The Comfort of the Good Part 2

"There was nowhere to go. The Doctor had lost his hearts. The Doctor had lost his home."

Writers: Al Ewing & Rob Williams

Format: Comic Strip

Released: 25th February 2016

Printed in: DWC 2.06

Featuring: Eleventh Doctor, Alice, Jones, ARC

Synopsis

• Series co-writers Al Ewing and Rob Williams team up for an unmissable mini-epic, as a year's worth of stories come to a head!

• Can the Doctor save his new friends from their time-twisting fates?

• Will Alice find peace - or be marooned far from Earth?!

• Will ARC finally discover the truth about itself - or be reduced to atoms?

• Will Jones fulfil his cosmic rock god destiny - or die among the stars?!

• And who will be left to join the Doctor as we head into Year Two?!

Verdict 

The Comfort of the Good concluded in excellent style and brought what has been an extremely eventful first year of Eleventh Doctor adventures to a close. Things really did come full circle in this adventure which was good and like The Fountains of Forever/Spiral Staircase/Sins of the Father, it brought things to a neat close which was positive. After the events of Conversion and the first part of this very story, the TARDIS had done something the Doctor never thought she would do and had banished him. It was extremely surprising and at first the TARDIS didn't seem like letting up here. After the incredible cliffhanger of part one where the Doctor's mother emerged from the TARDIS, the cliffhanger was exactly as expected with it being revealed that it was just another manifestation of the Talent Scout but as I think I mentioned in my blog entry for part one, the fact we get to see definitively what the Doctor's mother looks like is rather incredible. Of course, what was implied to be the Doctor's mother in The End of Time may just be another incarnation but when anything is said of the Doctor's mother we now have an image to place against the character. That's fantastic. The efforts of the Talent Scout to attain possession of the TARDIS were good and quite extreme but they also screamed an act of desperation which was also not surprising. It was very intriguing to see how vulnerable the Doctor felt without the TARDIS and almost seemed to have accepted defeat without any action at all. He was devastated and who could blame him? He'd lost his home and his best friend. What would he do now? Jones was the highlight of the story as a whole which was a breath of fresh air and I think he deserved to go out on a high. I wasn't his biggest fan but I just loved him in this story once he merged with the Entity. This story also said goodbye to ARC as I expected with the conclusion of the SERVEYOUinc story arc that has covered just about all fifteen individual parts. It ended differently to how I might have expected earlier on in the run but I thought it was good which was great to read. I enjoyed the references to What He Wants..., The Rise and Fall/The Other Doctor and Four Dimensions very much and there was also a nice reminiscing of After Life. That led me to take a step back and think about how Alice has been as companion and although I was quite critical of her at the start, ever since the Talent Scout impersonated her mother I think she's been tremendous and she was no different here. She looked after the Doctor when he was at one of his saddest points and encouraged him to kick on and go and get his TARDIS back. The moment the Doctor used Alice's telepathic link to the TARDIS to make up and apologise was fantastic and the horror on the Talent Scout's face when the realisation hit that the Doctor was back in control was excellent. The ending was really night after the Talent Scout wanted too much and returned to the Entity, it was just lovely to see the Doctor and Alice enjoying themselves. Alice got to see her mother enjoying her favourite singer that was Jones and the Doctor just seemed grateful for the company. Alice had no thoughts of home and after an eventful first year, we now head to use two! Overall, a fantastic finale.

Rating: 9/10