Ground Control

"How did you turn the TARDIS off?"

Writer: Jonathan L. Davis
Format: Comic Strip
Released: July 2010
Printed in: Doctor Who Annual 2010 (Comic)

Featuring: Tenth Doctor,

Synopsis

Somewhere in the time stream, a panda-like creature is floating.

Somewhere else, the Tenth Doctor is in the TARDIS but it is being taken somewhere. Refusing to ignore procedure, the Doctor opens its doors to Mister K. He quickly grounds the TARDIS and starts a full interrogation of the truth of the TARDIS...

Verdict

Ground Control was a very good start to this unique collection of stories from a comic Doctor Who Annual! I love the idea and I would have loved for it to be a mainstay and have hit British shelves but I'll take reading it in the third volume of the Tenth Doctor Archives from IDW! It went by at a frantic pace given the nature of the story and I thought that worked really well. The idea of the Doctor just opening the TARDIS doors because of procedure was very humorous and I really liked how Mister K just didn't hold back in asserting his apparent authority! He walked straight into the TARDIS, marvelled at its existence, and then quickly grounded it. The Doctor was absolutely stunned that K had the capability to keep his time and space machine on the ground. He wasn't best pleased and was a little confused by what became an absolute barrage of questions regarding the Doctor and his use of the TARDIS. I thought some of the questions were a little unfair and it is beyond doubt that the Doctor does good things for the universe with his TARDIS, but Mister K was less convinced. He was in full on interrogation mode and used the likes of regeneration to show that the Doctor was not always in control. I loved the Doctor's reaction to seeing himself regenerate but I was quite taken aback by its effects on the rest of the universe outside of the TARDIS and didn't quite by the fact. It didn't exactly cause damage in the likes of Planet of the Spiders and The Caves of Androzani, for example. The Doctor soon got comfortable with all of the questions and defended his actions well. He did good for the universe and a montage drawing of several recent enemies defeated was terrific. The story of the Cobalite panda was an unexpected one but the image of a panda in the Time Vortex was somewhat amusing! I was quite surprised that the Doctor almost laughed when he was told that was what happened after Donna almost started a war with them. The cameo of Martha, albeit as a fabrication, was welcomed too and I liked how the Doctor did accept that he wasn't always in control and that the TARDIS could be a weapon in the wrong hands. However, he knew that K was just distracting him to steal some of the TARDIS energies and quite easily and calmly left with no problems at all. But wasn't the TARDIS grounded? There needed to be a little more elaboration on the conclusion for my liking. As a whole though, it was a very entertaining comic strip story!

Rating: 8/10