Written by Simon Furman, Mike Collins, Grant Morrison, John Freeman, Dan Abnett, Richard Alan, John Carnell, Alan Grant

Artwork by John Ridgeway, Kev Hopgood, Tim Perkins, Geoff Senior, Dave Hine, Bryan Hitch, John Higgins, Lee Sullivan, Dougie Braithwaite, Dave Elliott, Andy Lanning, Martin Griffiths, Cam Smith

Paperback: 180 pages
Publisher: Panini UK LTD

The first Seventh Doctor Volume, A Cold Day in Hell is, like all of Panini's Who collections, wonderfully put together and restored, but much of the stories in this volume didn't totally work for me. The first story tries to wrap up the Sixth Doctor comic era by having a finale adventure for companion "Frobisher," but just continuity wise it just feels out of place with the Seventh Doctor...too many references to "since Peri left" which just doesn't fit where the Seventh Doctor was from the moment he took over the part on TV. 

They should've just started fresh...time has passed, there is a new Doctor, and if you are going to say goodbye to Frobisher anyhow, why shoehorn him into the start of a new Doctor's run? It is an especially odd choice as Frobisher's exit lacks any real emotional impact.  If they wanted to say goodbye to the character, maybe they should have worked that into the end of "The World Shapers" which closed out the Sixth Doctor's run. Seems an odd choice, but this book is full of that. 

It seems at the time Marvel (who was still distributing Doctor who Magazine at the time) was desperate to drag Doctor Who into their big sweeping and ridiculous canon.  They used the Doctor Who strip as a weird in between for a character called "Death's Head," who appeared in some other comic and is shrunk down by the Doctor as an excuse to move him onto his own title by Marvel UK.  They also brought in two awful characters from another title called The Sleaze Brothers for a story so inept and awful. Admittedly, I am almost always anti-Crossover, but Doctor Who really does need to just live in it's own vast and strange universe. The stories that Marvel forced are also just plain bad.

The book also has so many artists, you'd think at least a few would manage to demonstrate an ability to capture Sylvester McCoy's likeness.  But very few actually did, which is odd.  The actor has, in my view, a fairly distinctive face, you'd think artists would find his features easy to capture or even caricature after the more non-descript faces of Peter Davison and Colin Baker.  But for most of this collection you only know it is the Doctor because he's the guy wearing the hat. 

It isn't all bad, "Claws of the Klathi!" is a decent atmospheric tale with good art and a better than the usual capturing of the Seventh Doctor's look.  I rather liked "Keepsake" and "Echoes of the Mogor!" and I did like the running gag in which the Doctor is always landing and immediately realizing he has not yet found his friend's birthday party, which he is apparently on his way towards. 

I think the biggest issue is that collected in this volume is a total hodge podge of writers, artists, and stories.  There is no clear voice (as Steve Parkhouse was throughout all of the Fifth Doctor's run and the early days of the Sixth Doctor), and no clear visual style (as the Sixth Doctor's entire run had in John Ridgeway).  That lack of any artistic vision, along with a company bullying them into working in their own characters that don't really fit...and what you get is a bunch of one offs and only a few stories that actually dig in for more than one issue.  Ultimately this is a collection for Collectors and Completists only, otherwise, I think it is rather easy to skip. 

Producer & Script Editor: Ian Atkins,
Executive Producers Jason Haigh-Ellery and Nicholas Briggs

Written By: Anthony Keetch, Directed By: Lisa Bowerman

Cast Peter Purves (Narrator)

"His old body is wearing a bit thin......It happens to us all."

How very apt that Big Finish should give us a festive Short Trips, featuring the first Doctor (the original you might say!) ahead of this  Christmas day television outing?

The story opens with the TARDIS materialising into what seems like an idealised Christmas scene. As Steven and the Doctor step out, they see that there's snow all around, along with a forest of pine trees and, just off in the distance, a cosy looking cottage. However (as always) everything s not quite as it seems, because in the  cottage the pair find a young girl, Greta, and her Grandfather, Herman, cowering from an unlikely alien threat outside.

The story is a joy to listen to, and this is a lot down to Peter Purves narration, which starts off warm and gentle, but slowly leaves the listener feeling somewhat claustrophobic and quite tense. His impersonation of the first Doctor is almost perfect. Between Antony Keetch's writing talent, and Purves vocal skills we find ourselves suddenly in the company of William Hartnell, which is a lovely Christmas present in itself.

O Tannenbaum is essentially a tightly written, base under siege story, with a taste of first contact thrown in for good measure. What is a nice surprise though, is, as was the original intention of Doctor Who, the story also manages to sneak in some historical facts for the listeners to ponder over.

The words O Tannenbaum, of course is German for O Christmas Tree, and this short story will ensure that you keep you keep that real tree you have in the living room well watered and alive for as long as possible - otherwise, you never know it's loved ones might just come looking for it - and you!

As Steven Taylor / Peter Purves rounds off this story with a cheeky  "A very merry Christmas to all of you at home." you will walk away from this festive little treat with a lovely, warm feeling.

Merry Christmas!

Written by Alan McKenzie, Simon Furman, Jamie Delano, Mike Collins, Grant Morrison
Artwork by John Ridgeway
Paperback: 186 pages
Publisher: Panini UK LTD!

The World Shapers sees out the end of the Sixth Doctor's tenure as the star of the strip.  The earliest stories are pretty good, but as the book goes on the strip seems to lose a bit of the focus that made the Doctor Who Magazine version of the strip such a joy from its debut up until this point.  I think it is "Salad Daze" which was the moment I was starting to lose interest in this book.  It is still fairly good up to there, which is about the halfway point...then it slowly devolves into mediocre to downright bad. 

For my money, the worst story in the collection is, unfortunately, the story that ended the Sixth Doctor's entire run in the strip, and the story from which the entire collection takes its name.  "The World Shapers" is exactly the kind of story I get bored by.  Instead of thinking of an interesting story or theme, the entire strip relies on continuity to seem interesting.  It's Jamie! The Voord! Marinus! Cybermen! The Voord are Cybermen? It's mixing together two monsters and claiming them as one, hoping that that twist is enough to hold up the whole story. It doesn't. I know Grant Morrsion went on to great success, but his work here is lame.  

While still a decent read with some great artwork and solid stories, I personally found the second volume of the Sixth Doctor comic strip run to be a bit more of a slog. I don’t really know why, but I think after the great run of stories featured in Voyager, it was hard to keep the momentum going. And the titular “World Shapers” was far too interested in delving into obscure continuities that it ended up souring the book for me. Not a bad collection of stories (for its first half anyhow), but it just can’t hold a candle to the first Sixth Doctor set, or even the Fourth and Fifth Doctor run. 

Written by Steve Parkhouse, Alan McKenzie
Artwork by John Ridgeway
Paperback: 172 pages
Publisher: Panini UK LTD

During his tenure, The Sixth Doctor struggled to connect on the television screen. But at the same time he was sort of bombing over the airwaves, on the pages of Doctor Who Magazine he was charming and fun to read. In many ways, he was still that same Doctor that Baker was playing on TV, but more palatable, and the fact that the art is black and white makes the coat easier on the eyes. I would say that for anyone that has ever listened to Baker's lovely Big Finish audios, the Doctor of the Comic Strip was much closer to that interpretation than the brasher TV counterpart.

The introduction of companion Frobisher, the shapeshifter who wishes to be a penguin, may seem like an oddball choice...but in the zany world of comics it just kind of works. The collection opens with his introductory tale, which also sort of wraps up the loose thread from the Fifth Doctor's tenure, by giving a bit of closure to the Dogbolter story.  

The book then goes into the "Voyager" storyline, which I personally find to be one of the finest comic story runs in all of Doctor Who Magazine. It just has beautiful artwork, a weird and ethereal plot, and in many ways surpasses much of what the TV show was doing at the same time. This entire plotline was also colorized and released in the 80s as a graphic novel, also titled Voyager.  The final story in the "Voyager" plot is also the final story by Steve Parkhouse, who had been with the strip since the Fourth Doctor. 

Unlike the 80s graphic novel of the same name, Panini's book continues on with the rest of the stories that came out in 1985, the rest of the book being written by Alan McKenzie. While the Parkhouse half of the book is definitely the stronger half, McKenzie's stories are still pretty solid, and still flowed as a series up through the final story of the book. 

The running storyline in the first half of this collection is great, and even the lesser second half of the book is quite entertaining. With the gorgeous black and white artwork by John Ridgeway and wonderfully weird adventures, it is a highly recommended read for fans who want to see just how good the ongoing Doctor Who strip can be.

Writers: John Barrowman, Carole Barrowman 

Artist: Neil Edwards

Publisher: Titan Comics 

FC - 32pp
On sale: December 20, 2017 

In this third issue of the Culling miniseries, Jack, Gwen, Shelley, and the Pilot, crashland in a cabin surrounded by dying Earth - courtesy of Sladen, who happens to kill whatever she touches. Unable to go outside without being instantly aged, the Torchwood team divides their time between formulating a plan and observing the possible benefits of having sex to keep warm. The banter is of the dull and obvious variety Torchwood, the television series, was always best at. If there were a cheeky charm to characters within Doctor Who having blunt discussions about sex, it wore off a long time ago.

 The centerpiece of the issue is Captain Jack testing his regenerative abilities by stepping into the dying path left behind by Sladen. He is instantly aged while simultaneously being connected with the Vervoids tool of destruction somehow.

This alerts Sladen not only to Torchwood’s survival of the crash but also her relation to Captain Jack. In a classic Torchwood scene of unwarranted emotion erupting from a character we hardly know, Sladen vows to kill Jack and Docilis. This promises an epic, but empty, confrontation to come.

The Culling is a big story with a small scope stretched across too many issues. Instead of taking advantage of the format to burrow into these characters, finding out how all of this is affecting them, what failure would mean to them personally, why they will push so hard to succeed, the focus is on humor that doesn’t land and spectacle that fails to propel the story forward.

Torchwood #3 knows its audience. The television series had a specific if uneven, voice that never wavered. That voice has carried over to the limited comic book series seamlessly. For a fan, it must feel like diving right back into this unique corner of the Doctor Who universe. To non-fans, it most likely feels like more of the same.

Written by Steve Parkhouse, Dez Skinn
Artwork by Dave Gibbons, Mick Austin, Steve Dillon, & Paul Neary
Paperback: 228 pages
Publisher: Panini UK LTD

The Fifth Doctor’s entire run of Doctor Who Magazine not only fits nicely into this one volume (titled The Tides of Time), but it also genuinely feels closer to a graphic novel. It features some great stories, from the tremendous opening number that is the titular "The Tides of Time" through the Stockbridge stories and into the adventures with Gus that close out the book. Steve Parkhouse had taken over the writing duties of the strip in the latter days of the Fourth Doctor's run, and he ended up being the sole writer during the Fifth Doctor's era and continued on through the first half of the Sixth Doctor's time on the strip. Having that singular voice for the strip certainly gave it something, and it did a lot to build up the internal continuity of the strip itself.

The stories collected in this volume introduced some recurring characters like Maxwell Edison, Shayde, and Josiah W. Dogbolter, and really found a way to mix big sweeping epic storylines (like the opening story) and smaller stuff with a bit of heart to them (like "Stars Fell on Stockbridge" which is possibly my favorite story of the volume). It's a good mix of Doctor Who stories, the kind that feel like they could genuinely take place in the universe the series takes place in, even if the Fifth Doctor seemed like he never had a moment to be away from his TV companions...I am willing to go with it and say, sure he managed to have a period away from Tegan or Nyssa or Turlough or Peri, and had a whole set of adventures before returning to pick them up and carry on with his TV adventuring.

Overall, I really enjoy this volume. Parkhouse had a vision for what the strip should be, and that vision took off once the Fifth Doctor took over, and he would reach the peak and end of his tenure during the Sixth Doctor's run. As per usual Panini did a fine job remastering these old black and white comics, and this collection is well worth a look from any fan of the comic strip, as I personally think it is one of the best.