Cat Litter

"He makes up all the rules as he goes along."

Writer: Marc Platt
Format: Comic Strip
Released: October 1992
Printed in: DWM 192

Featuring: Seventh Doctor, Ace

Synopsis

Trapped in the TARDIS with its internal dimensions in constant flux, Ace must try and find the Doctor and work out just what is happening. Why is she so obsessed with how she compares with previous companions? And what will the TARDIS decide her fate to be?

Verdict

Cat Litter was sadly an extremely average end to my reading of the Evening's Empire graphic novel. I really cannot recall a collection of stories as mixed in quality as this one as we really did have some wonderful ones mixed in with some quite awful ones and some of my first consistently low ratings in a very long time. However, this has more or less completed my reading of the Seventh Doctor's run in the Doctor Who Magazine comic strips in a very jumbled order but at least they're now all blogged! I'm getting somewhere close to catching up now which is quite surprising really. I don't know how I'll manage once I have caught up! Anyhow, this isn't likely to be one that lives long in my memory and it really did have the feel of it being a filler story which was a bit of a shame. Even though I am yet to delve into the Virgin New Adventures, I really liked how this comic strip was trying to tie in with what was occurring there and there was also a nice reference to Memorial. That's pretty much where the good ended though and instead we just got Ace running around the innards of the TARDIS in a pretty meaningless story. There was nothing happening and Ace was just lost. We saw a humorous stamp of Frobisher's memory as companion but I was really put off by Ace's comments concerning herself and the Doctor's previous companions. She didn't seem too distressed or respectful of those companions that died when travelling with the Doctor and she thought she was the most important one. I didn't like that at all. I also couldn't understand why the panels of this comic strip were numbered and counted down. It didn't add anything to the story and just had me waiting for its purpose to be revealed, but sadly nothing ever came of it which I found really odd. The Doctor barely featured which was a shame but his end conversation with Ace did little to reveal just what had been going on. Would the TARDIS really be preparing for a new companion with the old one still inside? I couldn't buy into that. I like that the TARDIS has a mind of its own and could reconfigure its dimensions at will, but what would its problem with Ace be? This comic strip was clearly a way to write Ace out of the comics for a little while at least, but I thought it could have been done with a bit more quality. Overall, a bit of a disappointing end to the collection.

Rating: 5/10