Doctor Who: Once Upon A Time Lord [Part Two] - Titan Comics

DOCTOR WHO: ONCE UPON A TIME LORD, November 2023

Perhaps rather unsurprisingly concluding his “incredible Doctor Who comics debut” with the Tenth Doctor confronting all of the dead souls he’s created throughout his numerous adventures, Dan Slott’s conclusion to the celebratory “Firelight” is debatably rather dissatisfactory. True, the American author does inject a few noteworthy moments within this crescendo of cameos, such as the Cybermen once again battling a handful of Daleks as John Lumic unemotionally looks on. But all these scenes are so stiflingly short-lived, that there’s rarely an appearance that maintains a reader’s attention for any significant length of time.

Indeed, considering that the Gallifreyian simply gallops past all these people without any problem, courtesy of the alien werewolf from “Tooth And Claw”, this entire yarn appears to have been penned simply to provide Matthew Dow Smith the opportunity to pencil as many of the Doctor’s numerous enemies as he can. However, the narrative’s conclusion is wonderfully written, with the all-powerful Pyromeths finding themselves utterly helpless before the stern-faced time traveller once they discover to their utter horror that the fairytale Martha Jones has carefully been telling them was actually the truth; “Suddenly they could hear it. The wheezing, groaning sound of the TARDIS…”

Far more disappointing is this graphic novel’s much smaller, “special bonus” script, which features the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler perturbingly battling the Terileptil whilst orbiting the Earth at the start of the Twenty-First Century. Based upon the popular pairing spouting nonsense as they tie the “space-faring reptilian species” up in knots with plenty of tongue-twisters, Slott lamentably just repeats this particular incarnation’s penchant for de-evolving his foes back to when they were a much less dangerous species of extra-terrestrials.

Much more successful than the writing for “Rhyme Or Reason” are arguably Mike Collins’ clean-lined illustrations, with the West Bromwich-born artist rather pleasingly capturing the physical likeliness of both Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper as they joyfully outwit the supposedly highly sophisticated, technologically advanced fish-like humanoids. In addition, there’s a real stiffness to the movement of the Terileptils in “Doctor Who: Once Upon A Timelord” which nostalgically mimics the creatures’ awkwardness when seen on the small screen during the 1982 televised show “The Visitation”.

Writer: Dan Slott, and Artists: Christopher Jones & Matthew Dow Smith, and Mike Collins