Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor #12 - Titan Comics

DOCTOR WHO: THE THIRTEENTH DOCTOR No. 12, October 2019

Dramatically described by “Blogtor Who” as “an epic and brilliantly executed conclusion to this Doctor’s first year of comic adventures”, Jody Houser’s tedious conclusion to her “Old Friends” storyline probably made most of this twenty-two page periodical’s audience wonder just what incarnation of the book the website actually reviewed in September 2019. Indeed, considering that the opening quarter of this “Titan Comics” publication simply focuses upon the Time Lord and the Corsair serenely sitting upon a pair of chairs inside a cell talking, it is debatably difficult to believe that any perusing bibliophile actually made it through to the end of the American author’s narrative in a single reading session, let alone felt her pedestrian penmanship worthy of such praise..?

Bizarrely, it is not even as if the Gallifreyan duo needed to remain inside their purely functional prison populating numerous dialogue-heavy word balloons for the entirety of the scene anyway, as the titular character eventually reveals that she could have escaped from the jail whenever she wanted to, courtesy of her (infuriatingly ever-reliable) sonic screwdriver. This utter waste of time genuinely seems to have been written so as to help stretch-out an already desperately dying scenario, and as a result, almost terminally sets back the pace of this comic’s disappointing plot; “Suppose you’ll have to give me some pointers, then. Perhaps someday I’ll be just as good and/or bad at it as you.”

Amusingly, this instalment’s most dynamic moment comes just after the aforementioned and excruciatingly long overdue escape, when the Hoarder’s guardian robots become “upset we’re out of the cage.” The Doctor’s friend once again demonstrates just how much more interesting and exciting she is than the supposedly “charismatic”, nine-hundred plus year-old explorer by leaping onto one of the heavily-armed machines and using its weaponry to gun down the vast majority of its gem-encrusted peers. This pulse-pounding procession of destruction is wonderfully pencilled by (returning) artist Rachael Stott and can quickly be seen as an example of everything wrong with Houser’s version of the central protagonist, when she boringly has the comic's blonde-haired lead herself dispatch some more of the golden automatons with just an annoying wave of her “multi-functional fictional tool” a few moments later.

Rounding off this disagreeably dreary anecdote, is Jody’s sickly sweet finale which both depicts the Time Lord’s friends being easily rescued from Raddplina and the Hoarder’s leisurely incarceration by the ever-convenient Time Agency. So straightforward a climax debatably brings little excitement with it, as “the show's first female Doctor since its debut in 1963” makes everything appear so mind-numbingly easy and unexceptional.

The regular cover art of "DOCTOR WHO: THE THIRTEENTH DOCTOR" No. 12 by Veronica Fish