Villordsutch reviews Doctor Who Vol. 3 #8…
“When a cosmonaut attempts the first space walk in 1965, the rest of his crew watches in horror as he’s swallowed whole by shadow. Only the Doctor can save the spacecraft and the historically important mission!“
Following directly on from Part One of ‘Space Oddity’ in Doctor Who #7 [review here], we find ourselves trapped in a Russian Space Capsule high above Earth with the Doctor and Leonov rapidly running out of air as the TARDIS floats further away with the Vashta Nerada lurking deep inside the it.
Right let’s get this out of the way. This is Part Two and the closing part of ‘Space Odditiy’. I wouldn’t say however that you would need Part One to understand what is going on. My brief synopsis above has filled you in.
Part One was a good Who story. Fun, daft and a bit ‘stretching it’ silly added to that the not overly strong fear of the Vashta Nerada and made it an overall good comic to have. I was expecting the second part to finish the story off with a good ending. What we have though is a comic that this stretching it, silly and empty. It is not fun.
***Spoilers Begin*** In the capsule where we left our heroes, the Doctor attempts to get the life support up and running for himself and Leonov. In a handful of panels we discover that Russia launched this capsule secretly to see if they could build a location above America to launch missiles. The Doctor convinces him that America isn’t doing it and then it’s back to the silly. The Doctor tries to rock the capsule towards the TARDIS, then they explode missile shells to propel the capsule towards the TARDIS. Grom there they run through space (stretching the TARDIS Shield) and wind up with a confusing moment in the TARDIS, before finishing in Moscow where Leonov blackmails the Russian Government with going to NASA with the Russian Missile idea if they don’t stop it. ***Spoilers End***
You may be shouting, “Vil you’ve spoilt it for us all in your very brief paragraph!?” For this I apologise, however you may feel grateful later as you can take your hard earned pennies towards another (worth it) IDW comic on the shelf.
I can’t fault the art by Horacio Domingues (WildC.A.T.S.,Transformers) and Andres Ponce (TMNT, Star Wars); it’s looks good, from the darkness of space to the fresh clean colours of Moscow. The fault lands in the lap of Joshua Hale Fialkov (Elk’s Run, Echoes) – he started with a great with Part One, but couldn’t finish it in Part Two.
How could Fialkov make it better though I wonder? I don’t think it was easy for this story to be dragged over two issues as it obviously has too much running around in empty space and an enemy that was difficult to portray in a comic too. It finished it off with a TARDIS moment that made little sense and the brief lesson on why bombs in space are bad. Perhaps being set on Mir or the ISS could have been easier to bring some tension and fear from the Vashta Nerada, which became more little more than a second thought in all of this mess. We could have done away with the whole missile story too.
This was really not the best ending to a good start. Pick up another IDW comic and thank me later with sending me positive thoughts that or used five pound notes – you choose.
Villordsutch is married with kids and pets. He looks like a tubby Viking and enjoys science fiction. Follow him on Twitter.
Originally published April 17, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
