Finding a New Companion for a Long Trip

We recently looked at the one Eighth Doctor adventure from Titian Comics, “A Matter of Life and Death”, and now we move forward to the Tenth Doctor. I know, I’m doing these in a weird order, but that’s partially because I bought them in a weird order and all of these comics have been hanging out on my shelf for some time, waiting to be read. And if you’re wondering why we haven’t gone from the Eighth to the Ninth Doctor, that’s because I hadn’t bought any of the Ninth’s books. Those books started after I’d already been buying these for a while, and I had a huge run of the Tenth and Eleventh Doctor books that I hadn’t read at the time, so I wasn’t yet ready to buy yet another run of Doctor books when I really needed to get through these first.

I only bought the Eighth Doctor’s book because he’s my Doctor, the one I really started with first, and there was just the one volume. Picking it up was a much easier decision.

As it is, the Titan Comics runs really started with the Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Doctors, so we have a long run of a couple of the Doctor I did pick up to get through (as I also didn’t pick up any from the Twelfth because, at the time, I really wasn’t a fan of Twelve), and now we’re finally in a position to really explore this weird tangent of the Tenth Doctor’s run. Bear in mind, we’re in a side continuity that doesn’t really tie into the main continuity. It runs in its own pocket loop, a tiny whorl on the timeline where the Doctor has left Donna and her family behind (after the end of the Fourth Series) but before he moves on to his last adventure (in “The End of Time - Parts 1 & 2”). It’s hazy where exactly it takes place. Just some time around in there.

This is something we actually have to get used to with Doctor WhoThe longest running sci-fi franchise (at least in terms of sheer seasons), Doctor Who has seen cancelations, relaunches, and reboots, but the core of the series remains the same: a madman in a box traveling through time and space. expanded material. It’s not like with Star WarsThe modern blockbuster: it's a concept so commonplace now we don't even think about the fact that before the end of the 1970s, this kind of movie -- huge spectacles, big action, massive budgets -- wasn't really made. That all changed, though, with Star Wars, a series of films that were big on spectacle (and even bigger on profits). A hero's journey set against a sci-fi backdrop, nothing like this series had ever really been done before, and then Hollywood was never the same. (at least not Star Wars under the command of George Lucas’s editorial team). Comics, novels, and audio books for Doctor Who are very much in a “not really canon” continuity. They have to respect the continuity of the show, but nothing we read in these Titan books is ever going to show up in the main series. We’re in a Wild West kind of land, but one that is hermetically sealed off, so with these adventures we have to learn to enjoy them on their own merits, and try not to measure them too hard against the shows that come before and after these adventures.

And on that front, “Revolutions of Terror” isn’t all that bad. It’s certainly better than the Eighth Doctor’s “A Matter of Life and Death”, that’s for sure. The book (which spans five comic issues, although you’d be hard pressed to tell where one issue ended and the next began in this book) follows the Tenth Doctor after he meets up with Gabby. She’s an artist who, unfortunately, isn’t allowed to follow her passion because her overbearing father demands that she work two jobs at the family run businesses, a restaurant and a laundromat. When she isn’t at either of those locations, she’s at college, getting an accounting certificate so she can help the family with their books. She doesn’t get to do what she wants.

That is until the Doctor shows up. He’s there pursuing a group of psychic demons who, somehow, managed to transport themselves to our world through the washing machines at the laundromat (honestly, considering some of the magical sci-fi we’ve gotten in Doctor Who before, this isn’t all that ridiculous). The psychic demons are using Earth as their hunting ground, devouring good psychic entities that nurture and protect us, and the demons will feed on us, and use us as hosts, unless they’re stopped for good. Which is just what the Doctor, with Gabby’s help, intends to do.

There are many aspects of this first volume that I rather like. For starters, the book nails the personality of the Tenth Doctor. I suppose that isn’t that hard considering he had three series (and four full specials) to nail his character in the television series. All the book really had to do was respect the characterization and performance from the show and try to get it on the page. Writer Nick Abadzis is able to do that pretty well, with only a few lines of dialogue here and there that don’t quite feel right for the Doctor’s character.

That’s good because, unfortunately, I don’t really feel like Gabby comes into focus here as a character. She has plenty of backstory, and a whole cast of characters around her, but there’s something superficial about it all. She’s a character going through motions, but they’re motions we’ve seen plenty of times before from other companions that the Doctor has picked up over the years. She’s an American Latina, which is different from all the British (and occasionally Scottish) characters we’ve seen on the show, but without an accent to latch on to (because this is the written word and not a true performance) it’s really hard to say that she’s all that different in personality from Rose or Amy or many others. Something is missing.

I think it’s an issue of the character feeling too grounded, too normal, for the span of their adventure here. That’s understandable, since they’re just gotten introduced to the Doctor and, for the two adventures in this book (as there’s a backup feature about alien art come alive) Gabby mostly runs around. It’s a Doctor Who adventure, so running happens a lot. But I don’t quite have a sense of her personality like I’d like, not in a way that works on its own without a real person giving a real performance, like on the television series.

Part of the issue is that the backup feature of this book, “The Arts in Space”, is supposed to be written from her perspective, as a letter she’s sending back to her friend, Cindy, on Earth. Except the artist (I’m assuming main artist Elena Casagrande), picked a font for Gabby’s “handwriting” that’s really hard to read. Trying to parse her words, and fight through the awful font, did not endear me to her character at all. There’s the bones of someone interesting here, but the book couldn’t nail that for me due to some writing choices, and some artistic ones, that really held her back.

At the very least, though, these two stories in this book are given time to breathe. Unlike the Eighth Doctor’s “A Matter of Life and Death”, which was five short stories that went by too quickly, Tenth’s “Revolutions of Terror” has just two stories, each with enough space to develop and feel like real Doctor Who adventures. These feel like the kinds of stories that actually could have appeared on the show, and they have enough twists, turns, and amusing moments that they feel in line with the main series. They work really well.

And the art is pretty great, outside that bad font choice. I like the way Casagrande draws the Doctor and Gabby, and they each have solid personalities. They nail David Tennant’s look pretty well, and Gabby comes across as a well rendered equal in that regard. Her letter home also has nice touches, with a different (more Disney-esque) art style used for her sketches. It’s a nice touch that does more for her personality than her dialogue and written words do. Gabby is a character I think I could like, once she gets developed properly in this series.

So it’s a mixed bag for me. The book was good enough at being a Doctor Who adventure that I could see reading more (even if I didn’t have another nine or so volumes to get through). It hasn’t quite settled in the way I like, but the bones are here, and they’re fun. Whether the series can develop enough to become a must read recommendation is another matter, one that we’ll have to dig in to see, but for now I like what’s here enough that even if I hadn’t already bought a bunch of these I think I’d come back, curious to find out what’s next.