Right now we’re in that awkward place where we try to kill
time between the end of Doctor Who season 8 and the annual
Christmas special (how can you not be excited at the prospect of Nick Frost
playing Santa Claus? That’s going to rule so hard). Lucky for you, we have the
continuing adventures of the Doctor on the pages of the funny books to keep us
occupied. This time, the Eleventh Doctor is back for the fifth issue of his
title, and this bubbly installment bears the moniker “The Sound of my Voice.”
The action picks up with the Doctor, his latest travelling
companion Alice, and Jones, their tagalong future rock star from the past. That
last bit will make sense to those of you who have read the previous issues.
Just as we left them, the Doctor is being held at gunpoint by August Hart, who
they encountered in the past in a future incarnation; Alice is wondering around
the deep space research station, wanting to get home and straighten out some
problems with her landlord; and Jones, well, Jones is in the crapper, face to
face with an escaped amorphous creature that has been slurping up people’s
memories, leaving them in comas. This guy is called Arc.
Most of the plot involves running around. In the Doctor’s
case, he scurries about trying to discover the origins of the roaming monster,
and what he finds he doesn’t like (not a big fan of torture disguised as
medical experimentation, this particular Time Lord). Alice and Jones, in the
meantime, have their hands full fleeing from Arc, trying not to get blanked.
While all of this goes down, Hart, always a sturdy stick in the mud, is trying
to stop everyone, and finds himself, however momentarily, in operational
control of the entire facility, which isn’t good for anyone involved.
Once again, Alice proves to be a capable companion, more than willing and able
to take care of herself, and, in this case, save Jones from having his memories
devoured an amorphous grey creature. She’s a badass of the highest order, and
her presence is definitely paying off for the Doctor, even if it is, as always,
the sonic screwdriver that really helps save the day.
But of course there’s more to what’s going on than what you
initially see, and the whole story tries to carry a point about putting
yourself in other people’s shoes and trying to see the world from a different
perspective. This isn’t a bad idea, but it just gets tossed in late in the
game, like, “Oh, hey, here’s a grander message than just a wacky guy in his
sidekicks bounding through space and time.”
More than anything, this move is a desperate attempt to give
this continuing title additional depth and meat, otherwise it’s rather sparse
on those fronts. You can only go on watching a two-dimensional rendering of
Matt Smith (in more ways than one) bounding from frame to frame for so long
before you need something more to entice you to return. While a few the lastcouple of issues were on this track, largely because of Alice, her story, her
background, and her desire to take care of her own business and not be some
wayward stray the Doctor picks up and rescues, this chapter is a step in the wrong
direction, a step backwards.
Above all, issue #5 of The Eleventh
Doctor illustrates how important Alice is to maintaining any sense of
momentum and connection to this run. In a larger sense, it shows how vital the
companions as a whole are to the overall franchise, especially during Smith’s
time at the controls of the TARDIS. Hopefully they’ll get back to this soon,
because it’s the heart and soul of these comics thus far. We’ve spent a lot of
time with Smith’s Doctor, and while many fans out there miss him, this is an
empty suit and there has to be something more. You hope they haven’t hit a wall
already, but it’s starting to feel like that may be the case.
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