Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor #14 - A Review

With Clara Oswald and a fireman named Sam (go ahead and joke - he's used to it) in tow, The Doctor readies an assault on the alien Hyperions. Their mission: to stop the living fire-beings from completing the construction of an energy cage that will kill Earth's sun! But even with the unexpected aid of a Hyperion fusion angel The Doctor freed from slavery, the task will not be an easy one...


Robbie Morrison's scripts for this series are as rich and captivating as any episode of the Doctor Who program. The supporting characters created for this story are wonderful and one wishes we could see more of Sam The Fireman (who cleverly intuits that some previously unnamed part of the TARDIS interior is a fire extinguisher) in future stories. There's a lot of clever nods and references to other works of science-fiction as well, with The Doctor providing Clara and Sam with jumpsuits made of unstable molecules and The Doctor making reference to an Ice-9 reactor. And the subplot involving the freed fusion angel - who has the memories of an astronaut who was one of the Hyperion's first victims - proves truly heartbreaking.


Unfortunately, the artwork by Ronilson Friere fails to live up to the quality of Morrison's script. There's very little sense of consistency from panel to panel and Friere only manages to successfully caricature The Doctor and Clara half the time, if that. And his take on Kate Lethbridge-Stewart bears no resemblance at all to her actress on the show. The line-work in general is also far too busy.