Villordsutch reviews Doctor Who: Prisoners of Time #12…
“Our yearlong celebration of Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary concludes! All eleven Doctors must team up if there’s any hope of defeating his latest and most surprising adversary! Everything has been leading up to this epic conclusion!“
As with Doctor Who: Prisoners of Time #11, our latest offering drops on my virtual doormat less than a week after the last, which just fuels the tales and talk of IDW and Doctor Who going along their own separate ways by the end of 2013. So, after less than a year, the doors come to a close on what has been a fairly mediocre series with only a few stand out pieces along the way. Will Prisoners of Time be missed or remembered? Possibly not, but still, the Gods love a trier.
If you managed to get the issue, and didn’t miss it under the belief that it’ll be out next week, you’ll be more than aware of where we left the Doctor, handcuffed by Adam and the Master and left to make the ultimate choice of which assistants should die and who should get to live. With what seemed like a no-way out cliffhanger (to those that had never seen a cliffhanger before) the Doctor initiates “Operation: Penguin in a remote” and it all goes a bit timey-wimey, dimensiony-whensiony (a NuWho pun). A case of “You and Who’s army” arrives as the previous ten Doctors turn up to…well, I’m unsure and so are they, other than occupy panels and blunder around hoping for the best; it’s very messy and truth be told not as exciting as you might think. Eventually we get a group of Autons who serve little to no actually use, other than kettling the Doctors around the room.
This final issue of Prisoners of Time is firework with no blue-touch paper and I’d say it has been a big let-down, but considering this series has done nothing more than dabble within the beige spectrum of fun it is just a let-down. The Tipton brothers haven’t shown their true colours (well hopefully not) throughout this series, either due to the lack of room they have had to play with, or just not being interested in developing the story past “can we find a way to get all the Doctor’s together”.
Scanning my eyes across the artwork and it echoes the final issue’s story as this too is a bit of a let-down. I’m disheartened to see that both Kelly Yates and Charlie Kirchoff must have gotten wind of a) that ties are being severed from IDW and the BBC or b) They read this story and thought it stank. The art work really doesn’t score highly on any sort of rating system. There is no life to it, the characters appear to be rather oddly drawn on occasion (Paul McGann looks deformed), the colour palette is so drab at one point I thought Christopher Eccleston was an Auton. It really isn’t the best I’ve seen from both of these artists.
If you’ve got issues #1-11 of Prisoners of Time you’ll have to buy this to finish off your giant TARDIS cover, however I really wouldn’t give two hoots about opening it up and having a look inside. I’ll save you ten minutes and tell you it’s disappointing.
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 November 19, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
