackness and a portal opens behind him containing Verlock, Richelieu and a host of tentacled, bug-eyed monstrosities. The Darkness has anticipated everything...
An action packed and revelatory issue then, with a cliffhanger that would have been difficult to predict. Time is seriously out of joint and although (I assume) there is going to have to be a kind of reset in the final part, I hope it's not at the expense of the storyline. We had quite enough of that with "Supremacy of the Cybermen".
I have to say I really enjoyed how the story flowed from scene to scene and the way the flashback was integrated. Robbie Morrison has written enough comics by now to know how to pace these things properly. Good Doctor Who also takes real history and tweaks it slightly and this is no exception. There really was a 'Cabinet Noir' where the letters of suspected persons were opened by officials before being sent on to their final destination - although it was not until Louis XIV successor that a separate office was created. Even Napoleon used it on occasions.
For once there was actually a decent use of the screwdriver as a sonic device. Far better to have it as an amplifier of sound rather than a magic wand that can do almost anything the user can imagine. I also liked the growing interplay between the Doctor and Julie D'Aubigny. He likes her far more that he lets on. If I have one small niggle with this issue, it's that it was a shame the 'gargoyles' turned out to by robots. It would have been more in keeping with the Cthulhu 'monsters from another dimension' feel if they had been...shape-changers for example.
Art and colour-wise it's more of the quality we've come to expect from Mariano and his team. I particularly liked the blank squiggles around the panel borders of the flashback to signify the presence of the darkness and how it's influence grew. The one odd illustration was a full page near the end as the Doctor and Julie race for the TARDIS through the burning library. The drawings are fine - it's the colours which seem totally different from the rest of the book. Normally there is this soft, almost translucent quality, but for this page the brightness seems to have been turned right up. I'm not sure if it is a printing error or the result of tight deadlines, but it does look somewhat out of place.
All in all, everything is set for an exciting conclusion in part three - which I'll take a look at in just a moment. But first, it's time for "Torchwood".
Last year the good folk at BBC Audio released a whole plethora of new audio material. There were also compilations of previously published stuff under the "Tales" banner. Alongside box sets for the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors, we also have "Torchwood Tales" - a collection of all the audio-exclusive dramas that came out between 2008 and 2012 (before Big Finish got the licence). It's ten separate stories across multiple CD's - over eighteen hours of adventures featuring the vocal talents of the stars of the BBC television series.
I was lucky enough to get a review copy of this box set as an early Christmas present from BBC Audio, and over the next few months I hope to listen to all of the CD''s and give you my thoughts on how they turn out. Although I'm familiar with and have enjoyed many of the the "Doctor Who" audio-only stories from Big Finish and others, I've not heard any "Torchwood" ones before - so it will be an interesting to see how they compare.
I'll be honest, I watched the first series of "Torchwood" on television out of a sense of loyalty to the parent show and because I had originally enjoyed the character of Captain Jack Harkness. However after the initial excitement of having a brand new spin-off of Doctor Who wore off, like many people I struggled with the immensely smug and unlikeable characters, the at times appalling dialogue, the incompetent acting, the mis-judged plots - I could go on. Oh there were brighter points amongst the mediocre shlock of those first twelve episodes -"Countrycide" was disturbingly nasty and "Random Shoes" was gentle and heartfelt. But beware Mr Chibnall - no matter how good you turn out to be as a show-runner on "Doctor Who", fandom will *never* forgive you for "Cyberwoman"!
Of course "Torchwood" did pick up slightly with season two and then amazingly turned into must-see TV for "Children of Earth", before taking the quickest nosedive in history with the overlong and frankly dull "Miracle Day". So I'll be honest, it was with some trepidation that I cracked open the case of "Torchwood Tales" and took out the first CD. Were these stories going to be season one bad or season three brilliant? Let's find out...
Torchwood - Hidden. Written by Steven Saville. Read by Naoko Mori
I've only come across Steven Saville's name before in connection with a couple of novels about the 2000 AD character 'Slaine', but looking at his bio he has written quite a lot - including books in the 'Warhammer' universe and various TV tie in stories.
The first thing to say is that this is not an audio play, it's an audio novel - a reading of a short story, complete with chapter breaks. After listening to so many Big Finish full-cast drama's, it took a bit of adjustment, as I don't really listen to audio versions of books, preferring the personal experience of hearing and imagining the characters in my own mind.
So anyway, what's the plot? Well the apparent murder of a mysterious scientist and philanthropist leads to Captain Jack Harkness being arrested and facing a plethora of difficult questions. The rest of the team are on their own trying to work out where he is and why a number of other seemingly unconnected people are also being killed. Plus how does this all tie to a fertility clinic, a seventeenth century alchemist looking for the secret of eternal life and a Templar-like secret society looking to silence anyone who gets in their way?
If at this point you are thinking "that sounds more 'Da Vinci Code' than Torchwood'" - you'd be right - and much like Dan Brown's novels, this story features small bursts of action interspersed between huge amounts of leaden historical exposition. The only real action highlights (and I use that term loosely) are a car chase sequence in which Ianto drives like a maniac and gets himself seriously injured and a "tense" scene in the clinic as Gwen and Owen try to avoid a couple of gun-wielding assassins.
Captain Jack is absent for most of the action as we cut back and forth to him in the police interrogation room and he makes a few quips before vanishing off stage again. The rest of the time it's business as usual with the rest of the season one team - with Owen being particularly unpleasant as usual. Ianto is the one that probably comes off best out of this.
The problem is that it's all so...flat. It meanders along, never really rising above mediocre. The team runs around a bit, look into a few things (the details of which I can't even remember) and then it all just gets muddled and fizzles out at the end. Had I dozed off? I found myself skipping back a couple of tracks just in case I'd missed an important climactic revelation. Nope. That's all there is. There's not even a real central villain - or I didn't notice one. The secret society guys are little more than hired thugs. Even Dan Brown had a few interesting characters.
It's not helped by an equally pedestrian reading from Naoko Mori. She does her best with a dodgy American accent for Jack and tries gamely to inject a modicum of excitement into the few action sequences but generally she sounds about as excited with the story as if she was reading a dictionary. I'm not surprised really when it's all either historically dry or modern day dull.
Not a great start then. But hope prevails, so...let's do another one.
Torchwood - Everyone Says Hello. Written by Dan Abnett. Read by Burn Gorman
Abnett I'm very familiar with from his vast body of work for 2000 AD, where he created "Sinister Dexter", from DC where he did an excellent run on the "Legion of Superheroes" with co-writer Andy Lanning (and is now winning a lot of plaudits for the 'Rebirth' series of "Aquaman") and from Marvel where the writing pair revitalised the cosmic side of that universe in a way that I don't think has been equalled since. He's also a prolific novelist, particularly in the 'Warhammer 40K' sandbox. I'm not a real lover of those books but I have read a few, and I do have to say that "Necropolis" in his 'Gaunt's Ghosts' series is one of the most intense and enjoyable future war novels I have ever read.
The title of the story gives you the core idea. One morning random people start saying "Hello" to complete strangers - including Owen Harper - and revealing lots of personal details about their lives - likes, dislikes, secrets, private desires - you get the idea. At the same time the team in the Torchwood Hub detect a powerful psychokinetic energy field that came through the Cardiff rift. As more and more people just stand around saying "Hello" and divulging their darkest secrets, normal life grinds to a halt. Fires break out. Cars crash. Those few that are unaffected by the phenomena start to be attacked by the rest - who become known as "greeters" - and the city descends into mayhem.
Inside a garage on a disused lot, a strange light is pulsing and summoning some of the "greeters" into it's presence. They are to be 'Heralds' who will act as knowledge conduits between the light and mankind. But first. Torchwood must be disposed of...
So what did I think? Well I was right to trust Mr Abnett. This is more like it! Dan knows how to write interesting characters and much of the early running time is devoted to lots of little scenes with supposedly insignificant people. Little vignettes or slices of life that paint a lovely detailed portrait of the person as they are either affected by or confronted with this strange situation. As these scenes progress we start to meet a few of the major supporting characters, or come back to earlier ones that start to take on more significance. Take ex-convict Vic Royce for example. You start off thinking that he's just a random brutish taxi driver that is exposed to one of the "greeters", but then things take a left turn and he becomes very important to the plot.
The Torchwood main cast also come off really well under Abnett's pen...well apart from Tosh but then she's so bland I don't think even Alan Moore could turn her into a interesting character. Jack gets a lot more airtime in this one and we get inside his head a little too. As things progress, Jack is really at risk of being subsumed into the ranks of the "greeters" and there is a definite zombie-movie feel to things as the supposedly pleasant people turn nasty and start hounding our heroes with crude weapons. Never has such a simple single word sounded so frightening.
A big part of the success of this audio is the reading from Burn Gorman. Now I'm not one of his biggest fans, but with this he reveals that his portrayal of Owen Harper was probably hampered by poor choices by RTD and Chibnall when they created his character. Gorman really gets stuck into the story, adding dynamism and variety to all the various roles. His Welsh accents are excellent and it must be very difficult to come up with a hundred different ways to say "Hello", but he manages it and sounds like he is really enjoying telling the story.
Some might think that the ending comes a bit quick but I don't think it's out of step with the rest of the adventure. This is less about Torchwood and more about the little people that get caught up in the wake of big alien events - and I really liked that focus. I thoroughly enjoyed the two CDs and I'll make an effort to seek out any other Torchwood stories by Dan Abnett and hope that they are as good as this one.
More "Torchwood" next month hopefully. Now it's time to go back to our Doctor Who comics story in progress...
Twelfth Doctor # 2.13
"Terror of the Cabinet Noir" Part 3. Writer Robbie Morrison. Artist: Mariano Laclaustra
Before the break we found out that King Louis XIV is in thrall to the other-dimensional menace known as "The Darkness" - hopefully nothing to do with the awful rock band from Suffolk. Let's see how the Doctor gets out of this one...
One point of note. Our colourist has changed for this issue to Hernan Cabrera. Is he Carlos's evil twin brother from an alternative dimension? Who knows.
So the Doctor taunts Richleau that all this 'darkness' and 'horror' stuff doesn't frighten a Time Lord, but he just gloats about how the dark matter creatures have seen our light-infused universe and decided that we don't deserve it. When the dying Cardinal meddled with forces he didn't understand, he created a bridge that let them in, and now as the total eclipse of the sun begins, they will eradicate all life.
Seized by the black tendrils, the Doctor is thankfully saved by the blade of a certain swords-woman and he returns the favour with a repeat of the sonic amplifier trick which disorientates the possessed humans, enabling he and Julie to escape into the gardens of Versailles. Ducking musket shots, they dash into the King's maze where the TARDIS is hidden. Unfortunately they become separated and Julie is confronted by a cackling Captain Verlock, whisps of pitch black coiling from every orifice. The Doctor has vanished...
Sometime later in the Bastille Prison in Paris, we find Julie locked in a cell awaiting the call to be executed. The celebration of the 'Sun King' is in full swing and everyone is too busy having fun to pay attention to the actual orb in the sky. Led to the chopping block, Julie prepares to meet her fate, only to notice that the executioner is really the Doctor in disguise and he cuts her chains, just as the moon starts to cover the sun and Cardinal Richelieu appears wielding arcane energies like something out of a "Doctor Strange" comic.
Our favourite Timelord has a few tricks of his own up his sleeve though and he hands Julie an energy sword left on the TARDIS by a "swashbuckling captain I once knew" (I wonder who that could be ?). As the total eclipse reaches its zenith, hideous Lovecraftian creatures erupt amongst the revelling crowds and begin to consume them.
Racing inside Notre Dame cathedral, the Doctor confronts his enemies in front of a swirling eddy, but the coils of dark matter knock the sonic screwdriver out of his grasp. Throwing her energy sword, Julie gives the Doctor just one chance to get the sonic back before she herself is captured by The Darkness.
It turns out the Doctor had been busy during her incarceration. The press of a control sets the TARDIS off through space and it creates a vortex, allowing the filtered light of the 'Saberhagen Quasar' - the brightest star in the universe - to shine down on Earth, counteracting the effects of the eclipse and dispelling the dark shadows.
Unable to resist the power of the light, The Darkness creatures dissolve. Verlock disintegrates and Cardinal Richelieu finds that time has at last caught up with him as he ages to death in an instant. Thankfully Julie and King Louis XIV were not transformed by The Darkness, only controlled, so they return to normal. It's over.
Julie decides that she will allow the Doctor to take her on a trip in the TARDIS, with him operating as her "butler", but he's really not sure. There's only one way to decide this - sword fight !!
So, in the end, to my surprise, time wasn't reversed (at least not in this story). Richelieu did live an extra fifty years and basically rule Paris. I guess the web of time has a way of absorbing these kind of minor anomalies and reasserting the proper flow of events afterwards. As to the Doctor's solution to the problem of the dark matter invasion, it might seem at first glance to be something he's pulled out of a hat, but he's a time-traveller - it could have taken days or even weeks for him to figure out what to do and then a quick hop back in the TARDIS brings him back just in time to replace the axe-man and save everyone. That's my theory anyway.
Criticisms? Well, It was a little disappointing to see the 'sonic screwdriver amplifying a singing voice' trick used twice is two consecutive issues. Also the scene where the Doctor and Julie are escaping from Versailles and end up looking for the TARDIS in the maze seemed a little odd. The Doctor appeared to have forgotten where he parked the old girl only a few minutes ago! Lastly, apart from allowing the Doctor to conduct a last minute rescue to further the plot, I'm not quite sure why Verlock put Julie in the Bastille instead of immediately having her absorbed by The Darkness.
I really do like Julie D'Aubigny as a companion. She's kind of a 17th Century Leela crossed with Donna Noble - violent and feisty but with less Janus thorns and more boozing - and a refreshing change from the simpering female companions that just think the Doctor is wonderful. I hope she sticks around.
The artwork for this final part is still generally excellent. Mariano's black tendrils wind across many pages, and he definitely draws nasty looking monsters from before the dawn of time. There are a few facial expression that are a little off, but I'm nit-picking. It's the change in colourist to Mirror Universe Cabrera where there is a noticeable difference. Maybe it is the same person and they have just changed their style or their software, but I just don't like the overall effect as much as previous issues by this team. It seems,...less three dimensional somehow.
These are all small points though in what has been a hugely enjoyable three issue romp. It's probably one of the best overall stories in this Year Two run.
Right - that's been far too much of me for one session. Time to go. I'll leave you with a quote from a the late great John Hurt who once said about his lack of belief in an afterlife: "I hope I shall have the courage to say, 'Vroom! Here we go! Let's become different molecules!" More next time.
