Of the three continuing Doctor Who titles
Titan Comics currently has running, The Tenth Doctor has
easily been the best of the bunch. The latest, Issue #6, ushers in significant
changes, however. Not only does it kick off a whole new story arc, it brings an
entirely different creative team to the table. Writer Robbie Morrison and
artist Daniel Indro replace Nick Abadzis and his cohorts, and put their own
stamp on David Tennant’s Time Lord. While there is definitely a different mood
and tone going on here, they’re still playing the long game, letting the
narrative arc unfold and the characters develop over multiple installments, and
Issue #6 reads like what it is, the first chapter in a larger story.
The first story for The Tenth Doctor might
have had giant killer sculptures and sinister bipolar twin entities, but
everything about this latest issue, from the plot to the setting to the art,
has a grim, serious edge to it. Now that Gabby Gonzales has signed on to be the
Doctor’s fulltime travelling companion, their next adventure finds them in a
blasted, desolate place full of death and destruction, as a minor
miscalculation (Gabby tried to make a spot of tea in the TARDIS) plops them
down smack in the middle of No Man’s Land in World War I.
When the TARDIS, as well as the Doctor, take a direct mortar
hit, things take a turn for the even worse. They wind up in a field hospital
(the fact that the Doctor has two hearts is a matter of some confusion for the
medic), their trusty transportation device in ruins, the sonic screwdriver
confiscated, and, oh yeah, the British are convinced they’re German spies. The
situation could be better. And as you probably guessed, there is even more
going on than just this, the Weeping Angels keep showing up at inopportune
moment and killing folks (because there’s not enough death in war) and doing
horrible things, like sewing a dude’s eyes open.
Overall, The Tenth Doctor has been more
serious than the Eleventh, which is almost nothing more than
cartoonish bumbling about, but this issue takes that up a few notches.
Visually, this a bleak, dirty, grizzled world, as you would expect of scenes
from a war as vicious as this one. There are people being shot and blown up,
but even beyond that, there’s a stern looks to the characters and settings that
they didn’t have before, even the dapper Doctor. For some reason this new style
reminds me of Steve Dillon’s work on Preacher and his run on
Punisher, there’s a grittiness here that you don’t normally
associate with Doctor Who.
From a content and thematic standpoint, Issue #6 goes to
great lengths to show the ravages of war. Soldiers lose friends and family and limbs,
and you see the toll combat takes on individuals physically, mentally, and
spiritually. All in all, this is a surprisingly bleak story, though it never
falls fully into oppressive depression, which is a nice little balancing act.
Like I said earlier, Issue #6 is really little more than the
a first chapter and is primarily concerned with set up, establishing the time
and the place and the who and the what, as well as catching your attention and
hooking you. The whole issue is quite a bit like what you get before the first
commercial break in an episode of the show. There is a much larger, longer
narrative in store, one that will take more than a single offering to explore,
but this slice does a solid job of making sure you want to come back for the
next. There’s more going on and you want to experience it all.
This willingness to let a story unfold on it’s own terms and
not force an entire arc into a single issue has been a big part of why
The Tenth Doctor has distinguished itself as the top of the
heap as far as current Doctor Who comics go, and why it
looks to hold onto that position for the time being.
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