Tony Black reviews Doctor Who: Supremacy of the Cybermen #1…
For the Cybermen’s 50th-anniversary… YOU WILL BE DELETED! Exiled from Gallifrey at the very end of Time, Rassilon, fallen leader of the Time Lords, has been captured by the last of the Cybermen. Now the Cybermen have access to time travel. With it, every defeat is now a victory. Every foe is now dead — or Cyberized. Titan Comics’ 2016 Doctor Who event — and the biggest Doctor Who story of the year — begins here!
SEE ALSO: Check out a preview of Doctor Who: Supremacy of the Cybermen #1
A brand new five-part event series from Titan Comics for Doctor Who, ‘Supremacy of the Cybermen‘ in its first issue assembles the pieces of a time-spanning universal crisis it’s going to take more than one Doctor to solve, in the classic tradition of a big Doctor team up as we’ve seen previously on TV and tie-in media, most recently 2013’s 50th anniversary epic ‘The Day of the Doctor’. George Mann & Cavan Scott’s story doesn’t bring the four Doctors featured here together yet, though you presume it will, but instead throws you into four seemingly disconnected narratives with multiple companions, some familiar & some less so, which have largely a unifying theme in the villains: the Cybermen, after the Daleks arguably Doctor Who‘s most legendary bad guys.
Let’s go through the Doctors chronologically. The Ninth Doctor (or should that be Tenth?) is in 2006, ostensibly during Who‘s season one if we need to place it, and a London which has been destroyed with robotic dinosaurs roaming the place, who the Doctor saves Jackie Tyler from with the help of daughter Rose & Captain Jack Harkness. The Tenth Doctor meanwhile is in the 24th century where he brings best friend companions Gabby Gonzalez and Cindy to the Cosmomart, a planet converted into a shopping mall, where they run into some tough warrior Sontarans.
In the distant past, on prehistoric Earth, the Eleventh Doctor and companion Alice Obiefune are looking for tasty ancient fruit when a massive T-Rex leads them to a run in with some ancient bad guys. And finally, on the planet Karn, our current Doctor, the Twelfth, crashes his TARDIS as he looks to return to Gallifrey (this being set after the S9 finale) in order to try and figure out why time has gone completely nuts. What he finds, and *who* importantly he finds, is a big surprise. Lots going on, therefore, lots of characters and storylines, but to their credit Mann & Scott don’t spend ages trying to catch you up on who everyone is, and simply assumes you’ll know and launch you into the middle of four mad Who plot lines in some imaginative settings.
Supremacy of the Cyberman does feel a touch disjointed at times, and it’ll be interesting to see how all of these varied threads begin stitching together, plus the artwork depictions of some of the Doctors (Ten in particular) by Alessandro Vitti, Ivan Rodriguez & Tazio Bettin leave something to be desired – but nevertheless its a fun, entertaining romp with some sharp writing that captures each of the Doctors well, and a truly epic plot line it’ll be fun to see play out.
Doctor Who: Supremacy of the Cybermen issue #1 is available July 6th.
Tony Black is a freelance film/TV writer & podcaster & would love you to follow him on Twitter.
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Originally published July 6, 2016. Updated November 14, 2019.
