Scream of the Silent

"He was the Doctor, curious, questioning and too stubborn to cease to exist."

Writer: John Freeman

Format: Short Story

Released: November 1988

Printed in: DWM 25th Anniversary Special

Featuring: Seventh Doctor

Synopsis 

On the rare occasion that the Seventh Doctor is travelling alone, he meets with an eager female scientist by the name of Kalare. Together they're tasked with decoding the mystery behind the Barrier...

Verdict 

Scream of the Silent was a fantastic little short text story to bring a close to my reading of The Good Soldier graphic novel! It's definitely been a great collection of comic strip stories from the early '90s (and late '80s in regards to short stories like this one). We've had two hugely successful stories in The Mark of Mandragora and A Glitch in Time which both received full marks so I obviously thoroughly enjoyed those! The title story itself was superb but as I've mentioned before I'm a little disappointed with the cover artwork, despite its brilliance, as it is definitely a bit misleading in my opinion. Party Animals and The Chameleon Factor were very decent stories as well and overall, the comic strips from the pages of normal DWM were very good. Well, the graphic novel chronologically didn't start off at a standard that would follow in the text story of Teenage Kicks but it wasn't bad at all so I can't complain really. I'm glad that to beef up the collection a bit the great guys at Panini and DWM decided to throw in Seaside Rendezvous from the Summer Special magazine and also this nice little bonus of a short story! The time echo image that we see (as is above) is wonderful with the Seventh Doctor looking into the mirror and seeing the reflection of his first self. It leads me to wonder though, why do we always see the First Doctor as an old man? Obviously he was young once. We saw him as a child in Listen and we saw that he was old when he stole the TARDIS in The Name of the Doctor, but I would like one day for us to see a man we might not recognise and then for the Doctor to say that was him prior to any regenerations. That'd be a great moment! But anyway back to the story at hand and I thought it was told very well indeed. 5 pages for a text story might not seem like a not but in reality it actually is more than you think! It took me a lot longer to read than I imagined it would, not that it was a problem at all. I can't believe I'm going to say this but despite the good rating, I think the story was missing Ace a bit. I'm not sure how fans would have reacted in 1988 to the Seventh Doctor travelling alone after the events of Dragonfire, but it works for me now knowing where it can easily be placed in the line of continuity. Kalare was a lovely character and I loved how she got along with the Doctor very nicely. She obviously was doing something right (being a scientist probably helped) as it appeared that at the end the Doctor was actually quite keen to show her the wonders of the universe in the TARDIS. The Shurans served as interesting enemies and I liked how they surrounded the Doctor and Kalare before they went through the mysterious Barrier. The Doctor working out the language of the Tyans was actually a blueprint of sorts for the Barrier itself was excellent. The time passing on the outside ridiculously quicker than for the Doctor and Kalare was intriguing and I liked the surprise when they got back with Panduraskar. The climax was decent and I really liked the style with the little preludes at the end of the paragraphs. Overall, a very good story to finish my reading of the graphic novel. I'm gonna have to buy a new one now though as I like having one available, and Nemesis of the Daleks could well be on the agenda. But for now, this was excellent.  

Rating: 8/10