Interstellar Overdrive

"Brilliant! We're flying into an asteroid belt!"

Writer: Jonathan Morris 

Format: Comic Strip

Released: November-December 2006

Printed in: DWM 375-376

Featuring: Tenth Doctor, Rose

Synopsis 

The Doctor and Rose arrive on a Magellan-class star cruiser in the year 3000. There they encounter the members of the Pakafroon Wabster, the greatest rock band in history. But with the ship in a time loop and a murder mystery ensuing, the Doctor has his work cut out...

Verdict 

Interstellar Overdrive was a very good comic strip adventure to get me back into the swing of things with my reading of The Betrothal of Sontar! I've not been the biggest fan of Jonathan Morris in the past as I don't he's really written a story of the highest calibre so my expectations were probably a little lower than normal. However, I was pleasantly surprised by how enjoyable this comic strip adventure actually was. I definitely think it was one of the best comic strip adventures from Jonathan Morris yet. It could have been better of course but for a two parter I couldn't really have any complaints about the quality that we got. It started off with the Doctor and Rose getting immediately amongst the action which is something I always like. There was no real getting to know their surroundings and instead we just had a quick burst of information from the Doctor which I thought was really effective. The characterisation of David Tennant's terrific Tenth Doctor was tremendous which really pleased me as sometimes in this graphic novel thus far it hasn't been quite captured but that's understandable seeing as his first few comic adventures were printed prior to the broadcast of New Earth! There's no doubting here though that Morris did a good job. I didn't feel the characterisation of Rose was as good as it could have been but I think that might be down to her not really being the centre of attention during this story. It was all about the Doctor and Pakafroon Wabster. The band presented quite an interesting set of characters and I loved the Doctor's reaction to meeting them all. It wasn't too dissimilar to his somewhat starstruck reaction to meeting Agatha Christie in The Unicorn and the Wasp. They must be pretty good in the future then! I must admit I was hoping for a Busted reference with a music theme and a story in the year circa 3000 but sadly I didn't quite get that. I can't expect everything though! I really liked Banksy and Fluke out of the band and they were probably my standout guest characters from the story. They just had something more enigmatic than the other members of the band. An endearing quality hidden beneath the surface you might say. The cliffhanger between the parts was absolutely brilliant and it more than resembled the part one cliffhanger of the ongoing Ninth Doctor comic strip story Weapons of Past Destruction. Rose features in that story too and she sure does like getting herself thrown out into space! The resolution though was magnificent and even just by reading it I got that deja vu moment which I thought was superb. The pace of the second part was like a whirlwind which is what you have to do in a story featuring a time loop as you don't want to risk things becoming repetitive. It worked very well in Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters and it worked fantastically once again here. I thought Jacey was a pretty good character and although I thought the revelation that she was the murderer was a little too predictable, I loved how her motive made up for that. With the band set to be dropped off their record label, Jacey had planned on killing off the band and making it look like an accident, with a tragic death meaning they'd live on in music history forever! It was quite a dastardly scheme just for some money but I guess that's why I liked it and I think it definitely worked. The Doctor, with the help of a certain resurrected band member, soon put a stop to that and the time loop, even if the ending seemed a little sudden. Overall though, a very good comic strip adventure and one I definitely enjoyed! 

Rating: 8/10