WHO REVIEW: 60th Anniversary Special 1 - "The Star Beast"

After thirteen months, Doctor Who is back on our screens, and after almost fourteen years, Russell T. Davies has delivered a Doctor Who episode starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate. It's an odd way to launch a new era of the programme, one intended to bring in a whole new audience through the BBC and Bad Wolf's deal with Disney, by leaning so heavily on the programme's past. Yet it's also a canny move, calling back to one of Doctor Who's most popular periods, drawing back older viewers who have drifted away during the interim.

Since his final episode as the lead, The End of Time – Part Two on New Year's Day 2010, Tennant has returned before, opposite his successor Matt Smith for the fiftieth anniversary special The Day of the Doctor. That was quite a different thing though; a Doctor returning as a guest alongside the current star is a favourite way to celebrate a milestone. Ten years on, this is something new: a former lead stepping back in to star in the show once again, with the Doctor regenerating back into an old form.

It's a backward-looking step for the normally forward-moving series, and one that has previously been dismissed. (Many people called for perennial favourite Tom Baker to return to the role to revamp the series in years past, and the programme's original creator Sydney Newman even pushed for Patrick Troughton to make a one-season comeback when consulted on the series' future in the 1980s.) It's something they can only really get away with on this one occasion, for a short run marking the sixtieth anniversary.

Fortunately, Davies is too canny a writer to simply wring this for nostalgia without constructing an absorbing storyline to justify it. The Star Beast is an exciting, funny, and moving tale in itself, but also the beginning of a short arc that explores the mystery surrounding the return of the Doctor's old face and his fated reunion with Donna Noble.

Tennant, still a popular and familiar face on our screens thanks to hits such as Good Omens, Around the World in 80 Days and Staged, strides back in and takes over as the Doctor as if he'd never been away. Based on this first episode, the new Fourteenth Doctor is little different to the Tenth, displaying the same quirks and style, save for his sudden emotional honesty. He even openly admits to loving several people, something that had been anathema to him in his earlier life. Otherwise, there's little to set the two incarnations apart so far, although we have another two specials to further explore the character.

Just as impressive is Catherine Tate as Donna, always the most real and believable of the Doctor's companions, now older and happier, but always trying to shake off a sense of profound loss. Tate's performance is moving and hilarious by turns, reminding us just how far her character has come since her first appearance in the 2006 Christmas special The Runaway Bride. Her original exit, in the otherwise overblown fourth season finale Journey's End in 2008, was heartbreaking. Naturally, it can't be expected that the audience will be familiar with or remember the story, which saw Donna become, briefly, part-Time Lord, absorbing some of the Doctor's personality and knowledge. With this threatening to burn out her mind, the Doctor was forced to wipe her memory of him, erasing everything she had learned and experienced over her travels. The episode recaps this, first rather clumsily in an in-character introduction by Tennant and Tate, and later more naturally through the story itself.

The End of Time had rather unsatisfyingly skirted the issue when it included Donna in its story. The Star Beast faces it head on, with the threat that Donna will join the dots and match up this strange man and the extraterrestrial goings-on with her suppressed memories never far away. Her death as her mind gives out seems inevitable towards the episode's climax, even though we know she's going to be in the next two. It's a testament to the writing and performances that this is sold so well.

Donna's family return as well, with the wonderful Jacqueline King (55 Degrees North, Adult Material) as Donna's mother Sylvia, and Karl Collins (The Bill, Hollyoaks) as her husband Shaun Temple, finally getting some actual character after his brief appearance in The End of Time. Most important, though, is the introduction of a new member of the family, fifteen-year-old Rose Noble, played by twenty-year-old up-and-comer Yasmin Finney (Heartstopper). Finney gives a warm, likeable and sympathetic performance as Rose, who is, unknowingly, named after the Doctor's earlier companion Rose Tyler (Billie Piper). Both Finney and Rose are transgender, and this is a major focus of the story. It would be enough for the programme to feature a trans character and explore her experiences as an end in itself. In this case, though, Davies has crafted a story where Rose's gender identity is crucial to the resolution of the plot. It culminates in one of the most unsubtle yet powerfully affirming moments in the series' history. After Chris Chibnall's controversial era as showrunner, there were really fans who thought that Davies would tone down the “wokeness” of the series. As if Davies would ever knowingly make something less woke.

The same people who have a problem with a prominent trans character in their favourite show will likely have similar issues with the new character Shirley Ann Bingham, played by Ruth Madeley (Years and Years, The Watch, Then Barbara Met Alan). A wheelchair user, Shirley is one of the most competent and cool characters in the episode, being the heavily-armed new UNIT scientific advisor. (The Doctor claims to have been the first such advisor. I think Liz Shaw may have something to say about that.)

Perhaps the most surprising move on Davies's part is his decision to adapt a 1980 comic strip story into the opening special. Doctor Who and the Star Beast, by Pat Mills and Dave Gibbons, ran over several issues of Doctor Who Weekly (the predecessor to today's Doctor Who Magazine). A beloved story for fans, the strip forms the basis for the new episode, albeit with some quite significant changes, not least the new central characters. The eponymous Star Beast is the Meep, a cute, cuddly and seemingly harmless creature from the stars, here voiced with some brilliance by Miriam Margolyes (Blackadder, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, Monkey). It's surely no spoiler to reveal that the Meep is more sinister than it first appears, and Margolyes gives a fabulously entertaining performance. The visual and practical effects that bring the Meep to the screen are some of the best ever seen on the programme (the Disney-backed increased budget is readily apparent throughout), and its enemies, the insectoid Wrarth Warriors, could have stepped straight from the pages of that original comic. Still, the sheer weirdness of seeing Beep the Meep as a primetime drama villain is hard to get over.

The plot is fairly slim, and Davies does occasionally fall victim to some of his perennial dialogue issues, with some unnatural exposition and a reliance on meaningless technobabble to stand for intelligence. It is, however, thoroughly entertaining, coming to a climactic resolution that not only relies on Rose's identity and involvement, but also satisfyingly resolves Donna's story, which is no mean feat. Two further specials will explore the Doctor's mysterious return to his old appearance, leading into the introduction of the eagerly anticipated Fifteenth Doctor, played by Ncuti Gatwa.

Links and References: They abound. Lovely to see young Fudge, a main character in the original strip. The Doctor refers to resonating concrete, a brief obsession he held in The Doctor Dances. The barrister's wig he keeps in his pocket must be a nod to the similar scene in the Tom Baker serial The Stones of Blood.

Placement: It seems to be very soon after the Doctor's regeneration in The Power of the Doctor, allowing for, if you include them, the DWM comic story Liberation of the Daleks and the Children in Need skit Desination: Skaro, both of which apparently took place across just over an hour.

This isn't the first time Doctor Who and the Star Beast has been adapted to another medium. The 2019 Big Finish audio version was a pretty straight adaptation which sat nicely with the original. Where this episode leaves those versions, and the various other appearances of Beep the Meep in comics and audios, is a mystery.

And one more thing: Davies really missed a trick by not keeping the Thirteenth Doctor's TARDIS interior for this episode, and have it regenerate into the new one after Donna destroyed it with her unlucky spillage.

WHO REVIEW: Time Lord Victorious comics

The massive, multimedia crossover event Time Lord Victorious is already a bit of an overstretch for most of us fans. I'm torn between the excitement and intrigue of such an expansive storyline, and the money-grabbing enormity of it all. I never like the huge crossover events that Marvel an DC periodically do, where you have to buy three dozen comics to understand what's going on and it costs you a fortune. On the other hand, this is new ground for Doctor Who and it is my number one fandom, so the excitement is there. So I'm going to pick and choose and and where I can.

Some people are questioning why they're focusing on the Tenth Doctor and an event from his era of the series, and apart from the obvious popularity of the incarnation, there's the fact that the BBC can't make it appear, intentionally or otherwise, that any purchase is necessary to follow one of their broadcasts. So tying into the current series with the Thirteenth Doctor is a no-go. Even then, she's not entirely absent from the proceedings.

 DEFENDER OF THE DALEKS (Titan Comics: Time Lord Victorious)

The first of two comic strips opening the event is this, Titan's latest miniseries, released as two monthly issues. In it, the Tenth Doctor is pulled into a divergent timestream whereupon he is forced to aid the Daleks in their fight against a terrible power from the dawn of time. 

This is Jody Houser's story, following on from her work on the Thirteenth Doctor comics, where last we saw the Tenth Doctor involved in his own future (but I've not read that one yet). It's well-written enough, but for all the shouting about it, it's not all that much of an event. The Doctor reluctantly teaming up with the Daleks has been done before, and better, although at least the Dalek Prime Strategist, a new character, adds an air of sophistication. The Golden Emperor appears as well, harking back to the early "Dalek Chronicles" days of the tie-in comics. He's had a bit of an updated design but he's still iconic, and this sets up the Daleks! animated series nicely.

My main problem is the villains, the Hond. Although there's an interesting concept behind them - the sort of metaphysical idea that used to show up in the New Adventures days - design-wise they're just mud monsters, and that's really not all that interesting. Also, while I understand this crossover is designed to be expansive, we're already expecting another terrible threat from the Dark Times, the Kotturuh to threaten the universe. Do we need to introduce another? Still, there is a similarity with the Ancestor Cell, from the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel lie, which suggests the Hond as another potential identity of the Enemy. With Faction Paradox suddenly being mentioned in other prose stories lately, this might not be entirely trivial. 

Altogether, the adventure is fine, but underwhelming. Nice artwork by Roberta Ingranata.

MONSTROUS BEAUTY (DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE #556-558)

Doctor Who Magazine jumps in on Time Lord Victorious with a three-part comic story featuring the Ninth Doctor. DWM has skipped the comic strip for a few months to save money - the impact of COVID on sales - and makes an event out of bringing it back. We haven't had a past Doctor comic in DWM since the nineties, I believe, and while it's back to business with the Thirteenth Doctor next month, this does make it rather stand out. Like Defender of the Daleks, this features a threat from the Dark Times, but this is something we know and expect. Nine and Rose find themselves back at the dawn of time in the middle of the Eternal Wars, when the Time Lords fought the Vampires. 

It's a clever way of having the Ninth Doctor meet the Time Lords - although according to this, it's so early in their history that it's before they were time travellers. They're the Space Lords of Gallifrey, led by an angry female general who we learn is an early incarnation of Rassilon. It seems that every Time Lord must have a new regeneration with a different ethnicity or gender these days - and I'm all for it. Better than all those endless old white blokes in big hats.

I'd had an idea to write about a Vampire ship years, ago, and never used it, but in my mind it was something organic and far more like a perverted form of TARDIS. I love what Scott Gray and John Ross have done though - flying castles and crypts! The vampires themselves are disappointingly traditional, with only a brief appearance of a Great Vampire storming through the black, but it works pretty well. I particularly like the use of Cucurbites - blood-drinking space weapons - that first appeared back in the Eighth Doctor comic "Tooth and Claw." (The story also reference the episode "Tooth and Claw," just to mix things up.)

It's a pretty solid adventure with some vampire tropes being exercised, but it's the glimpse of the ancient Gallifreyans that's the most interesting. 

WHO REVIEW: DWM comics 2018

THE PHANTOM PIPER (DWM 519-523) SCOTT GRAY, MARTIN GERAGHTY, DAVID ROACH

THE CLOCKWISE WAR (DWM 524-530) SCOTT GRAY, JOHN ROSS

THE WARMONGER (DWM 531--534) SCOTT GRAY, JOHN ROSS

2018 has been a pretty good year for Doctor Who in comics, with Titan printing ongoing and limited series for the seventh, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth Doctors. I dip in and out of the Titan releases, usually with the UK-published editions – these are a few months behind the American releases, but not as much as most such repubs, and are far, far better value for money. I might come back to the Titans later, but for now I'm going to take a look at the other major Doctor Who comics publisher, Panini.

With the ongoing comic strip in Doctor Who Magazine, Panini is continuing a series that has run virtually uninterrupted since 1979, beginning with the fourth Doctor strips in Marvel's Doctor Who Weekly right up to the thirteenth Doctor stories in this week's DWM. The magazine is the sole publication that I still subscribe to, and I've been reading the comic strip devotedly every month since the high and heady days of the eighth Doctor strips.

2018 started in the shadow of the twelfth Doctor's regeneration, in the strange hinterland between Doctors. It's a strange period when the Doctor in the strip isn't really the current Doctor anymore – we'd already seen Capaldi turn into Whittaker on Christmas Day – but it's too early to show the new Doctor having adventures. And it was a long stretch this time, with a particularly late start for the new series.

The first strip of the year, The Phantom Piper, actually started in November 2017, and continued story elements that started in the eleventh Doctor era, right back in The Child of Time story arc in 2011. I love this aspect of the DWM strips, carrying forward stories and characters for years, revisiting old settings and old friends and enemies. It makes the strip feel like one, long story, in spite of the dozens of editors and writers, hundreds of individual adventures, and all the different Doctors it's featured. The Phantom Piper sees the twelfth Doctor and Bill searching for an explanation of a strange glyph that has appeared on the shell of the TARDIS. The Doctor elects to ask his friend Alan Turing, which leads Bill to change into WWII period clothes, only to step out onto the surface of the Moon.

The Doctor has taken her to Athenia, a far future colony where human and AI beings called Galateans live together. Here, a robotic recreation of Alan Turing continues to live and work, free to be who he wants to be. However, there's conflict brewing between the humans and Galateans, with the old problems of two groups of people blaming each other for their problems because they don't like those who are different. Into this steps the Phantom Piper – the very same psychopomp feared by Jamie McCrimmon – the King of the Dreamspace. A demonic and brilliantly realised monster, the Piper foments and lives off warfare, and uses the Child of Time Chiyoko to bring himself and an army of phantoms to life. The symbol on the TARDIS is the final part of the code, and the Piper has manipulated the Doctor into bringing it to Athenia so that he can achieve physical existence.

It's a gripping story, with plenty of action and heady sci-fi concepts, but also examines themes of identity, difference, conflict and responsibility, with both Turing and Chiyoko forced to look at themselves but ultimately coming to accept their strange natures. There are a lot of characters for an action-based strip, many of whom are returning characters from years ago, and I do think it's a better story for long-term readers, though, who are particularly rewarded for their commitment when former companion Fey Truscott-Sade suddenly appears at the end (thoroughly rattling the Doctor).

Fey was an on-again, off-again companion of the eighth Doctor during the late 90s/early 00s run of the DWM comic, to my mind one of the greatest periods of Doctor Who in any medium. An unstoppable secret agent who provided the skills and muscle when the Doctor needed them, she was last seen exploring the universe bonded to the Gallifreyan AI Shayde, whose first appearance in the strip was alongside the fifth Doctor in the 1980s. So, yeah, I can see why this might be utterly baffling for newcomers. Still, I managed to pick up a lot of this without in-depth explanation when I started getting the magazine halfway through a strip story, and the stories, when well-told, are easy enough to to get to grips with even with limited background.

The next story, The Clockwise War, manages to be perfectly rewarding for devoted followers of both the modern TV series and the DWM comics, bringing the Time war crashing into the middle of the ongoing narrative. Much like the eleventh Doctor series from Titan, The Clockwise War heavily features flashbacks to the Time War, in this instance featuring a younger War Doctor, before his hair greyed and still idealistic enough to still go by the name the Doctor. This doesn't quite mesh with what we saw onscreen, but that was vague enough that it still works, and this tale of a catastrophic lapse in judgment by the Doctor on the frontline gives a much stronger reason for him abandoning the title. It also makes perfect sense that the Doctor would recruit soldiers from his travels to help fight in the War, and bringing in Fey – already part-Gallifreyan thanks to her link with Shayde – works.

It's devastating to have this character back only to have her back as an enemy, twisted by her experiences in the War and what she sees as her betrayal by the Doctor into opposing him at every turn. The events of The Phantom Piper and its preceding stories are revealed to be part of her overarching plans to defeat the Doctor and reignite the Time War to her own design. It's one of those massively overcomplicated plots that Doctor Who does so well, running for a whopping seven instalments across time and space. The confrontation between the twelfth Doctor and Fey is gripping, but the most powerful elements are the flashes back to the War, with a real look at the nightmarish possibilities of a war utilising space, time and reality as weapons. It even creates a new villain spawned by the War, the Absence, who manifests as a very Thanos-like humanoid, but is a blindside for the real cause. It's one of the best stories the strip has run in years; a real epic but with personal stakes and drives for the Doctor and his friends. Huge plus points, as well, for featuring the Time Lord General and giving her the name “Kenossium.”

The Clockwise War is a suitably grand finale for the twelfth Doctor in the DWM comic, providing him with an emotional farewell while also drawing a line under the Moffat era of the TV series. October saw the beginning of the first strip to feature the thirteenth Doctor with The Warmonger, which finished this month. A mere three stories in one year, but that's what happens when you run long tales like this. The Warmonger is good fun, but presents a less sophisticated story than the preceding two. Then again, a new Doctor brings a new set of fans and potentially new readers, so leading with a pretty straightforward story is not bad thing.

The Warmonger sees the thirteenth Doctor and her crew arrive on Gatan, a ruined planet where two indestructible aliens have spent the last few years battling it out, seemingly oblivious to the destruction they have left in their wake. Not only that, but the endless fight is being televised, by none other than Berakka Dogbolter – the daughter of the recurring villain Josiah Dogbolter first introduced in the 80s strips. Is it a good idea introducing a new Doctor with what is, essentially, an old villain (albeit reworked with a new gender, rather like the Doctor herself)? I think it works, since once again, everything is sufficiently explained, and the sketched-in backstory for Berakka doesn't matter a jot if you've not read the strip before. It's just another bit of background colour for the Doctor and her universe. For a long-term fan of the comics, though, it cements this as yet another instalment in this ever-running comic. Even with another sudden shift to a new Doctor and new companions, this feels like it's part of the same story as The Clockwise War, The Flood, The Moderator and The Iron Legion.

The story here is a simple tale speaking out against exploitation, rampant capitalism and unending warfare. All things that we should be against, but sometimes there's no need for subtlety. This is a story that improves as it goes along, and it makes better use of the companions than a lot of the TV episodes of the recent series: Yaz is utilised well, paired off with a native character that allows her to take charge of a plot thread, while Graham and Ryan work really well as a pairing on their own thread. Plus Ryan dons a robotic suit of armour to save the Doctor and immediately falls over, which is the sort of dyspraxic behaviour we'd actually expect from him. It even gives the Doctor an opportunity to use pacifist ideals against the villains, and actually come up with a workable, non-violent solution to the threat, something the TV series hasn't really managed so far. It's a pretty decent first story for the thirteenth Doctor and a good start for 2019.