"Now I don't have to be IN the TARDIS to watch my favorite shows."
Doctor Who Annual 2010
IDW Publishing (July 2010)
Four stories in this issue, the first American produced annual for the Doctor Who comics. That alone is important. The stories within are very good stories, I will tell you that right now.
On the other hand, I think it fails to deliver on it’s promise to explore the TARDIS itself. While it certainly is a more prominent character in a couple stories, there’s nothing here that any Whovian hasn’t already learned about the ship.
Let’s start with “Ground Control”, a comic which brings Kelly Yates back to the comic. I don’t he’s drawn a Who story since he did substitution work for the miniseries “The Forgotten”. Johnathan Davis gives us a tale where someone is trying to convince the Doctor that it’s too dangerous for him to have the TARDIS, featuring moments with both Donna and Martha, both involving a panda-like warrior. It’s a fun story, and is probably the most TARDIS-centric of the stories, but still doesn’t tell us what we don’t already know, and that’s when jumping around the foe’s lies.
“The Big Blue Box” has Matthew Dow Smith on both story and art chores, and he does both very well. A man who has seen the “blue box” most of his life learns a startling secret about his origin and why two warring aliens want him. The TARDIS really does nothing beyond this, yet somehow our character decides that because of the TARDIS the Doctor will be fine? I don’t see what tells him this, but it’s a good story told from the perspective of someone relatively outside of the Doctor’s circle and I like it for that.
Al Davidson also takes story and art chores on his story, “To Sleep, Perchance to Scream”, a title which really doesn’t work since it’s just about the Doctor having a nightmare, meeting his next incarnation, and a eyeball creature the Doctor puts into a drawer by his bed for no stated reason. The only thing TARDIS related is a line about the TARDIS “siphoning off my bad dreams” (and Firefox’s spell check insists that it is “siphoning” with an “i” and not “syphoning” with a “y”). I really can’t follow this story enough to say if it’s good or bad, but it’s the weakest of the four and I really didn’t take to it.
The last story, “Old Friend” puts Tony Lee on writing as a bridge before the upcoming finale of the 10th Doctor’s IDW run. Matthew Dow Smith takes art chores as the Doctor and Emily are (supposedly) brought by the TARDIS to get a warning message from a future companion who is dieing from old age. Interestingly, the old man is named Barnaby Edwards, who according to the TARDIS wiki is an actor who has taken part in audio drama and episodes of the current series. This leads into the upcoming final battle with the Advocate, and that’s all this story does. There’s not enough to really review here, but it does make the story rather important to the current arc.
So, yeah, it doesn’t deliver on the promise of delving into the mysteries of the TARDIS, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad comic. I still recommend it for the stories it does have because it is a good read. It’s just not the read they advertise it as.
Tomorrow’s Comic> The Phantom: Generations #13
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