Doctor Who [2020] #3 - Titan Comics

DOCTOR WHO No. 3, February 2021

Considering that two thirds of this twenty-two page periodical are essentially a dialogue-driven rehash of the 2020 televised episode "Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror", Jody Houser’s script for Issue Three of “Doctor Who” most likely lulled the majority of its readers into something of a stupor. In fact, it is arguably hard to imagine just why the American author picked Nina Metivier’s story for the basis of this book’s plot in the first place, when the only elements of it which she’s pays homage to are that particular broadcast’s conversational pieces, as opposed to its pulse-pounding action sequences depicting the Skithra’s attempt to abduct the famous Serbian-American inventor at his Wardenclyffe lab.

Admittedly, the “Eisner-nominated comic writer” does inject her narrative with a moment of dynamic tension when Rose Tyler decides to help out the Skithra’s Queen in dispatching two of her race who have been tasked to wake the Sea Devils earlier than history had actually planned. But this short-lived sequence is debatably more silly than tension-filled though, especially as the Tenth Doctor’s young companion supposedly kills one of the giant extra-terrestrial scorpions simply by hurling a rock at its head ‘David verses Goliath-style’.

Sadly, the rest of this publication predominantly just follows the Time Lord’s first female incarnation as she goes about her business chatting to the likes of Dorothy Skerrit, pointing out how much more experienced she is to her younger self, and being ‘holier than thou’ when her allies are forced to kill their opponents before they themselves are killed; “This is a war, Doctor. One I’ve been fighting for a long time.” Indeed, the Thirteenth Doctor’s arrogant belief that she can solve every problem solely by talking rather than doing anything physically harmful increasingly grates upon the nerves, as does her perpetual levity at the fact that the Earth’s history has been significantly rewritten and resultantly her “fam” currently consists of another of the Gallifreyan’s past regenerations.

Disappointingly adding to the lethargic atmosphere of this comic book are Roberta Ingranata’s layouts, which for once appear somewhat rushed in places and are clearly designed to help ‘pad out’ the publication. Of particular note is the Italian artist’s repeated use of large blank voids between some of her panels in order to fill out the odd page, and the illustrator’s uncharacteristically poor pencilling of the eight-legged Skithra.

Writer: Jody Houser, Artist: Roberta Ingranata, and Colorist: Enrica Eren Angiolini