[Real life - in the form of exams - has got in the way of May and
Isaac's reviewing, so rather than leave this without an update for a
week or two I'm going to carry on with my own reviews. Don't worry, I'm
sure I'll get back to theirs before we hit Galaxy Four!]
It's quite hard to judge this story on its own, because it is very
deliberately set up as one half of a mirrored pair. The 1994 DWM Summer
Special focused on the beginning and end of the (classic) TV series, and
is divided into two parts. Read one way it is about William Hartnell's
era, mostly his first serial and first season; read the other it is
about Sylvester McCoy's, particularly Survival. Interestingly,
the two comics were from elsewhere in their timelines: the seventh
Doctor travelling with Benny Summerfield post Love and War, and the first Doctor with Vicki and Steven.
Beyond that, placement of this part is necessarily somewhat arbitrary
since there is no dialogue to pinpoint it. However, the artwork gives us
one big clue: Steven is drawn tense, alert in every panel and always
examining things. This strikes me as how he started his journey, so I am
inclined to place it early. Placing it straight after The Time Meddler has the added advantage of separating two historicals with an SF story, always a bonus.
I mentioned the dialogue, and the key here is that there is none. Not
one line. This is written entirely from the perspective of Xenith, a
city/computer intelligence that doesn't understand what the travellers
are saying, and whose attempts to communicate do not meet with success.
It reminded me somewhat of Planet Story, a rather excellent issue
of Marvel Premiere featuring Starlord, which used the same idea -
though in that case the two halves showed the same events from two
different perspectives, whereas here the seventh Doctor story is a
sequel to the first Doctor's.
This conceit puts a lot of pressure on the art and on Xenith's internal
monologue. Fortunately both are up to the task. Writer Warwick Gray has a
nice, consistent turn of phrase which tells us just what we need to
know. There is one stumble, when Xenith worries that "They've arrived and I'm just sitting here like some stupid abacus!",
an odd thought that doesn't quite fit the rest of the text; but this is
balanced out by the rather wonderful description of the TARDIS as "a
form of alter-sentient intelligence, dressed in delicate energy
spirals."
I've been generally quite harsh when talking about the artwork of the
comics in this marathon, but Colin Andrew's here is the best so far. A
few of his shots of the main characters seem too stiffly posed; but
Vicki and the Doctor are always recognisable, and while that's not quite
true of Steven he never looks wrong, just generic. That's an
impressive feat in itself, but it's not the artwork's most important
asset, which lies in the variety and the dynamism of the layout. No
pages are completely restricted to rectangular panels - the first comes
closest, but the TARDIS breaks out in the panel with the description
quoted above - and camera placement and lighting are creatively handled.
Long shots, closeups, low and high angles, tilted shots, a panel where
the main point of interest sits behind an extreme closeup of Vicki's
profile, views from behind and in front of the characters, half-shadowed
figures... it's an impressive roster, which meant that the time spent
reading this flew by.
In fact, the short runtime is the only thing stopping me giving this a
9/10: four pages is just a little too short to get the most out of the
concept. Still, when my biggest complaint about something is that I
wanted more, you know you're onto something good. And if my marathon
ever reaches the Virgin years, you'll find out if the second part of the
story lives up to the same high standards...
Published:
Date: July 1994
Rating:
8.5/10.
Next Time:
An Unearthing.
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