The Green-Eyed Monster

"When did you decide to become a feckless chav bumming around the universe with a man 900 years your senior?"

Writer: Nev Fountain

Format: Comic Strip

Released: January 2007

Printed in: DWM 377

Featuring: Tenth Doctor, Rose, Mickey

Synopsis 

Rose awakes alone and apparently abandoned in the TARDIS. As she searches for the Doctor and Mickey, she finds herself on an intergalactic talk show not too dissimilar to the Jeremy Kyle Show. With the Doctor, Mickey and even her own mother taking part, how will Rose cope?

Verdict 

The Green-Eyed Monster was a pretty average comic strip adventure to continue my reading of The Betrothal of Sontar which was a real shame as this has to rank as the worst of the collection so far. To add to that it would appear that this comic strip is the final one for Rose and Mickey in this format and in my opinion they deserved a better farewell! By the time this story was printed in DWM, it had been well over six months since Rose's departure in Army of Ghosts/Doomsday so this was like the final goodbye to the readers. Obviously it wasn't too long until she returned in Turn Left but I'm not sure the readers at the time were to know that. I do like the fact that the story was all about Rose though. She'd survived the entire Ninth Doctor era, not that it was all that long, and now she'd been there to see in the Tenth Doctor's arrival. She'd had quite an affect on the Doctor and even though I wasn't keen on the plot, I'm glad she was the centre of attention. I'm not sure whether I would have preferred the whole story to have ended up being a dream or if I was actually a fan of it being a plan of the Doctor, well Jackie actually, to rid Rose of her green-eyed monster. It was basically Doctor Who's intergalactic take on the Jeremy Kyle or Jerry Springer Show. It just shouldn't have been done in my opinion. The overlaying theme of jealousy was good but I think it could have been incorporated into a Doctor Who comic strip a lot more effectively. We know that Rose had feelings for the Doctor and in hindsight from The Stolen Earth/Journey's End we know that the Doctor very probably had feelings for her too. That in itself surprises me greatly but that's the direction things seemed to go with this era. There was actually a lot of subtle sexual references in this comic strip which quite surprised me. The Doctor seemed quite at home with having the Amazastians cool off and change in the TARDIS console room! Imagination may have a tendency to run wild with that many incredibly beautiful and young girls, but that doesn't have any place in my blog really, even if I did express some kind of joy in my blogging of Day One and Greeks Bearing Gifts during my Series One run of Torchwood way back near the beginnings of the blog. But hey, I'm allowed. It was included and I'm merely giving my verdict on what I have read and watched in these cases. I thought the concept of the Iagnon was very good actually with it being an alien that fed off jealousy but it would appear that Rose was very difficult to make jealous! It took a lot to actually overload the Iagnon that was stuck inside her ear. Eventually it was overloaded thanks to Jackie and the Doctor claiming they had found love! That was quite a disturbing thought to be honest and I was humorously cast back to the bedroom scene in Rose. The Doctor must really care for Rose if it meant having to kiss her mother, apparently on intergalactic television, to save her. I'm sure it's something he won't want to remember too often. The Iagnon basically destroying itself was actually quite a humorous demise to what turned out to be a pretty pathetic creature! It got so jealous of the Doctor that it fed off itself and caused its own demise. Overall though, despite excellent references to School Reunion and The Girl in the Fireplace, this just didn't do enough justice as a comic strip sendoff for Rose. It was too short at just one part and I wasn't an enormous fan of the idea. Good in places, but it could have been so much more.

Rating: 6/10