It’s time for one final showdown with the Talent Scout as the Doctor works to make things right and return everyone to where they need to be.
Written by Al Ewing and Rob WilliamsCover by Boo Cook
Illustrated by Simon Fraser
Colored by Gary Caldwell
Lettered by Richard Starkings and Comicraft’s Jimmy BetancourtPART 1 OF THE 2-PART SEASON FINALE! Series co-writers Al Ewing and Rob Williams team up for an unmissable mini-epic, as a year’s worth of stories come to a head! Can the Doctor save his new friends from their time-twisting fates? Will Alice find peace – or be marooned far from Earth?! Will ARC finally discover the truth about itself – or be reduced to atoms?! Will Jones fulfill his cosmic rock god destiny – or die among the stars?! And who will be left to join the Doctor as we head into Year Two?!
Written by Al Ewing and Rob WilliamsCover by Alex Ronald
Illustrated by Simon Fraser
Colored by Gary Caldwell
Lettered by Richard Starkings and Comicraft’s Jimmy BetancourtIt’s the end… But the moment has been prepared for!
Peanut butter and jelly. Peas and carrots. Starsky and Hutch. Romeo and Juliet. You can’t imagine one without the other, just like you can’t imagine the Doctor without his TARDIS. And yet, that is the predicament the Doctor, Alice, and ARC end up in, all the way in 4th century room. The TARDIS has left, angry at the Doctor for . . . well, pretty much everything he’s done for the past 13 issues. Oh and by the way, Jones is also missing.
This is the Doctor at his lowest. More than any other companion, the love for Gallifreyian and vessel is an unshakable bond. It’s a marriage, a relationship that has lasted all through time and space. And he just does not know what to do with himself without it.
(Note that by the time these comics hit shelves, TV audiences saw that the TARDIS was indeed, a female courtesy of “The Doctor’s Wife.” You will recall that the continuity of these comic stories places just before the season where “The Doctor’s Wife” aired, so the Doctor would not have had the concept of the TARDIS having gender. In fact, the Doctor himself refers to the TARDIS as “it” in issue #14, reinforcing that idea. I will do the same here.)
When you struggle in your romantic relationships, you sometimes first turn to friends and family for perspective, to sort through a complicated jumble of thoughts and emotions, to gain clarity outside your own little world. And the Doctor’s village provides all of that: the ARC finds and links Jones, who was floating around in the entity after the events of the previous issue. ARC and Jones help locate the TARDIS and put the warring couple in the same room. But your village can’t fix your relationship for you. You have to do that yourself. And so, the heavy lifting to make things right, to take back his TARDIS and defeat that Talent Scout once and for all, is at the feet of the Doctor. Indeed, Alice does play the part of cheerleader and psychic link to the TARDIS. What mends the fences between the two is the Doctor’s clarity of self. He realizes his mistakes, the power the Talent Scout put over him. But he does not dwell on that. In order to heal, he must recognize he needed the help, move forward, with both his old and new family by his side.
What a deep and profound metaphor for one’s own mental health, or any moment in our lives where we need help that we cannot find from within.
The creative team that opened this series returns for the finale, completing the circle of this series in some ways that work effectively and some that do not. Ewing and Williams’s script do bring the events of the entire series around to a natural conclusion. The Talent Scout gets exactly what he wants, or perhaps deserves. (Alice may beg to differ, but the Doctor urges her on with the lesson he learned earlier: don’t dwell, move forward.) John Jones returns to 1960s London to kick off his music career, but now with knowledge of fantastical worlds seen and a healthy dose of self-confidence. The ARC remains bonded to the entity, both finding security and peace. And Alice herself finds some closure, seeing her mother as her young self, immersed in the music of the John Jones she will love until her dying day. Of all the writers in this first year, they by far the strongest – – not without their own weaknesses (see “The Eternal Dogfight” and “The Infinite Astronaut”), and working best when they work together.
Continued belowI predicted that artwork from Simon Fraser would improve with time back in issue #6, and I see those seeds of that improvement. It’s hard capturing a likeness accurately, and perhaps I have been too harsh on some of our other artists in their work in making comic Matt Smith look like the real Matt Smith. Like other artists on the series, he captures the Doctor in a certain tone well: in this case, the broken, grieving man, the sad, raggedy man. It is artwork to set mood and tone, and with that, I must not nitpick over details. In fact, as I look back over the previous 13 issues, there are many instances where the artwork’s primary goal was to set mood and convey a larger theme, rather than just move through the narrative. Like many an artist before him on these issues, Fraser also provides us with two very lovely full page (or two page) art spreads rich in color and detail that not only show off his skill, but further narrative, and even bringing in previous narrative in subtle but clever ways. They are not gratuitous art for the sake of showing off talent, while still remaining what we over at Saturday Morning Panels call AAAARRRRTTTTT. (Look closely in the first one and you’ll see a few Easter eggs of Doctors past.)
An ending is also a good time to reflect on the body of the series, and as such, I wanted to take a few moments to look back on some things that went right through this run, and some that went wrong:
- Right: Al Ewing and Rob Williams. These two create magic when they are together on a script, building layers upon layers of context, gathering ideas and concepts from across an entire series run together in a seamless, organic way. They give us villians that deserve moments on TV.
- Wrong: Al Ewing and Rob Williams. Nope, that’s not a typo. When these two were great, they were great. When they weren’t great, it showed. Attention to certain story arcs left others in the dust, such as the aforementioned “The Eternal Dogfight” and “The Impossible Astronaut.” Continuity gaps and syntax errors made what could have been an exciting story laborious to read.
- Right: The spread page. If there was one thing every single artist did right in these issues, it was to bring the full arsenal of tone, color, and detail to large spread pages, filling them with sci-fi cinematic joy.
- Wrong: The changing artist lineup. Familiarity can breed contempt, but consistency in look is always key to true and full enjoyment of a story. The current lineup of Who comics still changes artists like people change socks, but the different artist appear to consult more to ensure a uniform look throughout. (It’s been also helpful that the arcs now are longer, four issues instead of two, giving artists more room to hone technique and execute their vision.)
- Right: Alice Obiefune. Look up “character growth” in the dictionary and you’ll see Alice’s picture. She started at the bottom with the loss of her mother, loss of meaning in her own life. And now she’s here: a partner, a leader alongside the Doctor. She’s not afraid to challenge him, to call out when he is fallible. She is a voice of reason and a voice of strength. And I would be remiss in not pointing out the representation she brings to Doctor Who companions: a woman of color, and one that runs a bit older than the millennial nubile young thing often on television. Indeed, life does begin at 40.
- Wrong: John Jones. I understand that John Jones served as our chameleon, changing identities as often as people change underwear. Outside of that, he floundered the rest of the series in search of a purpose, only finding it in these last two issues. I found myself imagining several issues without him in it, and for the most part, his absence didn’t leave the script hanging.
You will recall I had grand plans to take on the entire 11th Doctor run this summer, all three “years” of his comic tenure The further I dove into these stories (thank you TARDIS wiki), particularly as I looked ahead to the second and third year, revealed that doing so would be more of a year-round project rather than the summer project our Summer Comics Binge sets out to be. I’m all for endless summer, mind you, but even in those places with perpetual warm weather, summer does end. So it’s time to pack up the TARDIS and the beach towels and shake the sand out of my shoes, and leave Alice and the Doctor off on adventures off the page and in imaginations for now.
I’ll be back next summer for the second year of Matt Smith’s adventures in the pages of Titan Comics. Thank you for taking this journey with me. And don’t forget to use your local library and make Alice happy.
