The Other Doctor

"No more monsters. No more stories. The Doctor. Cancelled."

Writer: Rob Williams

Format: Comic Strip

Released: March 2015

Printed in: DW11 #10

Featuring: Eleventh Doctor, Alice, Jones, ARC

Synopsis 

The Doctor came to the planetary headquarters of SERVEYOUinc armed with enough shares to take ownership of the company. Which he did. But then the Talent Scout gave him what he wants. Now the Doctor rules over the SERVEYOUinc planet from skyscraper-sized TARDIS, and everyone here is happy. Or at least pacified. Or at least not dead... yet. 

The Doctor's former companions - Alice, Jones and ARC - are on the run, pursued by SERVEYOUinc forces, with only a back-up hologram of the Doctor's true personality for assistance. Can they bring the Doctor back to himself?

Verdict 

The Other Doctor was an excellent conclusion to the story already started in The Rise and Fall. With the new winter direction of Doctor Who Comic, in which it appears that they will not be printing the second half of this fantastic story, I was forced into my own hands to find the second part and to ensure the story gets finished for my perspective! I can deal with DWC skipping ahead a few adventures but not completing a story in their pages is not on in my opinion! Thankfully I was able to find the tenth issue of the Eleventh Doctor comic strips, in the format that was released in the USA, on the wonderful website that is Scribd. It's served me well in the past with numerous Ninth Doctor comic strips and quite a few Doctor Who Annuals from over the years. It seems I struck lucky because as of writing neither the Tenth or Twelfth Doctor run available goes as far as the tenth issue. But anyway, into the story itself and I thought it was superb. Just from the name I expected great things! After the superb cliffhanger at the end of the last story, the Doctor really had given in to the Talent Scout at SERVEYOUinc. They'd prophesied over the last ten issues that the Doctor would eventually join them and after acquiring the 51% needed to become the majority shareholder in the company, he had bowed down. He'd accepted what he wanted. The unthinkable had happened and as my quote shows, things had gone disastrously wrong. But the Doctor had anticipated that he may bow down to the pressure of SERVEYOUinc and had created a second conscience of sorts in the form of the digital watch. I liked the reference to Human Nature/The Family of Blood with the fob watch mention but it appears that even Time Lord technology had taken up a bit of an upgrade since that Tenth Doctor adventure. I really liked the reference to After Life and even since rereading in DWC, that story seems like a life time ago! So much has changed since then and out of the three Doctors that appear in the comic, the Eleventh Doctor segment must be the most topsy turvy. Originally I thought it was just going to be the Doctor and Alice travelling together set between Series 5 and Series 6 but then Jones was added as companion early on and with a running theme of the SERVEYOUinc corporation, ARC later become companion as well. The whole adventure seemed quite represented in this story. We had a holographic Doctor consciousness who was capable of having a conversation without a problem. And the real Doctor was now a bad guy running the company that Alice had grown to despise after what they did with her mother. I've been quite critical of Alice and Jones in the past but in this story I thought they were magnificent. Both of them. Alice took on the role of the Doctor in more ways than one and I adored the confidence he had in her when admitting that his second plan was whatever she would think to come up with. I really liked that. Jones thinking he was Xavi the superhero was great too and certainly in line with his character and maturity. He'd be right at home! The idea of having the children as the saviours was absolutely lovely and the Doctor's reaction to that was brilliant. The way his reversion back to his normal self was played out was very good though my only qualm with the story as a whole was that we didn't quite see how the Doctor changed from good to bad almost instantly. Something to do with the Time Lord manifestation of the Talent Scout? I'm really not sure. But overall, when putting both parts together, this really is an excellent comic strip adventure. 

Rating: 8/10