Weapons of Past Destruction Part 1

"He's seen all of space and time... You'd think nothing would surprise him any more."

Writer: Cavan Scott 

Format: Comic Strip

Released: 17th December 2015

Printed in: DWC: Tales from the TARDIS 01

Featuring: Ninth Doctor, Rose, Captain Jack

Synopsis 

Leaving World War II behind, the Ninth Doctor, Rose and Captain Jack discover that Time Lord technology, lost in the wake of the Time War, is being sold on the intergalactic black market! 

Now the threat of a new temporal war brews on the horizon. Can the Doctor stop history repeating itself?

Verdict 

Weapons of Past Destruction kicked off in tremendous style with this fantastic first part! It really was an excellent way to kick off the brand new series of Ninth Doctor adventures! I was shopping in Swansea on Saturday and as I looked to purchase the latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine (quite a bit late yes, I know) I happened to notice the image of the Twelfth Doctor and Clara on a more comic-like style magazine than Doctor Who Comic is actually printed as and upon closer inspection I was absolutely delighted to discover that it was a brand new sister title of DWC! Tales from the TARDIS is a magnificent name and with my absolute joy at DWC over the past year, I've been really hoping that we would get the Ninth Doctor stories released in the UK in some way. I would have happily settled for the graphic novels but instead we're going to be getting another fortnightly release of comic strips! I can't wait! Every fortnight now I'll be picking up three brand new comic strips and with the success and quality thus far, I really don't care if comic strips dominate my blog whilst I'm at university. They're arguably the most creative format for Doctor Who and as seen with Relative Dimensions yesterday, just about anything can happen! I love how the unexpected absolutely does happen with the Titan Comics series and I really do need to pick myself up the collection of IDW Eleventh Doctor stories labelled as the TARDIS archives. It looks like the comic strip content is just going to increase, which is fine by me as the length is perfect whilst I'm at university really. Even though I'm currently home for the Christmas period, I'm finding myself busy but fitting in a comic strip story is proving just fine. It's actually been quite a while since watching my last Ninth Doctor episode and the last story I did at all with this incarnation, excluding the cameo in Four Doctors, was The Beast of Babylon in which the rarity of Rose not appearing occurred. These comics however look set to go with the TARDIS trio of the Ninth Doctor, Rose and Captain Jack! I certainly wasn't expecting that but I'm absolutely thrilled that's going to be the case! I'm a huge fan of Torchwood and for a long time during the spinoff's airing, I thought it was better than Doctor Who. Although I rarely give a Torchwood episode a bad rating (I consider 7/10 and less to be bad), that opinion has since changed. But Captain Jack is a huge reason why I still absolutely love the spinoff so I'm delighted to be getting new visual stories with him alongside the Ninth Doctor. It seemed to come and go in a flash on TV so I get the feeling I'm going to really enjoy these. Judging by the story's synopsis, this is going to be a good one and jump straight into putting the trio in serious danger. The threat of both the Lect and Unon were considerable to the Doctor and co but I liked how the two quite domineering species clearly had trouble with each other. The Doctor immediately noticed that something was seriously wrong but didn't reveal it and I'm sure we'll learn all about that in due process. The characterisation of each member of the TARDIS trio was excellent and Cavan Scott really did capture the feel of Series 1 which I think is really important. He did a great job. I really liked how Rose was surprised by the fact the Doctor had seen something new. He was much travelled but even for a Time Lord, all of space and time was a big place! The climax was superb with an abundance of action which was fantastic. The Unon literally obliterated the Lect ship and that caused trouble! The TARDIS then dematerialised in quite a rush, and Rose was not on board. The Doctor's reaction to that was one of horror and then we just saw Rose falling and floating in space, presumably to her death. An excellent cliffhanger to a fantastic first part of this story! I'm so happy we've got the Ninth Doctor comics in the UK now and I just hope the Eighth and Fourth Doctor stories now follow. But for now, this was brilliant and the rating will come whenever the story concludes.