The choice of Gary Russell to write this series is a very interesting one. He is a man of many layers. He’s outspoken and wonderfully frank about most things. He very genuinely loves ‘Doctor Who’. He really does. And he *gets* ‘Doctor Who’ his run as producer of Big Finish’s line of ‘Who’ audio dramas still stands as some of the best ‘Who’ ever – with titles like ‘Jubilee’, ‘The Natural History of Fear’ and ‘Spare Parts’ going beyond being good ‘Who’ and becoming Just Good Drama.
But, sadly, as much as I love Gary Russell, he can’t write.
He just can’t.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that he is responsible for the two worst pieces of ‘Who’ fiction to ever carry the official stamp of the BBC – those being the books ‘Divided Loyalties’ and ‘Invasion of the Cat People’.
He writes illegible, overlong, surreal, muddy and confusing fanfic. For instance, I have read this comic two and a half times and still have no idea what happens. It’s just pictures and words. Russell seems to have a rather magic talent of Just Not Getting characters voices. I mean, I know that the lead is David Tennent’s Doctor, well, because it looks like him and he sounds (or is that reads?) a little like him. But… he’s just a bit off, like they got a moderately good twelve-year cos-player in to play the part this series (all my criticism of this issue can be easily applied to the previous one). And, well, Martha may as well be generic companion two – the bolshy one.
None of this is at all helped by the art which is by turns odd and completely insane. There are multiple pages this issue where there seems to be no logic to events. Like, at all. I mean, the second page… what… what’s actually going on? Did the artist even know?
But, still, I’m gonna keep buying this series, well, because I love ‘Doctor Who’ and it deserves a comic and, so, I am to weather the storm really.
…
Sigh.
Pia Guerra can’t come soon enough.