Villordsutch reviews Doctor Who: Twelfth Doctor #1…
Freshly regenerated and with a new head full of unanswered questions, the Doctor whisks Clara Oswald away to a strange and distant world.
Clara thought she was in for an evening of marking essays on the Metaphysical Poets, followed by going out on a date – or at least trying to. You know, normal stuff.
Instead, she’s facing down exotic flora and fauna in her best dress, backing up the Doctor on a trek through traumatically alien undergrowth – and she doesn’t even know what the Doctor is searching for, or what will try to kill them should they find it!
After being relatively impressed with the Titan Comics run of Doctor Who so far and absolutely over the moon with Peter Capaldi’s incarnation of the Doctor, I’ve been rather looking forward to getting my paws upon this first issue of The Twelfth Doctor run ever since I caught a glimpse of the rather beautiful (as ever) Alice X. Zhang cover a month or so back, and when the email plopped happily onto my Nexus 7 last week I was truly a happy person.
It’s clear from the opening of this story that Robbie Morrison is a Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy fan with jokes of Fjords, Mass-scale planet building (in this case terra-forming) and the number 42 cropping up in the first few pages he has already got me as a Douglas Adams fan-boy (aging) smiling. But with this failed Slartibartfast, here called Max Zaxx, things turn a bit malevolent with his robot assistant when he checks upon a temperature fluctuation. It’s after this small introduction to the story do we finally get to meet the Doctor and Clara and it appears that – in the comicverse – we are currently midway through series 8, just possibly after the Caretaker episode and the Doctor is taking Clara to a Isen VI, renowned for its snow and ice, so she can practice her skiing for an up and coming school trip.
As is shown in series 8 of the Doctor Who TV show both Clara and the Doctor are excellent sparring partners and Robbie Morrison has caught that extremely well in this first issue. As our tale begins to unfold the Doctor confronts both the main architects of the planet as well as the man with the money and queries them – in his special way – why once this planet of snow and ice is now a vast, lush jungle planet. Before answers can be properly given the TARDIS is used in a rescue of some doomed employees and we suddenly discover what has been causing a few odd moments of aggression above ground; also once again the Doctor’s arrival on this planet may not have been by coincidence on his part.
The art delivered for the whole package is good but the Doctor and Clara seem to have trouble with their faces and eyes as they vary in shape and definition fairly frequently which can be quite distracting, but the rest of the art along with the rather amazing palette from HI-FI with Dave Taylor makes the pages glow; so albeit the comic is about the Doctor and Clara, it can be (ever so slightly) overlooked due to the work put into the art around them.
As a first issue and an opening story this Twelfth Doctor comic has managed to capture and deliver Peter Capaldi’s Doctor and the new Clara extremely well, making a very good start in what will hopefully be a good run of comics.
Villordsutch likes his sci-fi and looks like a tubby Viking according to his children. Visit his website and follow him on Twitter.
Originally published October 15, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
