Doctor Who

Nothing Spectacular, But Kinda Entertaining

This free comic is a compilation of three (extremely) short stories based in the Doctor Who universe.

The first story, The Body Electric, focuses on the Doctor's 12th generation - the current one, when this comic was published, and one of my least favorite incarnations. The main POV character is Clara, whom I hate for her plotlines and not living up to my expectations for Oswin Oswald. So I have to admit I went into the tale with a negative bias the size of Texas. Having the Doctor call someone an “insult to alpha personalities everywhere” only sealed its fate.

But even if I hadn't found it unpleasant, the story itself isn't really much of a story. It feels like the opening, middle, and closing beats of an episode with none of the filler that the televised version relies on for its charm and entertainment value. And, of course, the main point of it is to remind everyone what a special little piece of perfection Clara is - one of the very reasons I hated her so much on the show. She's the “not like other girls” of companions, and the ending of this makes that point very clearly. No, thanks!

The second story either lacks a title or has it hidden in the art somewhere that I didn't notice. It's so brief it doesn't need a title regardless, and features the Doctor's 11th incarnation. But, y'know, when it starts with the Doctor intentionally trying to land in “Berlin, 1945, the last days of Hitler!” and being highly enthusiastic about it (before, thankfully, realizing he's in 2015 instead)... Well, let's just say that was one heck of a choice made by the writing team. And not a good one.

I was disappointed that the companions featured weren't Amy and Rory, but I suppose after the horrible way their arc ruined that was never an option. The featured companions were new to me, but I skipped the end of Eleven's run on television so I assumed they were part of that... until I looked up the third story's companion and realized these are also from comic continuity rather than televised continuity. There wasn't enough shown of any of them to get a solid feel for their personalities.

The story itself is about a free comic that controls people's minds. I guess, given this is a Free Comicbook Day release, the aim was for a bit of meta humour. And you know what? It actually kind of worked. That's right: with barely a couple pages to it, some intensely meta storytelling, and a terrible start, this one still managed to turn around and make me like it.

The third story, The Laundro-Room of Doom, features the Doctor's 10th incarnation, who's quite predictably my favourite. The companion with him is named Gabby, with whom I was unfamiliar. (After looking her up online, I discovered she's a comics-continuity companion and there's a small amount of irony to the laundry room being involved since there was a laundromat-related incident for her original introduction.) So I went into this one expecting good things... and was not necessarily disappointed, though the story was far too rushed. I liked the banter and the plot beats, but wanted more from it.

Overall, this collection is very superficial. It's a little fun, though, and I enjoyed roughly 2/3 of it. But it did nothing to reignite my interest in Doctor Who, and I'll probably forget it within the next few hours.