Doctor Who: The Seventh Doctor #3 - Titan Comics

DOCTOR WHO: THE SEVENTH DOCTOR No. 3, September 2018

Providing a somewhat saccharin-sweet, arguably all-too neat conclusion to Andrew Cartmel’s three-issue mini-series, this twenty-two page periodical reads more like a re-imagination of Lewis Gilbert’s 1967 James Bond film “You Only Live Twice” than “an epic all-new adventure” featuring the Seventh Doctor with its strong spy-fi shenanigans and pitched battle inside a volcano-based secret military headquarters. Indeed, apart from a truly surreal moment when the titular Time Lord uses his umbrella to subdue a plethora of extra-terrestrial terrorists with a dose of knock-out gas, this publication’s plot noticeably ignores Sylvester McCoy’s television character in favour of focusing upon the exploits of the Intrusion Countermeasures Group and their successful efforts to parachute a heavily-armed force of soldiers into the alien’s underground nerve centre; “You know what, mate? This is the bit I live for. When all the c@#p stops and the action finally begins.”

True, such a decision makes some sense when it generates plenty of automatic-weapon firing gunplay and a high-octane chase between Group Captain Gilmore and his treacherous former junior officer, Delafield, as the pair desperately clamber up the tower-block tall ladder leading to the cockpit of a technologically advanced spaceship. But just why the almost-absent Gallifreyan doesn’t simply instruct Ian to drop gas-bombs from the Lockheed C-130 Hercules transport aircraft as opposed to paratroopers is never raised, nor why the Doctor decides to materialise the TARDIS smack bang in the middle of the Royal Australian Air Force’s attack with nothing to protect either Ace or himself with other than a flimsy-looking radiation hazard suit..?

To make matters worse, the former script editor’s narrative also illogically has the incredibly talented Christopher Jones suddenly pencil both Professor Jensen and Doctor Williams wearing the self-same blue jumpsuits of the alien aggressors as opposed to their archaeological dig attire. As the Time Lord’s feisty companion quickly points out, such a change of clothes is a “bit dangerous” as the pair “might be mistaken for bad guys”, and seemingly appears to have been perversely penned simply to provide Allison with an opportunity to have a moment’s banter with Rachel as to the women’s ‘good looks.’ Certainly it makes no sense for the duo’s captors to have forced them into the uniforms as it would have made their prisoners, who had already previously attempted to sabotage their operation, even harder to spot from amongst the plethora of similarly-dressed scientists working around them.

Undoubtedly Cartmel’s biggest ‘leap of faith’ with his audience however, has to be the contrived nature of Gilmore’s rescue “over sixty years, and half a world away” following the senior soldier’s entombment within Delafield’s orbiting spaceship. Locked inside the vessel’s cockpit, circling the Earth, the military officer is nonsensically forced to ludicrously survive “in some kind of state of hibernation so I didn’t die from lack of oxygen… [or] even age” instead of being simply liberated by the Doctor in the TARDIS just as soon as the alien craft had entered a stable flight path.

‘First published on the "Dawn of Comics" website.'

The regular cover art of "DOCTOR WHO: THE SEVENTH DOCTOR" No. 3 by Christopher Jones

Doctor Who: The Seventh Doctor #2 - Titan Comics

DOCTOR WHO: THE SEVENTH DOCTOR No. 2, August 2018

The three hundred and forty-ninth best-selling comic in July 2018, at least according to “Diamond Comic Distributors”, Issue Two of “Doctor Who: The Seventh Doctor” would certainly seem to contain the pieces necessary to make a successful publication which captures the very spirit of the BBC Television series during Sylvester McCoy’s tenure as the titular character. But despite it concerning giant extra-terrestrial spaceships, “a mysterious snake-like alien entity” and plenty of spy-fi thrills as Professor Rachel Jensen and Doctor Allison Williams are abducted away to “a volcanic archipelago off the Pacific Coast of Mexico” at gun-point, this twenty-two page periodical also arguably includes the self-same flaws which led to the increasing unpopular programme being cancelled at the end of 1989.

For starters, there never seems to be any sense of actual jeopardy throughout this publication, even when Group Captain Gilmore’s military unit are about to swallowed up in “a lethal cloud of radioactive dust” having been stranded in the Australian desert “with no communications and no transport.” Previously described as both “secretive and manipulative”, arguably one of the biggest criticisms levelled against the Scottish actor’s incarnation of the Doctor was his seeming "well devious" omnipotence and Andrew Cartmel’s script for this second instalment to “Operation Volcano” disappointingly provides it ‘in spades’ by depicting the troublesome Time Lord somehow conveniently conjuring up futuristic sand-gliders from a handful of tent pieces, so as to speed the party ahead of the oncoming storm; “Luckily, we still have the tents I brought. Rather useful, flexible items… Now, let’s help Ace dismantle them and reassemble them in a new configuration.”

Such contrivances permeate this book’s proceedings and resultantly probably repeatedly jarred its 2,842 readers from out of any reverie which they had acquired from its story-telling. Just how, for example, did the aggressive aliens manage to get one of their kind, namely Gilmore’s immediate subordinate Delafield, ensconced at the Intrusion Countermeasures Group Command Headquarters at Blythburgh House in Oxford at precisely the same time as Jensen suddenly sends the Group Captain a telegram urgently requiring the “physician”..? Or how does the Gallifreyan inexplicably deduce that by burying the corpse of a previously killed serpent at an Aboriginal scared site, its apparently inert dead body will still transmit a signal to its brethren and encourage them to manifest themselves in front of an armed military unit..?

Perhaps the former magazine editor’s biggest disappointment however is his script’s inclusion of yet another in a long line of amiable aliens who have the incredible good fortune to be able to mentally mind meld with one of the leading cast and subsequently provide both the humans, as well as this book’s audience, with plenty of exposition as to what is going on and why the anaconda-long multi-tentacled reptiles have been able to live unnoticed on the Earth since they first arrived thousands of years earlier. Sadly what Cartmel can’t explain though, is just how a serpent with no limbs whatsoever is capable of building the technologically advanced space-ships which “the Feds” apparently used to trace the “dangerous crooks” to our world in the first place..?

‘First published on the "Dawn of Comics" website.'

The regular cover art of "DOCTOR WHO: THE SEVENTH DOCTOR" No. 2 by Christopher Jones

Doctor Who: The Seventh Doctor #1 - Titan Comics

DOCTOR WHO: THE SEVENTH DOCTOR No. 1, July 2018

Unsurprisingly taking full advantage of the medium’s lack of financial restraints, Andrew Cartmel’s opening to “Operation Volcano” is undeniably packed with just the sort of mind-blowing ‘space-opera’ visuals which would have had the Eighties television series’ producer John Nathan-Turner furiously scratching out the scene in the screenplay with a big red pen so as to desperately ensure the adventure’s cost remained well within budget. However, whilst such an Arthur C. Clarke inspired look to “the first full-length comic story starring the Seventh Doctor since Cat and Mouse in 2013” may well have seemed a great idea on paper, the publication’s disconcerting jump from the Australian desert in 1967 to high Earth orbit in 2029, and then back to an earlier time in South Australia as Rachel and Allison investigate a “most remarkable cave system”, must arguably have caused its 3,944 readers a somewhat disorientating experience. 

Fortunately though, by the time the titular character and Ace finally meet up with Group Captain Ian Gilmore in the Bodleian Library, the British author would appear to have got his plot’s overly-enthusiastic scope more under control, and resultantly what follows is far more in line with what one might have expected from the science fiction programme’s former script editor. Indeed, as the “inquisitive explorer” and his “trusted companion” negotiate the deadly radioactivity of the Maralinga nuclear weapons test site, and encounter murderous spies along with a giant extra-terrestrial spaceship, this lavish-looking forty-four page periodical increasingly feels like a genuine story literally plucked out of Sylvester McCoy’s tenure as the Time Lord.

Admittedly Cartmel’s annoying hops forward to the European Space Agency’s Kourou Launch Facilities in French Guiana on April 16th 2029, where an extremely long-haired Royal Air Force officer refuses to have his “mighty mane” trimmed, does debatably disrupt both the flow of his narrative, as well as the comic’s classic era ambience. But such interruptions are somewhat forgivable once Ace inadvertently discovers that Daku Darana and Jimmy Benforado are enemy secret agents, and has to literally fight for her life until the Australian military party’s counter-espionage expert puts a bullet in the murderous Adelaide Herald reporter; “Yeah, nice work, Cookie. But next time get here a bit sooner, eh?”

Still, infinitely less forgivable is this book’s secondary tale “Hill Of Beans”, which whilst written as a direct sequel to “The Greatest Show In The Galaxy”, is far more noticeable for having Mags the Werewolf herself, Jessica Martin, penciling as its (guest) artist. Sadly, such an innovative 'sales pitch' really doesn’t do Richard Dinnick’s already dire script any justice whatsoever, and instead just provides this super over-sized book with a dismally disappointing ending which resembles a quality not dissimilar to that seen in hundreds of amateur-drawn fanzines...

The regular cover art of "DOCTOR WHO: THE SEVENTH DOCTOR" No. 1 by Alice X. Zhang