Tony gets his ruffles
on.
One by one, the Doctor’s
lifetimes are being colonised.
Not by the alien threat of
the week, but by Titan Comics. The Ninth Doctor has become a regular fixture
under the command of Cavan Scott, the Eighth Doctor had a triumphant short run
thanks to George Mann, the Fourth Doctor has even joined the fray thanks to
Gordon Rennie and Emma Beeby. Now Paul Cornell, long-time writer of intelligent
adventures for the Doctor, has begun a series of Third Doctor adventures.
You see this grin? This
grin of fanboy glee?
This grin is going nowhere
in a hurry.
Issue #1 of the Third
Doctor adventures stamps itself firmly in the post-Three Doctors territory,
where he of the frilly shirts has got control of the Tardis back, but has yet
to properly zip off into time and space again – indeed he didn’t really do that
until he’d regenerated into the maniac with the teeth and the curls and the
infeasible scarf. Nevertheless, that pinning of the story into a very
particular chunk of the Doctor’s on-screen lifetime informs the tone here,
Cornell giving us a threat that feels fairly modern and zippy while having its
roots firmly in everything Pertwee.
Jo Grant finally makes her
way into the comic-book world, and she’s still having an on-off flirtation with
Mike Yates. The Brigadier is as large a presence in this issue as he was on-screen,
in control of everything he can be, calling the Doctor when he’s not sure what
he’s dealing with.
There are moments of
air-punching all the way through this issue, placed there like strategic
land-mines of joy – The Doctor holding court in what has the feel of a
gentleman’s club, a familiar villain revealed, a mechanical, self-resurrecting
gang of creatures who look vaguely cybernetic but are something…else, the
Doctor’s eyes bulging comically as he’s throttled, Nestene-style, Bessie
surprising the living daylights out of a policeman with a sudden turn of speed,
Bell, Yates and Benton, the Brigadier calling for an air strike and the
subsequent fumefest to which the Third Doctor treats him, the arrival of a UNIT
techie with a very familiar name and ailment, and the final panel, which – in
true Cornell style – makes you jump up and down and yell, before realising
people can probably see you and may not understand.
So – the story so far?
Mexican waves of ‘We’re not worthy’ as Paul Cornell applies himself to an
earlier era than his usual stomping ground.
In terms of that tone we
mentioned, we never got much of an idea from the on-screen Third Doctor about
how the Doctor spent his ‘off hours’ once he didn’t have the Tardis’
dimensional circuit to fiddle with, and the Third Doctor has always been
perhaps the most content of all his incarnations to adopt the lifestyle of a
privileged gentleman, so there’s something inherently right about seeing him
hold court to a gang of other notables, and Cornell gets the tone of his
storytelling down pat. Similarly, when he encounters Jo in primitive camo
make-up, his response is pure twinkling Pertwee, and these things help to
genuinely build the world of the Third Doctor in two dimensions.
The Brigadier too is spot
on – when the Doctor rages that he hopes he’s happy, having blown the bejesus
out of a bunch of aggressive cyborgs, his response is typically Briggish –
‘Thank you, I am.’ Again, it all helps to rebuild in our minds the world of the
Third Doctor as we remember it, and more importantly, as it was, while giving
it just enough modern spin to excite 21st century fans in its own
right. Big ticks then all the way down the list as far as writing’s concerned.
But of course, to some extent, you knew this would be the case – Paul Cornell’s
a writer who puts the time in to his tone and his characterisation whatever he
writes, which is presumably how you get the gig of writing for the Third Doctor
in the first place.
What about the artwork,
then? With the exception of the multi-coloured Sixth Doctor (comic-book series
any time soon, Titan folk?), the Third Doctor’s outfit is probably the most
difficult to get consistently right, though as far as a face is concerned, he’s
probably something of a gift.
Christopher Jones, on
artwork duties here, nails the Third Doctor to the page most of the time. There
are perhaps occasional shots that don’t get him quite right, but for the
majority of the time, Jones gives us unmistakeable Pertwee, striding about the
place like a frilly-shirted crane. The Brigadier too, while perhaps not
absolutely photofit-perfect, is more than good enough to pass strutting muster
in the face of a new threat and (though he has yet to know it) an old. Jo’s a
rather more moveable feast, sometimes conjuring Katy Manning in the flesh,
sometimes looking a little more generic and even on occasions looking a little
like Liz Shaw died her hair blonde.
The visual tone, following
Cornell’s lead is the 70s show, but fresh – the zipping from place to place,
the al fresco confrontation with a band of marching metal numpties, the scenes
of Bessie driving over a barren heath with a huge sky taken almost point for
point from The Green Death. In essence, Jones delivers a freshened-up 70s, and HiFi
on colourwork turns the richness up to make the 70s look like the
high-definition here and now.
A faultless comic-book
then?
Pretty much. It’s not as
yet some grand treatise on a philosophical point hiding in the pages of an
action-comic, it is exactly what it says it is – the Third Doctor comic-book –
and it delivers pretty much all you could wish for from such a thing. The Third
Doctor, Pertweeing his hearts out. A mysterious bunch of metal gits who don’t
take kindly to being blown to bits, a hidden hand of darkness among the higher
echelons of British society, and the UNIT boys and girls running and jumping
and firing their guns and under no circumstances getting to the awkward bit at
the end of a date with Jo Grant. It also delivers those punch-the-air points
along the way, and they really are worth it all on their own, returning
villains, new villains, and new heroes all spreading a broad smile over your
face.
Jump on board Bessie with
the Third Doctor right now. It’s Paul Cornell, and in Christopher Jones,
Titan’s found an artist that can render the period well but give it a freshness
to make it feel relevant today. That means only one thing - it’s the 70s (or
should that be 80s?) all over again, and it feels wonderful.
No comments:
Post a Comment