The Eternal Dogfight

"He acts the fool and plays for laugh, but there's moments where you get a glimpse of something else..."

Writer: Rob Williams

Format: Comic Strip

Released: 13th August 2015

Printed in: DWC #7

Featuring: Eleventh Doctor, Alice, Jones, ARC

Synopsis 

Alice, Jones and ARC have joined the Doctor aboard the TARDIS. During a time-twisting adventure where the flow of time reversed inside the vortex, the Doctor succeeded in preventing Jones' death and the destruction of the entire planet. 

Now Alice must return to London and confront the challenges of everyday life. With her landlord in the process of evicting her, and as she mourns the loss of her mother, the last thing she needs is to face a sky full of alien fighter pilots. But travels with the Doctor never do turn out quite as you'd expect...

Verdict 

The Eternal Dogfight was an excellent opening part to a two part story featuring the Eleventh Doctor and his comic strip exclusive TARDIS team that concludes on the very next page that this one ended on! As it's a unique summer special extended edition of Doctor Who Comic this month, we were given two Eleventh Doctor comic strips that form the same story. I'm not sure why the Eleventh Doctor section has to differ from that of the Twelfth and Tenth Doctors, but just like Whodunnit?/The Sound of Our Voices, it appears that we have another two parter but with each part having a different name. On television it's understandable why they went with that direction with the exception of The End of Time, but in a comic strip it just seems daft when in the very same comic we've got two stories having their second part and it being called just that. It also seems strange that we've got two different writers for one story but as long as it's good I don't care. I think I actually quite liked Alice in this story for probably the first time since The Friendly Place. I loved the opening quote (of the comic not my blog entry) and it just summed Alice up perfectly. She had all of time and space on her doorstep but all she wanted to do was go home. Does that not scream boring? I think it does and that's what she's been most of the time in her travels. But she actually had some quite intriguing incidents in this story! It appeared that the Time Lord we saw lurking in the streets in After Life was back but this time much less subtly and far more triumphantly! It screeched Alice. I do hope it is a Time Lord! Literally any member of the race, old or new. However, judging by the fact that the next thing we saw of Alice after she encountered the apparent Time Lord was her with her mother, who is actually dead and the reason for Alice being so downbeat on her travels, and she'd somehow made her way to the Amstron ship. The display of the 'Eternal Dogfight' was superb, as you can say from my accompanying picture, but I did find it to be a little bit of a rip off from the Sontaran-Rutan war, the latest chapter of which appeared in DWM's The Instruments of War. The Amstrons themselves even looked like a cheap knock off of the Sontarans! The J'arrodic didn't look much like the Rutan though thankfully. In saying that, I did like the Amstrons especially when they totally ignored the psychic paper. I bet the Doctor thought he was being really clever. I'm not quite sure where they're trying to go with Jones as companion to be honest. There's just no direction at all. He doesn't seem to be anything like the character we first met in What He Wants... and now they're going with a silly porky angle. However, after the 'Serve You' mention from ARC, I think there's a lot more going on for this strange companion. I thought the angle with SERVEYOUinc had ended in the last two parter story but it appears I'm wrong. I'm surprised but I'm looking forward to seeing what more can be done! The Eternal Dogfight simply being a firework show for humanity was good and I loved how the leaders of both races assured Earth that they weren't under attack or the target and that once they'd finished obliterating each other they'd soon be on their way. Superb. The cliffhanger was magnificent with the Doctor needing to end the war that had been going on for millennia, the Time Lords didn't even know the cause, and find a cure for Jones after he ate some very bad Astron food. The Doctor really has got a lot to do! The characterisation of the Eleventh Doctor was very good in this story which was nice as it's been mixed over the last seven issues. However, he could have done without the distraction of Alice and her dead mother being on close proximity! Just what will happen next? I look forward to finding out!