Down to Earth

"A beautiful day, indeed."

Writer: Matthew Dow Smith
Format: Comic Strip
Released: August 2011
Printed in: Doctor Who Annual 2011 (Comic)

Featuring: Eleventh Doctor

Synopsis

The Eleventh Doctor continues his travels alone whilst Amy and Rory are off doing husband and wife things. He arrives in the countryside and confronts an old enemy he has already defeated in the form of Harold - a Trylonian. But why isn't he taking over the planet?

Verdict

Down to Earth was to a lovely little story to continue my reading of the first volume of IDW's Eleventh Doctor Archives and the 2011 comic strip edition of the Doctor Who Annual! It was definitely a vast improvement on the recent outings of Silent Night and Run, Doctor, Run and was just a really nice and terrific little story. As its title suggests, it was down to Earth in its nature as well as the setting and that was just a really nice direction to take the adventure. It had such a great feel to it of being genuine. I liked that the Eleventh Doctor has been somewhat getting up to some mischief without Amy and Rory accompanying him on his many adventures as he was just sat waiting for Harold to come home so he could expose him. At least, that seemed the initial intention but that is not the Doctor's way. He was keen to remove the perception filter from Harold to find out exactly who or what he was but he didn't seem too surprised when the truth was that he was in fact a Trylonian. Harold's appearance didn't change too much other than the fact he was now blue and I had found it quite intriguing up to that point that he wasn't more defensive towards the Doctor when he found him in his house, legs up on the table. That was because he had encountered the Doctor before and things didn't go too smoothly for him and his race. The Trylonians were a race intent on invading planets and taking over them and on the occasion the Doctor had met them, they were planning on taking over the Zorian home world. Everything was on track but then the Doctor showed up in his TARDIS, in an unidentified incarnation, and sent the Trylonians packing and it was because of that why Harold found himself hiding on Earth and blending in. He'd been there for nearly half a century and even though he had slowly been repairing and improving his spaceship, up to a capable place of being able to take over the planet, he had settled and really liked his new home now. Why would he wish to destroy or take over it? It was home. I thought that was really nice and the Doctor acknowledged it too which was lovely. He actually aided Harold in extending the capabilities of his perception filter to the spaceship so he would not lose his love of flying. That was what he wanted most. He was already home in his eyes and the Doctor echoed those thoughts in a lovely ending. The feel good nature of this comic strip really was wonderful and a fantastic way to do a story with a limited page count. It worked really well! Overall, a delightful little comic!

Rating: 8/10