Doctor Who #16 (IDW Vol. 3) - A Review

Doctor Who #16 proves a worthy conclusion to the Dead Man's Hand storyline.  More, it proves to be a fitting capstone for the IDW Doctor Who series.  We don't know who might pick up the license to publish more Doctor Who comics in the future but we can only hope they will prove to be as good as the IDW series was 90% of the time.



Tony Lee's script brings everything to a satisfying and logical conclusion - no easy task in a story involving Oscar Wilde in the American Old West, an alien invasion, Calamity Jane, Thomas Edison and the stone-skinned zombie of Wild Bill Hickok!  The only real flaw with the story is that Clara is given surprisingly little to do in the final battle save offer moral support.  Indeed, Clara spent most of this storyline on the sidelines and its' a bit jarring given what we've seen The Impossible Girl do in the past.  



Mike Collins' artwork continues to be serviceable but hardly outstanding.  Collins is a fair caricaturist in his close-ups but he becomes sloppy in the middle and far distances.  Heavy inking also contributes to the overall loss of fine detail throughout the book.  Despite this, the book is still an enjoyable read.

Doctor Who #14 & #15 (IDW Vol. 3) - A Review

I somehow managed to miss Doctor Who #14 last month and didn't realize it until I saw #15 in the shop this past weekend.  Thankfully, the matter was easily rectified and I was able to get caught up on what happened after what was - if  memory serves me correctly - a most enjoyable set-up.

The Doctor and Clara find themselves in Deadwood at the same time that Oscar Wilde is conducting his famous North American tour.  Strangely enough, stone-skinned masked men are gunning down the people of Deadwood without guns - including one that Calamity Jane swears is the long-dead Wild Bill Hickok himself!  Naturally The Doctor is all too willing to throw on a Stetson and play Marshall but could there be more going on than even he suspects?  Almost certainly...



Tony Lee depicts Smith's Doctor as a delightfully dorky man-of-action.  Things go a bit far in one scene where The Doctor ponders whether or not he prefers being ignored or having people try to kill him but for the most part Lee perfectly captures Smith's manic energy.  Indeed, the only major flaw with Lee's script is that he may be trying to do too much with this story. 

Teaming The Doctor with one historical figure would be story enough.  Here he is teamed with four of them, ignoring the people of Deadwood itself!  There are also multiple villains in play but the readers are unlikely to complain even when the historical bits get a bit cumbersome.  The best sequence of the book, bar none, involves all the incarnations of The Doctor getting involved in a psychic legal defense of The Doctor's life. 



Mike Collins' artwork is oddly uneven in both issues.  He fares well enough in the close-ups and does a decent enough job depicting the various Doctors as well as the historical figures involved.  Yet some panels are over-inked and Collins' artwork loses all detail in the middle and far distance.  This leads to some oddities and inconsistencies in the artwork but nothing that distracts overly much from the final package.

Doctor Who #13 (IDW Vol. 3) - A Review

While Doctor Who is frequently described as a series where anything is possible, rarely is this idea pushed in a historical context.  "Cities made of song and people made of smoke" are all well and good but you can't just go mucking about with "what might have been" in history.  Even when history itself is apocryphal and filled with more tall tales than any sci-fi dime novel, it just isn't done! 

And yet, with Doctor Who #13, Tony Lee has done it and done it well. 




The central conceit of this issue is that a young Oscar Wilde - who did travel the length and depth of America in 1882 - found himself in Deadwood, South Dakota at the same time as "Calamity" Martha Jane Canary.  At the same time, The Doctor and Clara make a day-trip to Deadwood.  And, yet again at the same time, there are rumors that the legendary Wild Bill Hickok has risen from the dead to seek revenge as a mysterious masked gunfighter, who kills with a gesture instead of a gun. 

Lee balances all of these stories and subplots like a plate-spinner.  More, he manages some truly touching character moments, such as Wilde and Clara bonding over booze as Clara tries desperately to avoid pitching story ideas to a Wilde who is years away from writing his most famous works of fiction.  Amazingly, there are hints of even further complications in a story that already has three good stories running through it at present time.  This story may well justify the four issues being devoted towards telling it.


Artist Mike Collins shows the same skill here he did in the recent Fourth Doctor chapter of Doctor Who: Prisoners Of Time.  The characters from the show and historical figures are well caricatured and Collins proves an effective visual storyteller.  The panel layout is logical and the story flows smoothly without any confusion.

Bottom Line: If you're a Doctor Who fan, this story is a must read.  Fans of western comics in general and good historical pieces may also wish to give this one a shot.  Seeing the legendary Oscar Wilde in the equally legendary locale of Deadwood is worth the price of admission alone.