The Keep

"These are the dying days."

Writer: Alan Barnes

Format: Comic Strip

Released: January-February 1997

Printed in: DWM 248-49

Featuring: Eighth Doctor, Izzy

Synopsis

Shortly after arriving on Earth in the 51st century, the Doctor and Izzy are greeted by Marquez, the android servant of Crivello, an aged scientist only kept alive by his complete immersion in a nutrient tank. His quest is to build an artificial sun to give humanity a new home, and a time traveller is required to make it happen...

Verdict

The Keep was a terrific combination of the Endgame graphic novel! I thought this was brilliant from start to finish and serves as a great little first outing in the TARDIS for Izzy as the new companion of the Eighth Doctor. It's a little easy to forget that this is so early on in the run for the Eighth Doctor in any format, but the writing of his incarnation really is very good here. I was reading a lot of the lines in the voice and personality of Paul McGann which is certainly a positive. I liked how his incarnation was portrayed as heading for the action and quite energetic as we saw a lot of that during The Movie, so continuing that here was very good indeed. At two parts, this was quite a short little adventure but it did a wonderful job in telling a fast-paced and just fantastic story! Judging by how the epilogue ended and Crivello's untimely death once his goals were achieved, I get the feeling that there might be more to come from this particular adventure as I make my way through the graphic novel. Izzy's reaction to being in the 51st century was a very fun one because it wasn't exactly how she imagined the far future would be! She was expecting cities made of gold and silver but what she got was far from it. She seemed to react pretty well to being trapped after the lights went off and her wanting to wake the Doctor up during their tangle was terrific. Uber-Marshall Leng made for a decent villain whilst he was threatening the Doctor and Izzy and I found his connections to Magnus Greel very interesting! I thought that was a really nice addition to the story and something so simple adds a lot to a monster, especially in such a short comic strip. Marquez saving the Doctor and Izzy with a scoop was good and I thought Izzy's reaction to experiencing that was excellent as it was steeped in realism which I think is very important. The cliffhanger was superb and something that came out of nowhere! The Doctor was inundated with praise for what he was looking at as the nucleus of an artificial sun, but I wasn't expecting him to be sacrificed and thrown in by Marquez! The imagery there, along with the first page of part two, was brilliant. Izzy's thoughts of being stranded three thousand years from home were great and I loved how understandably joyous she was when the Doctor emerged from the artificial sun. It was in fact alive and as Crivello anticipated, the Doctor being a time traveller allowed him to control it. The sun emerging and standing up seemed to resemble a large Groot from the Marvel universe which was good on a personal note. The Doctor and Crivello's brief synaptic encounter was fantastic and although it wasn't much, there seemed to be so much coming from it. The Doctor was enthralled with the pure knowledge installed within the scientist. His desire to form a home world for humanity whilst Earth was ravaged by its sun was admirable and he was only trying to help. So to find him brutally killed at the end was a big surprise and something I am sure we will come back to in a future adventure. Things ending up well with the artificial sun going off to the Crab Nebula on the Doctor's instruction to pave way for a temporary home whilst Earth was busy being destroyed was fantastic and I liked how quickly the group of brutes turned into being positive now that they had somewhere they could live. Overall, a fantastic comic strip story!

Rating: 9/10