Room with a Deja View

"Nature abhors a vacuum."

Writer: Rich Johnston

Format: Comic Strip

Released: July 2009

Printed in: IDW #3.05

Featuring: Tenth Doctor

Synopsis

A murder has taken place, committed by a member of a species that lives in the opposite direction to the timeline, who, from its own perspective, has not yet committed the crime in question.

It's locked house murder mystery where the culprit is clear from the beginning, but the process is anything but. The Doctor lands smack bang in the middle of it all.

Verdict

Room with a Deja View was another magnificent comic strip in what is turning out to be a quite brilliant second volume of Tenth Doctor Archives from IDW! The standard is really impressive and I think they are reaping the benefits of only having standalone stories. I do enjoy a comic strip story arc but I think they can get a little complicated at times so this format works well for me. I liked how the Tenth Doctor travelling alone was addressed and him actually thinking that he might need to be alone for a little while was very intriguing. He was in the Dead Zone which was a really interesting concept and I loved that this place - a place so far away from anything and everything - was the source of a distress call. That was more than enough to get the Doctor out of his meditation. I loved the mockery of many formats of Doctor Who storytelling in saying how he would arrive at a place, be charged with the murder (because there usually was one), find the true culprit to free his name and then stop whatever other nonsense or trouble was occurring. However, this time he wasn't arrested as per usual and was instead blasted in the face in case he was carrying the plague. The use of disease in this comic strip was very good and I liked how well it was sold as being deadly and wiping out trillions. Peoples of all kinds had come to the Dead Zone as the Great Refuge and those in charge couldn't quite believe that the Doctor was 100% clean of its infections. Their knowing of Time Lord legends was great and I liked how the Doctor pounced upon that. He soon took charge of the murder investigation and encountered the mysterious Tx. He was a fantastic character and the concept of him living on the opposite timeline and living in reverse was sublime. I loved that and the conversation with the Doctor during his interrogation only making sense whilst reading in reverse was superb. It was a little confusing but I appreciated the complexity and it worked fantastically well. It turned out that he wasn't actually a murderer at all but had allowed the victim to live much longer than he would have without Tx's intervention. He would still be convicted though as he had technically given a full confession and the law must be followed. Tx just had one request of having a final day with his family. The truth of that actually being his reversion to being born in our timeline was excellent. Overall, a brilliant comic strip story! 

Rating: 9/10