Writer: Jody Houser
Artist: Rachel Stott
Colourist: Enrica Eren Angiolini

29 Pages

Published by Titan Comic 1 May 2019

The mystery of the history podcast and the flesh eating monsters continues, with Time Agents swooping in to investigate how the Doctor is wrapped up in it all.  The agents turn out to be the time traveling scientists that were so integral to the first story of this Thirteenth Doctor line. The Doctor seems to be a through line for this popular history podcast, and the Agents want to no why.  They also have the issue of the flesh eating monsters, who have evolved after feeding off the flesh of humans for so long, including one that is seemingly immortal due to having bit the Doctor.  

The story builds nicely from where the previous issue left off.  Taking the cliffhanging mystery and naturally building upon it. Seeing the agents turn out to be the duo from the first story from this series, and how their long time at the Time Agency has changed them since we last met.  It also (and pardon this) fleshes out the monsters a bit.  And leaves us wondering how this podcast will tie it all up. 

It is a strong installment in the latest comic adventures, and if we have to wait a long time for the show to return to the air, at least there is a solid regular comic adventures for the Thirteenth to fill in the gap. 

Writer: Jody Houser
Artist: Rachel Stott
Colourist: Enrica Eren Angiolini

31 Pages

Published by Titan Comic 10 April 2019

What I enjoyed about Issue 6 of the “Thirteenth Doctor” line from Titan Comics, is that it felt like it was going in one direction, but in the last few moments opened up to make this story bigger in an interesting way. Issue 5 had introduced us to a new setting, introduced a new guest character, and in the end the new monster of the week. It seemed like it was set up for a story in this setting.

Then this issue seemed to wrap it up. Sort of felt like a Doctor Who ending, monster defeated - onwards to the next adventure. But then our gang lands in another spot in history that the companions all know from the same podcast they learned about of the last era...and the same monsters are here...then some Time Agents show up.

When it was wrapping everything up, I initially thought "well this seems to be just a humdrum two-parter" and thought reviewing it might be hard, but that extra set up at the end gave me hope.  Our heroes are on a brand new adventure, one with more intriguing threads to follow than some monsters in the dark in a quiet wartorn village centuries ago.  Now there are the monsters, but also Time Agents, and a mysterious podcast which seems to be exploring the strange world s the TARDIS is now landing them in.

I thought the last issue was fine, but it had mostly been story set up, so it didn’t particularly grab me. This issue pushed it in a new direction, one that left me interested to see where it all leads.

Writer: Jody Houser
Artist: Rachel Stott
Colorist: Enrica Eren Angiolini & Tracy Bailey

26 Pages

Published by Titan Comics 6 March 2019

The fifth issue of the ongoing Thirteenth Doctor comic book from Titan begins a brand new adventure for the Doctor and the gang.  This time they land in a small village in 1500s Europe, during the Guelders Wars.  This isnt a period of history I am really familiar with, but no matter, there is an alien menace that gets involved!

****I try not to dive into too many details, but Spoilerphobic Folk Beware****

The village seems deserted, but they find one woman on the run, her name is Magda.  Through her they find that an army is apparently on the way, and accroding to rumors, they have the help of demons.  Demons implies Aliens to the TARDIS team, so they are ready to take them on.   And they eventually find a bunch of flesh eating monsters hiding away...so aliens confirmed!  And while she is beginning to talk to much, and alien bites the Doctor.  As cliffhangers go, this one is kind of lame, but there have been much worse in the long legacy of this franchise. 

This issue is all about the set up of the new storyline, and as such it is really all about building up our new setting introducing the current problems, introducing some the guest character, and eventually unveiling the monster of the story.  It can be difficult to review the first issue of a story.  It's like writing a review for the first 15 minutes of a movie.  Sure...I could say it's good or bad, but at the same time I have no idea where any of this is going, so how can I judge the story on the whole. 

What I can judge is that the writing of the characters is still top notch, and the art remains excellent.  As long as Houser and Stott are running this show, I will be satisfied to keep reading each and every issue. 

Writer: Jody Houser
Artist: Rachel Stott
Colourist: Enrica Eren Angiolini

28 Pages

Published by Titan Comic 6 February 2019

The first storyline in the Titan Thirteenth Doctor comic line comes to a conclusion, bringing some closure to the story that began as far back as the "Road to the Thirteenth Doctor" mini-series.  As conclusions go, it is fairly straightforward and simple. I don't want to ruin it for anyone who may have yet to read it, so I will just say that it is a decent, if somewhat anti-climactic end, but should satisfy any fans who have been following the story thus far.  Spoilers from here on out!

Picking up where we left off, the Doctor and the gang fall down the tube and land in some kind of sewer or something, and find Perkins' time travel cohort. She explains that she trapped Perkins in the time vortex hoping to spare him the pain of their predicament.  They then release the prisoners of the hoarder, and the Doctor calls in some Time Agents and they go after the hoarder. He isn't down to give up so easily and attempts to escape using Perkins' Vortex Manipulator...and just as he did end up trapped in the vortex.  

As endings go, it is okay, but it felt like this story finally began to get somewhere interesting with the previous issue, and that is immediately solved here.  I can now evaluate the story on the whole, and I feel like it may have taken a tad too long to finally find an interesting path, and once it did, it closed up shop before really exploring that path.  

Still, it is a decent Doctor Who adventure and maybe reading it one go would be more entertaining than in briefer monthly instalments.  Overall I would say it seems the Titan Thirteenth line is in good hands. 

Writer: Jody Houser
Artist: Rachel Stott
Colourist: Enrica Eren Angiolini

33 Pages

Published by Titan Comics 19 December 2018

****These reviews may contain MINOR SPOILERS, Reader Beware****

The third installment of the Thirteenth Doctor ongoing comic from Titan Publishing fills in a bit more background for our guest character Perkins.  We begin with Perkins holding the gang hostage in the TARDIS, but he is easily thwarted by the state of grace nullifying his weapon.  He then fills them in on what he and Schultz had been up to, collecting all sorts of items for the alien being they called the Hoarder. It turns out part of what he wanted them to steal was alien children, to be held as hostages, and he at least claims to hold their own descendants hostage in order to keep them stealing for him.  

So the Doctor decides they have a new enemy to face off with, one that is not only stealing artifacts from all of history but has cages full of children as well.  They head out to try and find Dr. Schwartz and take on the hoarder, but are almost immediately caught in a trap with walls closing in on them.  Their only option of escape is to jump down a hole not knowing how far it actually goes down.  And that's our latest cliffhanger. 

I think despite a lack of action until the final pages (and even then the action was walls closing in on them), this was a solid installment.  I think the reason being that it helped develop the actual stakes our heroes are facing off with.  Bad guy has cages full of kids. Got it.  Before hand, it was vague energy beams and a shady guy who we didn't know much about making threats for reasons we didn't really know.  They weren't bad reads, but before now I can't say I was really invested in where the story was going.  Now I am.  That is probably the best praise I can give a single issue of a comic.  

Writer: Chris Chibnall 
Director: Wayne Yip
Executive Producers: Chris Chibnall and Matt Strevens

Starring: Jodie Whittaker, Bradley Walsh, Tosin Cole, Mandip Gill, Charlotte Ritchie, Nikesh Patel, Daniel Adegboyega and Nick Briggs

BBC One (UK)
First broadcast Tuesday January 1st 2019

It may have displaced Doctor Who's Christmas Day tradition, but the "spatial shift" in TV listings for 'Resolution' made this story no less of a gift. With sections of fandom wanting a return of old monsters, and with some arguing for stronger narrative threats for Jodie Whittaker's Doctor to face off against, 'Resolution' delivered in spades. And though it might be a truism to suggest that no new Doctor is truly forged in steeliness until they have faced the Daleks, it's a piece of lore that's extremely well borne out here.

And what a Dalek! Given the presence of a lone reconnaissance scout, this immediately had the feel of 2005's Rob Shearman-penned story, albeit reworked through the distinctive filter of Chris Chibnall's vision for Who. A steelpunk Dalek neatly recapped the sonic screwdriver's new origin story from S11.e1, with Chibnall again deciding to cast his showrunner's remit to 'make it new' into the narrative universe, having both Doctor and Dalek recreate their own remembered versions of the show's icons. At first, I was concerned by the DIY Dalek's design -- it reminded me of unofficial replicas and assorted fan builds seen over the years -- but on reflection, there was just the right blend of RTD-era industrial vibe, innovation (including the red-lit section set within the outer casing) and clanking homespun realism, given the story's clear justification for all this. The resulting 'Sheffield steel dalek' will likely prove to be a one-off boon to merchandising ranges, but Chibnall astutely mined Dalek mythology for some striking images and pay-offs; the mutant-on-the-back recalled iconic imagery from 'Planet of the Spiders' more than previous Dalek tales (and was occasionally a touch unconvincing, for my money), whilst the use of Dalek 'bumps' as housings for rocket-launchers was nothing less than inspired.

This may have felt more like 'trad' Doctor Who at times, but it was also full of surprises and brilliant bits of imagination. Having the Doctor confront this Dalek inside GCHQ was probably my favourite moment of series 11, combining a realist/spy-thriller version of how a lone Dalek might actually try to seize power in today's Britain with the inventiveness of Doctor Who at its very best. There was an air of inevitability about the scenario, once you realised where the script was going, but it fused the ordinary and the fantastical in a perfect way for a post-Snowden culture. Likewise, removing all wifi -- no Internet and no Netflix! -- made the Doctor's arch-enemy a resolutely contemporary menace, even if the 'family cutaway' struck a slight misstep in terms of its broad comic intent and clunkiness.

Another inspired moment, however, was the way that UNIT's non-involvement was tackled. Undoubtedly well aware of old-school fan complaints along the lines of "why weren't UNIT called in?", the showrunner dispatched these mercilessly. But the presence of a call centre operative reading off her computer screen put UNIT's demise squarely into the context of government efficiency savings, as well as implicitly evoking Brexit-style wrangling over international funding. Any long-term fans pondering how UNIT could have been so savagely undone via these real-world resonances might want to additionally consider the extent to which UNIT perhaps belongs properly and organisationally to the age of 1970s' public services and internationalism -- a world now undermined by decades of neoliberalism (traversing both major UK political parties). The scene may be strongly satirical, but its commentary remains perfectly evident: we can't have nice things like UNIT via any current politics of austerity or isolationism. Instead, extraterrestrial-incursion security has seemingly been privatised, resulting in MDZ's feeble defence of the former 'Black Archive' (you can't imagine Kate Stewart or Osgood allowing a Dalek scout to wander off with weaponry and propulsion systems).              

This was very much a two-pronged 'Special'; a sort of double-A-side seeking to combine Dalek shenanigans with the emotional weight of Ryan's father reappearing. Perhaps these strands didn't always rest side-by-side as comfortably as the features of Aaron's combination oven, but on the whole 'Resolution' was a successful hybrid. It followed a textbook pattern by uniting its main plot threads at the denouement, both thanks to Aaron's engineering specs, and via the sting-in-the-tentacle of the Dalek's desperate final attempt at human possession. The thirteenth Doctor remained characteristically fallible, mind you, with her Dalek showdowns never quite going according to plan, and her "squid-sized vacuum corridor" expanding to human-sized proportions with almost fatal consequences. All of this allowed 'Resolution' to re-articulate Chris Chibnall's mission statement for Who -- that the Doctor's "fam" should be just as important as the Doctor herself. And so it is Aaron and Ryan who, acting together through forgiveness and love, finally overcome the Dalek's tenacity. In one strange moment, it even feels as though the script is reaching towards a parallel between family and monstrosity -- just as family is more than DNA and a name, as Graham tells Aaron, then so too is the Dalek more than a DNA identification and a matter of naming. Both Dalekhood and fatherhood hinge on behaviour, meaning that just as Aaron has to prove his status to Ryan then the Dalek is equally required to prove its nature to new viewers and new fans. This it duly does, the episode being jam-packed with gloriously retro extermination effects and Dalek ruthlessness. And though monstrosity and family are eventually opposed, with the "extended fam" predictably defeating the monster of the year, it is striking, in an episode where the Dalek's identity is initially a matter of DNA testing and naming, that the familial and the monstrous should ghost across one another.  

This is a story firing on all machine-tooled cylinders. The direction from Wayne Yip is brilliantly kinetic and well-judged throughout, and the acting performances are uniformly first-rate. I'd especially single out Charlotte Ritchie, who does a lot of great work as Lin to really sell the Dalek 'pilot' concept, switching through various gradations of embodied Dalekness. In addition, Nick Briggs is on superb form, relishing the chance to do things such as providing maniacally extended and chilling Dalek laughter.

I still miss the pre-credits sequence, though. The response to Graham's much-trailed question, "does it have a name?", would have been intensified by immediately then crashing into the titles. OK, cutting the title sequence buys a little more story time, but a few judicious trims here and there could easily have made room for the titles, and for a more dramatic punctuation of the Doctor's reveal of the Daleks. I hope that pre-credits scenes are restored across series 12. And on this showing, the return of the Daleks -- plural and non-DIY this time -- would also be most welcome in 2020.

Regardless of how series 11 is packaged on DVD/blu-ray, it's difficult not to view this as anything other than the true finale to Jodie Whittaker's first season. The DNA of Chris Chibnall's vision for the show is coded right through it: fantasy plus grounded social/political resonance plus emotional realism, all added to an ethic of teamwork and elective family rather than Time Lord (super-)heroics standing front-and-centre. Yes, at times this Doctor seems more reactive or passive than in the past, as well as less torn by internal demons, and less shadowed by back-story mysteries. It makes the Doctor far less of a focal point, freeing up narrative space and time for at least some of the "fam", and reconfiguring Who in a more inclusive and mentoring mode than arguably ever before. Chibnall's work hasn't just been about bringing in new writers' voices, featuring new locales, and emphasising a renewed sense of Doctor Who's capacities to speak back to power. He has also resolved to give the Doctor a radical new stripe of narrative agency too, one less omnipotent, less certain, and more energisingly hopeful. And that, for me, is a resolution worth championing.