Arena of Fear Part 1

"His name is Captain Jack Hotness."

Writer: Nick Abadzis

Format: Comic Strip

Released: 28th July 2016

Printed in: DWC: Tales from the TARDIS 09

Featuring: Tenth Doctor, Gabby, Captain Jack, Cindy

Synopsis 

It's the Doctor and Gabby versus Captain Jack, Cleo and Cindy, with the mysterious Mr Ebonite pulling the strings!

Forced to race each other for an extraterrestrial artefact, friendships are put to the test in the most surprising of ways - and the TARDIS team changes forever!

Verdict 

Arena of Fear kicked off, or rather continued the stories already started in Cindy, Cleo and the Magic Sketchbook! and Medicine Man in brilliant fashion. I must admit I was not expecting to see a newly named comic strip in this issue of Doctor Who Comic after the way the last story finished but it definitely now looks like that I will be combining the ratings of this story, whenever it shall end, and Medicine Man. It didn't really address either of the last two story's cliffhangers but did so in a clever way by having the entire party of characters suffering from memory loss. The way we got artistic narration from Cindy instead of the usual Gabby was terrific and I do hope that once things settle down she ends up joining the Doctor and Gabby on their travels. I love that pairing so much and I think it's the best thing to come out of DWC, but adding Cindy to the mix would just increase the greatness in this segment of the comic because she's a fabulous character in her own right. Her opinion of Captain Jack was interesting to say the least and you can see just a snippet of her thoughts in my humorous opening quote. She was certainly attracted to him! Cindy was not quite as commendable though to Cleo and Erik. I must admit that I am surprised that these particular characters have returned as although they're not at all bad, they didn't have a big impact on things to the extent that I thought they'd return. The blend of times in this story was really interesting with the likes of Munmeth and Muthmunna meeting Sunzberro and Mem-Brain. The latter two characters were very comical and that matched their appearance which was good. I'm not sure Erik had more than one line but the way his eyes were illustrated clearly demonstrated that he was a bit mad, despite the memory loss. Mr Ebonite running proceedings some 29,000 or so years in the past was really interesting and I'm intrigued to see if his prospect of everybody dying comes true. His referencing of The Five Doctors and comparing the Arena of Fear to the Death Zone on Gallifrey was excellent. I really liked that. I had hoped for a more joyous reunion between the Doctor and Jack but I'm hopeful that they'll embrace each other more warmly in the next part of this story. Things were rather eventful and they may not even fully remember their experiences together. The mention of Jack's involvement with Torchwood was good and I'm now intrigued to see if there'll be any mention of Miracle Day after my recent watching. In terms of Jack's character, this story acts as the latest point in his life that I will have blogged. That excites me greatly. I thought the absence of Gabby from all but one page hurt things a little bit and after the Doctor had part of his memory back I was hoping he'd quickly realise that his companion was absent. That wasn't the case though and it was soon revealed that she seemed to be working for and under the spell of Mr Ebonite! She looked dazzlingly evil which was worrying but I did miss the flashes of sparkle she brings to pretty much every comic strip she appears in. Gabby is a wonderful companion but I'm interested to see how she fares playing an evil character now. I'm sure the Doctor will have something to say about it. I'll have to wait a month or so to find about and I look forward to it with great anticipation. Overall, a great comic where the rating will come at the story's conclusion.