‘Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor #3.10’ Review
Written by Richard Dinnick | Art by Francesco Manna | Published by Titan Comics
I’ve come to learn that anything with Richard Dinnick writing it has some quality to it. Either it’s a bit quirky, mines an aspect of Dr Who others have left untouched or forgotten, or just excels at dialogue and character work. He seems to have found a good home with The Twelfth Doctor, suitably quirky and cranky in easy measure. As last issue was a ‘one and done’ deal, this issue sees the first part of a new two-parter, ‘A Confusion of Angels’. Let’s check it out.
If I had a pound for every time an adventure starts with The Doctor finding a drifting spacecraft I would be a millionaire. This time round though, The Doctor has a legitimate concern in that said giant drifting spacecraft has not issued any sort of distress call. The Doctor, Bill, and Nardole board the ship. Those three, incidentally, are now my second favourite Who trio, just behind The Ninth Doctor, Captain Jack, and Rose. A scream rings out, a death scream supposes The Doctor , so ‘no rush then’. Heh. A quick check on the onboard database reveals this is a container ship belonging To Max Capricorn. You may remember Max from the TV episode, ‘Voyage of the Damned’, when he attempted to blow up the Earth by steering his superliner Titanic into it, a plan foiled by The Tenth Doctor and, er, Kylie Minogue.
Max died though, right? Yes he did, but he did have those angelic looking killer robots The Host working for him. Wonder if they are anywhere about…First things first, The Doctor has to save the crew, who must be very scared and afraid. Actually they aren’t really, but some crew are apparently missing and unaccounted for. The crew out searching for them mistake The Doctor and companions for space pirates, and only Bill manages to escape in the ensuing scuffle. The Doctor learns a killer is on the loose on the ship, and the ship has indeed been sabotaged. While the crew are explaining all this, The Doctor sneaks out and fixes their distress beacon, something that helps persuade them he is not the killer. Or a pirate. At least, not officially. Bill has bumped into someone in the hold, someone doing some innocent tinkering. If you count seemingly building hundreds of new killer Host robots as ‘innocent’ tinkering. Seems The Host are back.
I told you Richard Dinnick takes bits from here and there to craft great stories, and this issue once again proves that. Not many have returned to that TV story to revisit The Heavenly Host, and after reading this you wonder why. A nice little twist on the spaceship in space tale, a little bit of an Alien homage in its feel, and some nice dialogue again between The Doctor and companions.
The art by Francesco Manna, and colours by Hi-Fi, were also nicely done. Manna paced the story out well, nice mix up of panel sizes and design, and of course good likenesses. I especially liked the two page spread that revealed The Heavenly Host, and the Weeping Angel in the shadows in panel 1 on Page 17. Just a little artistic Easter Egg sneaked in, or anything more? All good fun.
Another solid, fun story, making good use of The Doctor’s strengths, and using elements of past continuity to make new stories work even better. The Twelfth Doctor remains a consistently great read with Richard Dinnick at the helm. They both like shenanigans after all.
**** 4/5
