‘Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor #3.8’ Review (aka The Lost Dimension – Part 6)
Written by George Mann | Art by Rachael Stott, Marcelo Salaza | Published by Titan Comics
So, The Lost Dimension arc, this year’s flavour of the now yearly multiple Doctors event, comes once again to a monthly book. I have said elsewhere that this year’s event, pretty much giving most of The Doctor’s incarnations their own adventures, should have taken place in their own books anyway, with a couple of Alpha and Omega bookends to tie it all up. It has ended up being a bit of a sprawling mess to be fair, lacking cohesiveness and struggling to find any sense of tension or even fun, jumping all over the place with seemingly very little payback.
For readers of the Twelfth Doctor’s book who are not following The Lost Dimension, you’ve not actually missed a great deal. A powerful force has been unleashing white holes across the universe, capable of swallowing whole planets, killing everything. Multiple Doctor’s and companions have been fighting this force across multiple times, with little luck, and fighting the accompanying zombie like ‘Peace’ virus, that infects people by touch. That virus has just turned up at St Luke’s University in Bristol, where The Doctor, Bill, Nardole have been joined by Jenny, the daughter by another Doctor (remember her?).
Turns out our trusty gang aren’t in trouble at all, as time travel artron energy cancels out the effects of the zombifying anti-energy. The TARDIS, however, doesn’t want to open itself up, which is terribly unhelpful. It finally does, and who do we find inside but The Tenth Doctor himself. Not only him, but his companions Gabby and Cindy too. Not only them, but also the Tenth Doctor’s TARDIS too, the two TARDIS’s anchored in the same space-time, a very rare occurrence. World ending catastrophe’s aside, there is a warm reunion between Jenny and her ‘dad’, the Tenth Doctor, before we get back to business.
Bad business. Unfortunately, the anti-energy is starting to take root on Earth, infecting people all over the world at a startling rate. It’s a deliberately targeted attack, aimed at high population centres worldwide, including London. Strangely, though, the infected have now started to chant ‘Doctor’ repeatedly, rather than ‘Peace’, not exactly interchangeable terms. Time to try and destroy that anti-energy while there is still time. Bill, Gabby and Cindy stay in the TARDIS while the two Doctors and Jenny make a break for it. While I was just about to make a ‘My Two Dads’ gag, it got totally ruined when a turn of the page sees The Ninth Doctor appear, also attracted by the strong anti-energy signature. As I have no ‘My Three Dads’ gags I’ll move on. Unfortunately it seems the three Doctor’s have only teamed up for nothing, as one of those huge planet-destroying white holes has appeared in the skies above the Earth. Er, help?
This was one of the best single issues to date, with George Mann crafting a story that made sense, read well, had some great character moments, and Rachael Stott and Marcelo Salaza illustrated perfectly. All the elements lacking in some of those prior books were to be found here in spades, and if all single issues could have been as good as this, this event would have been a much better one. Mann really channeled the essence of David Tennant and Peter Capaldi here, capturing their mannerisms and speech perfectly. The threat being faced is still pretty vague, and is clearly just the deus ex machina to get everyone together, but as chapters go this was the strongest.
The art also went a long way to making this particular book good. It did the routine well, that is the art was lovely to look at, clean and well defined with some lovely detail. It paced the story well, had excellent layouts and large panel splashes, and did a good job of visually capturing the Doctor’s look and mannerisms. Top job all round.
Just two chapters left, let’s hope they are as good as this one.
**** 4/5
