Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor Holiday Special #2 - Titan Comics

DOCTOR WHO: THE THIRTEENTH DOCTOR HOLIDAY SPECIAL No. 2, January 2020

Whilst Jody Houser may well have fallen “in love with New Who when it started airing in the US”, it is difficult to imagine that her narrative for Issue Two of “Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor Holiday Special” would cause such ‘an intense feeling of deep affection’ for the BBC Television Series from its dwindling 5,611 readers. Indeed, despite the American author apparently believing that “there’s always something new and exciting around the corner, and that a mad alien in a box can be such a force for good throughout the universe”, this particular thirty-six page periodical disappointingly contains so very little in the way of excitement, drama or even a modicum of action, that many within its audience may well have felt that the female writer was actually trying to turn people away from the long-running programme in their droves… 

For starters, this two hundred and eighty third best-selling comic of December 2019 resolves its previous instalment’s so-called cliff-hanger, by having the TARDIS crew simply be freed from their cell by an Elf turned Safety Officer called Baxter and his large sugar cane. This ludicrously dissatisfying resolution is far from innovative for a Christmas-based tale, and Houser is quick to gloss over any explanation as to just who the Doctor’s pointy-eared rescuer is, how he knew where they were, and why his large peppermint stick somehow smashes a hole in a laser-powered force-field with a simple “Jeff sent me.”

Equally as unenthralling is Jody’s misguided belief that a seemingly endless series of sequences set within some air-ducts, and intermittently populated with a disconcerting discourse as to whether the mysterious Jeff is Santa Claus or not, would somehow be a good idea for this publication’s already overly-protracted plot. These snoozefest sequences, doubtless patiently pencilled by Roberta Ingranata and uncomplainingly coloured by Enrica Eren Angiolini, could easily have been significantly reduced in length, if not omitted in their entirety, and presumably were only composed to lull any perusing bibliophile into a semi-delirious state before this book’s big reveal that the villain of the piece is “the cantankerous Krampus!”

To make matters worse, the final third of this Holiday Special then attempts to desperately explain that the Doctor and her “fam” have unsuccessfully attempted to defeat the “sort of anti-Santa” before when she first kidnapped some aliens to build a teleportation device, and resultantly it now looks like the being who "feeds on fear" is about to “terrify the love of Christmas out of the children of Earth.” Incredibly however, so convoluted and ludicrous a storyline still doesn’t result in any notable action occurring, apart from a fez-wearing Time Lord watching the villain escape with her minions through a dimensional doorway after the Gallifreyan rewired her foe’s energy collecting contraption; “This isn’t over, Doctor!”

The regular cover art of "DOCTOR WHO: THE THIRTEENTH DOCTOR HOLIDAY SPECIAL" No. 2 by Blair Shedd