The Doctor has been detained for three years on a strange planet due to a Tardis malfunction. Clara meets up with him, and she has experienced his absence as equaling a time of only a few hours. In the three years the Doctor has built a Tardis locator. Besides that, the Doctor realizes that he needs to find the “wall” holding in the atmosphere in the area just beneath the White Hole. He enlists the American pilot in charge of a plane loaded with an atomic bomb. That bomb will be the engine for the vehicles. After dealing with the Cataak aliens for some spare parts, the lot gets underway to find the wall.
The book does end on a thought-provoking note.
The artwork of this book does not help the story along at all. In fact, the lack of detail makes the figures look like the barest caricatures. While the aliens did look interesting, the overall penciling came off as watered down compared to the excellent work in The X-Files debuting this month.
The plot also relies on what I call “The Sherlock Effect”, something done effectively well in the BBC version of the Hound’s-tooth capped detective from 221B Baker Street. This is where the hero, in this case The Doctor, figures something out so impossible that we, the audience, have no idea what the solution may be. We are then told of the information that only the hero knows by means of a matter-of-fact exposition. That’s not fun when one wants to interact with a show or comic book. Smart audiences want clues to follow.
Yes, the ending was cool. No, it did not make up for the rest of the issue that felt flat and pointless. I stopped watching Doctor Who after David Tennant left; maybe now would be a good time to stop reading the comic books, as well.
Score: 2/5
Writers: Andy Diggle and Eddie Robson
Artist: Andy Kuhn
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Price: $3.99
Release Date: 6/19/13