Teenage Kicks

"Perhaps everybody gets the alien they deserve."

Writer: Paul Cornell 

Format: Short Story

Released: August 1990

Printed in: DWM 163

Featuring: Seventh Doctor, Ace

Synopsis 

The Doctor brings Ace to a present-day London pub in autumn, landing the TARDIS in the pub basement. The Doctor busies himself on the pub's trivia machine before going over to talk to a woman sitting on her own with a bunch of carnations. He sends Ace over to engage with a guy at the bar sitting on his own, but there's something more to the strange character...

Verdict 

Teenage Kicks wasn't the best story in the world by any stretch of imagination. I was quite disappointed really seeing that it was written by the usually very strong Paul Cornell. It just didn't have a lot riding for it in my opinion and may have benefited more from a few more illustrations instead of just blocked text which became a little tedious. Now I know it was only two pages (not counting the above illustration) but somehow it seemed to drag a little. This story saw me kick off my reading of The Good Soldier graphic novel, a couple of months after purchasing it shortly after it was released, only to then win a copy as my letter praising Blood and Ice won the DWM Star Letter of the Month. Seeing that the first comic strip story was printed in DWM 164, and there was a text story later in the graphic novel that was printed in DWM 163, I thought I'd go with logic and do the stories in the order they appeared in DWM. I'm not a huge fan of text stories at all and that's largely why I've been put off doing my 2007 and 2009 Storybooks. They're a struggle on times and they always seem to take longer than you'd expect. That happened here which was a shame. The characterisation of the Seventh Doctor was pretty good but not as strong as in my recent readings of Ghost Light and The Ripple Effect. Ever since watching Remembrance of the Daleks with my cousin a few weeks back, I seem to have been doing an awful lot of stories with this TARDIS pairing, one that is far from my favourite. I did enjoy the reference to The Curse of Fenric as I do enjoy any opportunity for a past story to get a mention in any kind of story. Ace meeting up with people, unexpectedly, who shared card names with her was certainly intriguing. Characters with names such as Jack, Queen and King definitely had my interest and momentarily I thought we'd get more of an insight into Ace's past. She's the first companion where we get to learn quite a lot of her past in Perivale and the story behind her being known as Ace. I suppose the point could be argued for Nyssa seeing as we got a whole story in The Keeper of Traken to learn about her people and culture and then the torment of her losing her father to the Master before she officially became companion in Logopolis. But Ace just has something unique about her in that she's undoubtedly the closest companion to being like the revival companions. Desiree that though we still don't know a hell of a lot about her! I hoped that would be elaborated here but instead we just had violence. I liked the Doctor's mention of people betting on things they know the outcome of and I immediately thought of the magnificent Back to the Future trilogy and the Sports Almanac! I do love those films. I think this story highlights just how much Ace means to the Doctor and they've definitely gone through a lot together. It was quite a nice touch that he'd let Ace pick their next location, if the TARDIS was of course up to it! Their relationship is growing on me but I'm still not struck on the pairing. I'm not sure I ever will be sadly. Hopefully this graphic novel could do something to change that. But it hasn't got off to the best start unfortunately. 

Rating: 6/10