Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor #5 - A Review

The Doctor and his latest companions - an amazon and an astronaut - have retrieved the last of the Swords of Kali. But that won't be enough to save Clara Oswald's life. For the sinister Scindia family still aim to revive their "goddess" Kali - a fourth-dimensional being whose power makes quibbling over her actual divinity a moot point. And they mean for Clara Oswald to be their goddess' new host body!


The word "epic" is used far too frequently in my estimation. Even I am inclined to overusing it. But the tale Robbie Morrison tells here is epic in both definitions of the word. It is a tale that proves both epic in scope and it is an epic in form.


Alas, the artwork by Dave Taylor isn't quite as good. Taylor presents some amazing images - such as the reveal of Clara/Kali - but most of the issue's artwork is mediocre, at best.  It's not enough to detract from Morrison's story but many of the proportions are odd and Taylor's pencils get sloppy past the middle distance.

Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor #4 - A Review

Freed from a localized time warp, The Doctor seems to have lost one companion but gained two more.  Accompanied by Rani Jhulka (an Indian warrior from 1825) and Priyanka Maratha (an Indian astronaut from 2315), The Doctor uncovers a plot stretching back to a long-dead race of fourth-dimensional beings who once played at being gods on Earth. And in order to save Clara Oswald, The Doctor will have to help the sinister Scindia family recover one of the Swords of Kali - an artifact that could cut the very fabric of space and time!


Robbie Morrison writes one HELL of a Doctor Who story. His supporting characters have well-developed motivations and fleshed-out histories. His villains for this piece - The Kaliratha and The Scindia Family - are one of the more interesting concepts in the series' history. And the whole affair is reminiscent of the classic Fourth Doctor story Pyramids of Mars which utilized Egyptian mythology in the same way that Morrison makes use of Indian legends. There's also a fair bit of witty dialogue through the book that sounds just like Peter Capaldi's snarky Doctor.


Unfortunately, I can't praise the artwork for this issue quite so heavily. The general look is inconsistent - a problem that can probably be credited to the fact that two separate artists worked on this issue. A larger problem is that this inconsistency frequently results in Chandra Scindia - the patriarch of the Scinidia family - being rendered in a manner that can only be described as an Arabic stereotype, which is doubly strange since the character is mean to be an Indian!

Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor #3 - A Review

It's an odd thing, but Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor #3 doesn't really feel like a Twelfth Doctor story. The script by Robbie Morrison seems like a lost relic of the Classic Series of Doctor Who, with the Peter Capaldi Doctor seeming at times more like an odd combination of Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker than his usual sarcastic self. But somehow, I don't think Whovian purists will mind too much for one simple reason - not a single Series 8 story was as much fun as this comic.


The action begins with The Doctor and Clara being interrupted in the midst of a portrait painting (Apparently Clara inspired the Mona Lisa, but the only part Da Vinci got right was her smug smile). A phone call from an old friend of The Fourth Doctor in 23rd century India sends our heroes forward in time to where they arrive just too late to stop an apparent murder. From there, we're treated to a goodly amount of plot about alien conquerors, Hindu deities, mistaken identities, mysterious thefts and a room that exists in multiple times at once. And The Doctor drops a lot of names of famous people he once knew.


If Robbie Morrison is channeling the spirit of Robert Holmes with his writing, then Dave Taylor is emulating the artwork of another famous Dave - Dave Gibbons. While not quite a physical replication of Gibbons' work, Taylor's pacing and choreography is reminiscent of the Doctor Who comics of olde.  The whole affair is marvelous to look at!

Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor #2 - A Review

The Doctor and Clara's trip to the ice planet of Isen VII has unearthed a lot more than the wedding of the 25th century!  A  distress signal triggered by the terraformers that changed the planet into a lush jungle paradise has revealed the resting place of a Hyperion - one of the last of a race of sentient suns so evil and dangerous that The Time Lords of old broke their usual rules on non-interference to try and put an end to their species for all time!  And now it will fall to The Doctor to finish the job...



Robbie Morrison's script perfectly captures the mad science of a typical Doctor Who story.  More importantly, Morrison has a good feeling for the speech patterns of The Doctor as played by Peter Capaldi and the voice of Clara Oswald.  There is a good deal of snark and sarcasm in the script along with one of the most Doctorish Doctor lines ever - "I like to think of myself as a pacifist but sometimes peace is the thing you have to fight the hardest for."

The artwork by Dave Taylor is decent enough.  Curiously, it seems rushed compared to his turn in the previous issue.  Individual panels look fantastic but the overall quality is quite erratic.  The proportions of Clara's face are noteworthy in this regard, with her eyes at times seeming oddly placed on her face.  Thankfully, these strange moments are few and far between and the final product is quite enjoyable.