Tesseract

"The trees have escaped the boundaries of the parks."

Writer: Tony Lee
Format: Comic Strip
Released: January-February 2010
Printed in: Doctor Who (2009) #7-8

Featuring: Tenth Doctor, Emily, Matthew, Martha

Synopsis

While the Tenth Doctor gives his new companions, Emily Winter and Matthew Finnegan, a tour of the TARDIS, the vessel is invaded by a number of dimension-hopping aliens. The Advocate places doubt into Matthew's mind about the Doctor's morality, while the Tea' Aree have much the same effect upon Emily...

Verdict

Tesseract was a pretty decent comic strip adventure to kickstart my reading of the third volume of IDW’s Tenth Doctor Archives! It was quite a lengthy story and somewhat an epic but it was because of that which made me surprised that there seemed to be so much jumping around without much linkage or elaboration. I appreciate the attempts for each double page to try and tell its own part of the story, usually with a companion that had been separated from the Doctor and the other fellow traveller, but at times I think it felt forced and there needed to be a bit more flow. I thought the first two parts felt like their own story which was weird but I actually thought it was pretty good with the rummaging around the TARDIS interior and the search for different console rooms. I wasn’t convinced by the whole story concerning the crank - that seemed a little easy - but seeing the Tenth Doctor in the console room associated with that of the Eighth Doctor from The Movie was magnificent! I really did enjoy that and I loved how he re-enacted the swinging scene from those mighty steps. The continuation of Emily and Matthew as companions was good but I thought the former was vastly superior, but the latter believing that to be the case thanks to the returning Advocate was really intriguing. Using the examples of Adric and Turlough as ways that the Doctor has used his companions in the past seemed a little harsh, and I felt quite saddened by the Doctor’s reaction when he found that Adric was being used against him. That did seem a little out of line! The Enochai were pretty good villains and I liked how they found their form in energy and got stuck in the trees. That was quite humorous but I loved the idea of the trees moving! The BBC report to try and cover that up was incredibly comedic though. The highlight of the comic strip for me was undoubtedly the return of Martha Jones! I loved that she called the Doctor again but following the events of The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End, and her attempted use of the Osterhagen Key. The Doctor confronting her about that was hugely intriguing! I did like the continued mentions of her marriage to Mickey and while they did go a tad overboard, the lead in to the little scene with the Sontarans in The End of Time was terrific. I thought the ending was a little sudden and anti-climatic given we had waited six parts to get there but the cliffhangers were strong throughout so that was a big positive. I thought the characterisation of the Tenth Doctor was also very good but I was surprised by his decision to let Matthew go off with the Advocate - that seemed a little out of character even if he did proclaim that he’d be back. Emily going along with it so easily was a surprise too. Overall though, it was a decent comic strip adventure that certainly had a lot going on!

Rating: 7/10