The Pestilent Heart Part 3

"Divide... Replicate... Consume!"

Writer: Mark Wright 

Format: Comic Strip

Released: 25th August 2016

Printed in: DWM 503

Featuring: Twelfth Doctor

Synopsis 

Disaster spreads as a deadly plague is mutating the human population into hawk like creatures! The Doctor is close to the source and when reunited with Jessica Collins, her father is struggling with infection...

Verdict 

The Pestilent Heart continued in excellent style with this terrific third part of the comic strip adventure! It's been a bit longer than I had hoped for me to get down to reading this but I always ensure that I finish reading an issue of Doctor Who Magazine prior to starting the next and last month's seemed to take a bit longer with other reading, a holiday and quite a lot of football on my agenda. But hey ho I was glad to start reading the next issue and there really is no feeling like starting a new issue of DWM. It's a terrific magazine and I'm really looking forward to the extended interview with Peter Davison. It was wonderful to read how much the Fifth Doctor meant to editor Tom Spilsbury and I do hope that it's him that gets to conduct the interview. Steven Moffat's column was quite humorous and I loved how enthusiastic he was about getting asked what his favourite flavour crisp was. He does get asked some strange questions but he also gives some rather witty and sometimes unrelated answers. The Season Survey results are always a favourite feature of mine and I'm very intrigued to see what the magazine's audience thought of the latest series, as well as other formatted stories. I'm bound to disagree with the results but that's only natural and that's the beauty of Doctor Who fans. We all absolutely love the show but our opinions are so differing. Things really are varied quite considerably from fan to fan and that's fantastic. I always anticipate reading Relative Dimensions with great joy as I just love everything Jacqueline Rayner does. She's a magnificent writer and her column is just superb but it will be sorely missed. I'm also looking forward to the Brian Minchin interview as well as the always excellent Galaxy Forum and DWM Review. Anyway, back to the comic strip at hand and after a fantastic cliffhanger to part two, I was looking forward to this third part. I reread the first two instalments this morning as is always my routine with DWM and DWC stories. I really liked how action packed this third part was and it really was full of pace and excitement. That's all you can ask for in a comic strip and it continued the story very nicely and was definitely the best of the three parts so far. We had people everywhere turning into humanoid Hawks whilst Jessica's Dad had run off with her after turning into one himself. Lloyd was still inside though and was actually protecting his wife and daughter from being infected like the rest of the population were. The characterisation of Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor was very good once again and I'm not sure the writers, whoever they are, ever fail in that whether it's in DWM or DWC. He's an excellent Doctor and that shows even in the comic stories. The Doctor using the TARDIS to rewrite the DNA of the local population was quite impressive but it seemed to take its toll on the old girl as the TARDIS seemed to cave in on itself. The console room was nowhere to be seen and it was hardly bigger on the inside anymore. The Doctor had overloaded her and although he was confident she'd heal and regenerate just fine, he was temporarily homeless. The Collins family soon saw to fixing that problem but I'm more interested in the TARDIS. The last time it healed and regenerated itself was in The Eleventh Hour and we got a brand new console room. I do wonder if DWM will introduce a new TARDIS interior. I highly doubt it but I'm not entirely ruling it out. The ending was interesting as it didn't state that the story was over but that was indeed the case. Overall, a great comic strip!

Rating: 9/10