Villordsutch reviews Doctor Who: Four Doctors #3…
I have the feeling that I’ve slowly been morphing into a small yapping dog, yelping at Paul Cornell’s heel’s, demanding that he fulfils the promise of the stated Four Doctors in the Doctor Who: Four Doctors comic book. I’ve wanted to bear witness to the escapades of the War Doctor since the brief shot of him in Issue #1, but here in Issue #3 Mr Cornell does something quite marvellous and at the same time fulfils the quota of Doctors.
After the last issue’s [review here] attempt on murdering the numerous incarnations of the Doctor to gently force them into the prophesied photograph our Time Lords are split-up with different Companions amongst a maze like structure. When they finally meet in the middle they come across a continuity bomb which has been adorned with the shell of a Dalek. A continuity bomb sends a person back through time to a moment in their past and shows them what would have happened if they made a different decision. We see the Tenth Doctor let Wilf die and go on to become a tyrant, the Eleventh at the moment when all time collapsed, but here he doesn’t allow River Song to rescue him, and finally the Twelfth Doctor and he has become a bitter hermit, betrayed and isolated in the TARDIS. It’s at this moment our current three Doctors realise how they can make their escape from the continuity bomb and enter this alternative time-line and join up with this second Twelfth Doctor.
Paul Cornell has given us a rather splendid issue this week; I know my main concern over the past two weeks has been that I haven’t seen much of the War Doctor, but after witnessing the ace card being played in this issue – which was quite excellent – this all seems somewhat of a petty concern now, especially as the entire crew of the TARDIS was given a warning just a few pages before it was played. On top of this we get to witness the downfall of the Doctors in the alternative timelines and especially the Tenth, who falls the furthest. We witnessed this decline in “The Water on Mars” and obviously his final moments when Wilf was trapped in the chamber and here’s what he could have become. On top of the brilliant chapter this week we get the excellent artwork – as ever – from Neil Edwards who captures the pace and power of Doctor Who perfectly. This along with the amazing colour palette from Ivan Nunes makes this a perfect comic to read.
Paul Cornell just took Doctor Who: Four Doctors and made everybody whisper, “WTFlip!” at the final panel. It’s quite clear you need to be reading Doctor Who: Four Doctors now!
Check out our recent interview with Paul Cornell here at Flickering Myth.
Rating: 9/10
Villordsutch likes his sci-fi and looks like a tubby Viking according to his children. Visit his website and follow him on Twitter.