Run, Doctor, Run

"I seem to have gone sideways a bit."

Writer: Joshua Hale Fialkov
Format: Comic Strip
Released: August 2011
Printed in: Doctor Who Annual 2011 (Comic)

Featuring: Eleventh Doctor

Synopsis

After accidentally squishing one of its inhabitants, the Eleventh Doctor is chased through a world of varied gravitational orientations by a mob intent on killing him for his crimes. They are determined to see him answer for his actions, but the Doctor plans on making up mean up and down mean down.

Verdict

Run, Doctor, Run was a decent comic strip adventure but sadly it petered out towards the end and it seems that is exactly what is happening with this first volume of Eleventh Doctor Archives from IDW! It's a real shame as things started so well but this start to the 2011 comic strip edition of the Doctor Who Annual did not get off to a great start. I thought the playing with gravitational orientation was very good and a really great idea for the comic strip format as that was surely the most perfect platform for a story messing with gravity. It could be illustrated with ease and it wouldn't tackle the logistics that would obviously arise for a televised episode. The start of the story did not mess around with getting things started as the Doctor squashed one of the weird world's inhabitants and the other locals saw this as something quite horrendous! He had to be punished for his crimes and answer for his actions and seeing the Doctor struggling to get to grips with the differences of gravitational orientation and the lack of the laws of physics that he was used to. I did feel there needed to be a bit more dialogue at times but thankfully it was not on the horrendous level of Silent Night. I wasn't a huge fan of the characterisation for the Doctor in this one and it actually seemed like it was written for the Ninth Doctor with the amount of times he said 'fantastic'. It was quite weird in that regard. The differences of orientation should have led to more utterances of 'geronimo' but we did get one with the Doctor stuck down below from the locals that were trying to kill him. I was quite taken aback by their asking if he was okay and the Doctor seemed to be likewise. It hardly seemed the right question to ask! The Doctor was asking all about the gravitational orientation and soon worked out why it was happening. This wasn't a planet at all but rather something reminiscing a gaseous planetoid. He now knew what to do in order to return things to what he perceived as normality but it didn't seem like the locals were so willing for that to be the case. I would have liked a bit more elaboration as to why that was the case as it probably would have made the ending a bit better, but even then it was slightly confusing as the Doctor saved the day but then had to escape for making things better. It was quite a unique one, I'll give it that! I really liked the concept and I thought it was utilised well, and with a bit more dialogue and some more elaboration this definitely could have been a lot better. Overall, a decent story but it was not without its flaws.

Rating: 6/10