Bloodsport Part 1

"The blood-right of this kill belongs to us!"

Writer: Mark Wright
Format: Comic Strip
Released: 20th October 2016
Printed in: DWM 505

Featuring: Twelfth Doctor, Jess

Synopsis

The Twelfth Doctor takes Jessica and Max Collins to look at some impressive artwork but a peaceful visit to a gallery soon turns sinister as it becomes the central location of a quite barbaric alien hunt. Jess and Max soon get captured and when people start getting killed, the Doctor has his work cut out for him...

Verdict

Bloodsport kicked off in excellent style with this fantastic first part of the story! It was pretty much everything you could ask for in the opening part of a comic strip adventure but I'll get to some of the details shortly. As is usual in my blogging of the comic stories from Doctor Who Magazine, I like to talk about the magazine itself and I must start off by saying that I'm pretty disappointed in the permanent increase of price to £5.99. For a magazine, that seems quite hefty I must say and I must admit that I have questioned whether I will continue to purchase the magazine. I mean, I surely will as with Doctor Who Comic being released on the same day now the pair come to a tenner and that doesn't make things seem so bad as DWC is incredible value for money in my opinion. There's nothing extra to warrant the price change though and that's slightly annoying. But despite that, this looks set to be an excellent issue once again and with it being released nine days ago, I have already read some of it. I'm thrilled to see that there will be more BBC original audios with the Twelfth Doctor coming early next year as I really enjoyed the Winter story arc and I'm intrigued to see how things will pan out with Clara a thing of the past now. I mentioned in my blogging of The Green Death that I really was fascinated by Steven Moffat's column and I thought Galaxy Forum was good but I was surprised to see a lot of positivity about Jonathan Morris and his feature on the Cybermen in the previous issue. I thought it was horrific and really just made a mockery of the excellent villains. This issue seems to be quite centred on the tenth anniversary of Torchwood which is an anniversary absolutely worth celebrating and I'm just glad that Big Finish is able to give us a celebratory story. I remain hopeful that it will one day return to television but as much as I'm excited about Class, I think that only hinders a possible return. The preview for the spinoff was good but I did think it would get more coverage in the magazine as a whole. Another preview I'm looking very forward to reading is that of The Power of the Daleks. I still can't quite believe that this story is getting a DVD release and has had all six parts animated. It's going to be a joyous watch. Now, back to the comic strip itself and I'm gonna go ahead and say that Jess has now become the companion for the Twelfth Doctor in the gap between television series. She's a very good character and I liked how Max also made an appearance here and absolutely loved what was going on! The story was full of action after starting off with the Doctor's love of art and things really did escalate quickly. The characterisation of Peter Capaldi's incarnation was fantastic I must say. The concept behind the Kolothos Hunt was pretty barbaric but I just loved how Skadi oozed confidence when it came to the natives. They killed easily and their hunt was soon complete without much resistant. They just seemed to be playing a game and the Doctor would be having none of it. Jess and Max managed to get themselves captured aboard the impressive alien ship but the latter just seemed to be enjoying himself which was a change from the norm. The cliffhanger was excellent with a horrifying proposal put forward to Jessica and whilst she'll surely decline, I get the feeling she might not have much choice. Overall, a brilliant start to the story!