ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
This does not get off to a particularly promising start, being a rather slim story with a great deal of padding. Sadly, padding is something of a running thread through this series of six interrelated tales. The second instalment has whole pages of the Doctor and Martha dressing up and chatting on the bus which squeezes out the ultimately rather confused plot. It is never clear entirely what is going on, or why, and Hentopet and Bubastion’s motives seem to change from panel to panel. The third instalment sees the Doctor and Martha pratting about testing the TARDIS’ exo-shell, gabbing about Martha’s family and chatting about the Skarasen and the Borad in Loch Ness. Hardly essential stuff, especially when it gets in the way of another confusing and badly resolved plot. The New Earth-type setting with the Catkind also feels tired, especially when we had the Sycorax only two issues before. There’s even more padding and waffle (this time about TARDIS functions) in the fourth instalment, which takes an astonishing seven pages to get to the plot. The middle pages of this episode are deeply confusing, either because it’s been badly scripted or badly illustrated or something has been missed out, but I can’t work out at all what’s supposed to be going at the bottom of Page 11. The final pages of this strip are, though, reasonably intriguing. Even with explanations forthcoming in the fifth instalment, things get hopelessly confusing, particularly Tharlot’s motives, not to mention the motives of the Pantheon. It all comes to an enormous anti-climax in the sixth issue as the Doctor does something with the sonic screwdriver that he could have done in the previous instalment. We are also left with a rather large unanswered question: why did the Pantheon leave one member of each species behind? On the final page, the Doctor says he never wants to see, hear or read about the Pantheon ever again. I’m afraid I’m in complete agreement with him on that one. This is really rather a mess.
 

Doctor and Martha discover that at midnight the defences around the city will come down allowing whatever is in the savannah beyond to enter the city and destroy all traces of humankind. Sure enough, at midnight, giant armoured cat creatures attack the city. Searching the city for the leader of the liberation cult, the Doctor and Martha find Bubastion who reveals that the Pantheon Elite are not of this universe but plan to take over the planet as a base of operations. Something is coming and they are testing the Doctor, making him ready for that moment.

The TARDIS is drawn to a mechanical planet where the Doctor and Martha are pursued by robots. They escape in a lift and, on the top floor of the building, discover Professor Tharlot, only survivor of Omphalos. The Doctor communicates with the sole survivors of ten other worlds, but quickly exposes Tharlot who has been spying on the Doctor’s adventures. Tharlot escapes but Martha has discovered that the robots are not hostile, they are simply looking for a leader. They reveal that Tharlot is a criminal. The Doctor discovers a holographic projection showing ten worlds in perfect alignment, which leads him to guess that one of the faces on screen was actually Tharlot’s accomplice. Tharlot captures the TARDIS, then attempts to kill the Doctor and Martha by blowing up the robots, but they discover an impossibly large room and, inside, Tharlot who sends them via a space-time portal to find ‘the leash’. Meanwhile the ten aligned worlds create a tear in the fabric of the universe through which something is emerging. Tharlot reports to the Pantheon Elite that he has the Doctor safe. Unaware that they have been betrayed, they are relieved because he is vital to what comes next.

The Doctor and Martha arrive at Ainsworth Point, Cumbria in North West England in September 1957 where Martha is shot. The Doctor carries her to Ainsworth House, a building occupied by the Ministry of Defence where he passes himself off as Doctor Harold Sullivan on a surprise inspection. Martha recovers but realises that Nurse Nancy is actually Brel-Whispah, a shape-shifting member of the Pantheon Elite sent to protect her. The Doctor, meanwhile, works out that the universe is under threat from an evil primal force. The Pantheon Elite was set up to protect the universe and employed Silas Wain who in turn roped in Tharlot and selected the Doctor to save the universe at the cost of his own life. However, they hadn’t bargained on Tharlot turning traitor, and he is in Ainsworth House and in charge of a huge pan-dimensional sonic gun that he helped the MoD build. After destroying Brel-Whispah, he turns the weapon on the Doctor and Martha.

Tharlot wants the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver which, joined with his weapon, will allow him to rule the universe, but the Doctor uses the screwdriver to repel the effects of the weapon. Temporarily defeated, Tharlot teleports away with his weapon, but the sonic screwdriver records an energy trace. The Doctor summons the Pantheon. The alignment of planets was the Pantheon’s attempt to seal the breach, but now they need to get to the TARDIS. Silas Wain is returned home, but he has unfinished business with the Doctor and wants Martha’s ancestry traced. The Doctor, Martha and the TARDIS are transported to the centre of a battle between the ten kidnapped alien races and Tharlot’s horde of robots. The Doctor turns his sonic screwdriver on Tharlot’s sonic weapon and Tharlot is destroyed. He then uses the sonic weapon and the mental energies of the kidnapped races to blast the creature back through the breach.

SCRIPT: Tony Lee
ART: Issue 1: Pia Guerra (art), Kent Archer & Shaynne Corbett (ink assist), Charlie Kirchoff (colour), Issue 2: Pia Guerra (art), Kent Archer (flashback sequence inks), Charlie Kirchoff and Kris Carter (colour), Issue 3: Stefano Martino (art), Liam Shalloo & Kris Carter (colour), Neil Uyetake (production), Issue 4: Kelly Yates (art), Kris Carter & Charlie Kirchoff (colour), Pia Guerra (pencils p21-22), Kent Archer (inks p21-22), Neil Uyetake (production), Issue 5: Pia Guerra (pencils), Kent Archer (inks), Charlie Kirchoff (colour), Neil Uyetake (production), Issue 6: Kelly Yates (pencils), Rick Ketcham with Brian Shearer, John Wycough & Kelly Yates (inks) Kris Carter (colour), Neil Uyetake (production)
LETTERS: Neil Uyetake (1), Comicraft’s Richard Starkings (2-6)
EDITOR: Chris Ryall & Tom Waltz (1), Denton J. Tipton (2-6)

ISSUES: 1- 6
COVER DATES: August 2008 - January 2009
ON TV: The Next Doctor
IN DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE: The Widow’s Curse - The Stockbridge Child
IN DOCTOR WHO ADVENTURES: The Lavender Hill Blob - The Parrian Proposal
IN DOCTOR WHO BATTLES IN TIME: - Swarm of the Zenith - Metal Mania
REPRINTS: Reprinted in the ‘graphic novel’ The Forgotten, released by IDW in April 2009, which was rereleased with new cover in April 2013.

The Doctor wakes up in a strange room without the TARDIS or the sonic screwdriver. He finds Martha and they explore the building, which is actually a museum dedicated to the Doctor and his adventures. When the Doctor says he’d be lost without his previous incarnations, a stranger in a darkly lit room decides to test that theory. The Doctor becomes weak and loses all of his memories before his encounter with the Sycorax on Christmas Day a couple of years before. Martha brings him his first incarnation’s walking stick and he tells her a story from that time (see here). The stranger reveals to himself that he will force the Doctor to regenerate so that he can steal the Doctor's remaining incarnations. The Doctor collapses, one of his hearts having stopped.

Martha performs CPR, bringing the Doctor back to consciousness. They explore more of the museum and find his second incarnation’s recorder. He tells Martha a story from his second Incarnation (see here). The watching stranger unleashes an Auton on the Doctor and Martha. The Doctor remembers his third incarnation as Martha hands him the keys to Bessie (see here), then dispatches the Auton with a can of Nitro-9, but it seems that the TARDIS has been destroyed.

Martha questions whether the TARDIS has actually gone. They find a bag of jelly babies which reminds the Doctor of his fourth incarnation (see here), and then a cricket ball which reminds him of his fifth incarnation (see here). The Doctor finds Martha holding Ace's cricket bat ready to defend herself. The mysterious onlooker releases a swarm of giant spiders from Metebelis 3.

The Doctor uses the stone that powers the sonic screwdriver to distract the spiders allowing him and Martha to escape. While he is weakened, she hands him a cat badge which reminds him of his sixth incarnation (see here) and an umbrella reminds him of his seventh incarnation (see here). Drinking a restorative hidden in the handle of the umbrella, the Doctor regains his strength, but when the cloister bell starts ringing and Martha identifies it without ever having heard it, the Doctor realises something is wrong. His unseen opponent distracts him by activating a Clockwork Driod and a Voc robot. However, we now see that the TARDIS is still in space, the cloister bell ringing, and the Doctor unconscious on the floor with a large insect attached to his neck.

Attacked by the robots, the Doctor and Martha escape. Martha hands the Doctor a cravat belonging to his eighth incarnation, and the Doctor tells her about that incarnation (see here), and then, when presented with the psychic paper, about his ninth incarnation (see here). When Martha presents him with a chameleon arch, the Doctor regains the last of his memories and realises that she isn’t Martha at all but actually the TARDIS. However the version of the Tenth Doctor produced during the meta-crisis aboard the Daleks’ Crucible (Journey’s End) arrives with the Clockwork Droid and the Voc Robot and threatens to steal the Doctor's remaining regenerations so that he can regenerate himself.

The clone Doctor is revealed to be Es’cartrss of the Tactire, a cranial parasite, and one of the races aboard the Crucible in the Medusa Cascade who gained access to the TARDIS and attached itself to the Doctor. However, the psionic link the Time Lord shared with the TARDIS was enough to forge a link between his body and the TARDIS matrix they are now in, but Es-cartrss was dragged in too and placed in control. The Doctor and ‘Martha’, who changes into Harry Sullivan to tackle the Clockwork Droid and Leela to tackle the Voc, run, but it is the Doctor and Mel who find the robots guarding a doorway in the same area the Auton chased them away from. Removing the ‘perception filter’ from Ace’s baseball bat reveals it to be the Key of Rassilon. The TARDIS attempts to gain access to the door disguised as Steven Taylor, but the robots are defending the door against all organic lifeforms. However, when it adopts the form of Kamelion it is able to enter. Inside, the Doctor finds that Es’cartrss has hotwired an old TARDIS console to power the matrix. Unable to turn it off, the TARDIS, now disguised as Adric, resorts to a can of Nitro-9. Es’cartrss attacks the Doctor, but the Doctor summons his other selves who join minds to erase the erroneous data in the Matrix - Es’cartrss. As the other Doctors fade, the Doctor is left alone with just the TARDIS exterior. After a reunion with an imaginary Susan, the Doctor steps through the door and back into the real TARDIS and consciousness.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Like the very worst excesses of fan fiction, this story is fashioned out of continuity and then crammed full with even more pointless continuity and then fancily decorated with still more annoying continuity references until the story (such as it is) drowns in its own self-obsession. It’s like the worst excesses of Seasons 20 - 22 turned up to eleven. If you love continuity then this is definitely the story for you. If you don’t then you will probably loath this appalling nonsense almost as much as I do. The artwork is generally rudimentary, the likenesses appalling. The only saving grace is the colour which is gorgeous.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
With a nice sense of fairy tale and a strong emotional core, this is actually a very good story let down horribly by highly experimental artwork where the heads appear to be screen-captured and Photoshopped and the rest of the frame appears to have been added in by a six year old with a felt tip. It’s definitely not to my tastes and seriously undermines the story, which is a great shame.

SCRIPT: Leah Moore, John Reppion
ART: Ben Templesmith (art and colour)
LETTERS: Comicraft’s Richard Starkings
EDITOR: Denton J. Tipton

COVER DATE: February 2009
IN DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE: The Stockbridge Child
IN DOCTOR WHO ADVENTURES: The Parrian Proposal - The Greed of the Gavulav
IN DOCTOR WHO BATTLES IN TIME: - About Last Night - Dark Side of the Moon
REPRINTS: Reprinted in the ‘graphic novel’ Through Time and Space, released by IDW in December 2009.

When Martha complains that they're out of milk, the Doctor aims the TARDIS for a grocery shop, but instead lands in the Whispering Gallery on Grått. The gallery is filled with pictures of the deceased, and each picture contains a small fragment of the dead person's consciousness, specifically their final thoughts before death. The Doctor recalls having once met and travelled with a young female Gråttite named Grayla. He gave her a taste of the universe beyond her home planet, where any display of emotion is outlawed. The Doctor is saddened to find Grayla's picture among the displays, with her final thought being a warning to the Doctor about displaying emotion on Grått. The Doctor leaves the gallery in search of Grayla's grave, leaving Martha alone in the gallery.

The Doctor soon discovers the reason behind the Gråttites' lack of emotion, a monster called a Morkon that feeds on emotion. The Gråttites blocked off their emotions to starve it, but it was Grayla’s return following her single journey in the TARDIS that awakened it and made it stronger than ever, sending it on a rampage. Martha, meanwhile, finds herself compelled to rearrange the gallery to fulfil the last wishes of some of its exhibits, pairing the paintings so they can finally express how they felt about each other, but she realises the futility of her action and is overcome with grief. This is when the Morkon finds her. She barricades herself in the TARDIS. The Doctor arrives just in time, tempting the Morkon with his emotions. He feeds it such misery and darkness, the creature grows rapidly until it explodes. The Gråttites are finally free to express their emotions.

SCRIPT: Tony Lee
ART: Paul Grist (art), Phil Elliott (colour)
LETTERS: Malaka Studio
DESIGN: Neil Uyetake
EDITOR: Denton J. Tipton

COVER DATE: May 2009
IN DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE: The Age of Ice
IN DOCTOR WHO ADVENTURES: The Spirit of Ashgar - Code Freeze
IN DOCTOR WHO BATTLES IN TIME: - The End
REPRINTS: Reprinted in the ‘graphic novel’ Through Time and Space, released by IDW in December 2009.

London 1889, and HG Wells takes renown physicist Jonathan Smith to meet the Doctor, who turned up a couple of days before needing Wells’ help. The TARDIS has run out of power, he needs to get to Cardiff to gather enough Rift energy to jump start the machine, but the Torchwood Institute are after him, tracking the TARDIS’s chronal signature. Making their way across London in search of apparatus, Smith, unnoticed by the Doctor, deliberately puts Torchwood on their trail and Wells is captured and interrogated. Apparently won over by the Torchwood Institute’s claims about the nature of the Doctor, Wells offers to bring the Doctor in himself, and it looks like he will be true to his word as he gets Smith to hold the Doctor at bay while he goes to summon Torchwood. Alone with Smith, the Doctor identifies him as a time traveller from the 51st Century in league with Magnus Greel, who has travelled back to prevent Greel’s death at the Doctor’s hands. Revealing that he has set Smith up with a faked diary written by Wells and placed for Smith to find in the future and the powerless TARDIS story, the Doctor dematerialises leaving Smith at the mercy of Torchwood. Wells identifies Smith as the Doctor and he is taken away by the Institute. The Doctor meets up with Wells to explain what happened, but is forced to slip away before his fourth incarnation and Leela arrive for a night at the theatre.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Because this is a Tony Lee story there is a superabundance of tedious continuity references bogging things down (Timelash - seemingly a Lee favourite -, Boomtown, Shada, Tooth and Claw, An Unearthly Child, The Unquiet Dead, Ghostlight, Inferno, the Torchwood series) and the story itself is both a prequel and sequel to The Talons of Weng-Chiang. But it isn’t a very interesting one because people just stand around espousing the explanations rather than doing things. Frankly, the idea of the Doctor trying to get to Cardiff to refuel the TARDIS while pursued by Torchwood is a much stronger and more dynamic idea than this convoluted indulgence.

Paul Grist’s artwork always strikes me as being rather too comic in style to really carry a Doctor Who story. This largely atmosphere-free tale isn’t hampered too much by his work, but it isn’t much helped by it either.
 

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
The art and colour work is a definite step up, but the plot about the Doctor leading a robot revolution against a stagnant society is so cliched and stale it’s like it’s escaped from an early 1980s Doctor Who annual.
 

beautiful paradise, but the inhabitants have stagnated and spend all their lives contemplating past works of literature, art, and mathematics while their robot slaves do everything physical. What's more, the Autopians sentence the travellers to be executed, as they did with the Chronos Mission. The travellers convince the robot assigned to carry out the sentence, named Sam by Donna, not to go through with it, and to let the Doctor upgrade him and all the other robots to full sentience. The freed robots plan to kill their former masters, but the Doctor makes them realise that this would mean they were no better than the Autopians. Both groups wonder what they should do with their lives now. Donna hits upon the idea of making idyllic Autopia open to the rest of the universe as a spa world, with the robots in charge and the Autopians as concierges. The Doctor thinks this is a genius idea.

Aboard the TARDIS, the Doctor decides that he needs to be alone and moves the TARDIS to the Dead Zone, the closest the universe gets to absolute nothingness, so he can meditate, but once there he receives a distress signal. Following it, he finds a space station in the middle of the nothingness, but when he materialises aboard he is quickly arrested by Inspector Mozz, a gasbag from Gallibuitas Xenax. Mozz and Inspector Looz explain the situation to the Doctor. The station is a refuge from a plague which ravaged the galaxy centuries ago, passed through communication. However, a distress signal was sent from the station and a Krotonic creature killed trying to stop it. The culprit has been identified as Tx and is in custody. However, he is a member of the Counter Family, whose timelines run backwards. This means they cannot understand him and for some reason he calls Mozz his mother. The Doctor realises he can interrogate Tx through the TARDIS. Once the room is secured, he continually travels back through his own timeline to respond to the last statement made by Tx until he has pieced together all the information: Tx was born one day ago from Mozz and Looz. His people were born from the destruction of the space station sometime in the future. Tx sent the distress signal in order to save the linear life forms from the destruction which will be his ancestor's creation. Outside, the Doctor explains Tx’s actions to Mozz and Looz but the information is tantamount to a full confession. They have no option but to execute him. The Doctor convinces them to allow Tx to spend a final day with his family. When Mozz and Looz come to execute, Tx they are surprised to find the Counter Family ecstatic. The Doctor explains that this is not a sad time but a time of birth. Mozz and Looz finally understand and execute Tx. He dies in the Doctor's arms. The Doctor heads back to the TARDIS, telling the inspectors to prepare for what is to come. Just outside his TARDIS, the Doctor meets himself from yesterday who then takes that TARDIS back to the cell the day before. The Doctor enters the newly arrived TARDIS and dematerialises, now intent on finding company.

IMAGINARY FRIENDS - MATTHEW FINNEGAN
Runner at United Actors Studios in Hollywood, 1926, a job he had held from the age of fourteen, and - although it’s never made completely clear, seemingly the boyfriend or at least very close friend of Emily Winter. He can drive a car but has never owned one. After helping the Doctor defeat the Terronites in late June, he and Emily asked to join him on his travels, a request the Doctor initially refused. He changed his mind after the events of Fugitive and they joined him on his travels. Although Emily took to the adventurous lifestyle like a natural, Matthew, though brave and resourceful, was more awkward and unsure of himself, traits that allowed the Advocate to place doubts in his mind about the Doctor’s morals and motivation, about his own usefulness as a member of the crew and about the relationship between Emily and the Doctor. She amplifies these doubts by telling him about Adric’s fate and giving him the forged diary of Turlough until, after the events of Don’t Step on the Grass, he elects to travel with the Advocate rather than the Doctor and Emily. It can be no accident that Matthew wears the same colours as Adric, sides with the baddies, has a bowl haircut and is called Matthew. Because of the Advocate’s machinations, it is two years before the TARDIS catches up with him on a war-torn planet that will one day become Terron V. Despite realising the Advocate’s evil nature, she still used him to activate the terraforming device that would erase every lifeform on the planet. Only his palm-print could deactivate it again, but she rigged the panel to kill anyone who touched it. The Doctor tried to stop Matthew touching the panel, but he tricked the Doctor and made the sacrifice, killing the Advocate at the same time. However, this was always the destiny that he had planned for himself, for this fusing of his and the Advocate’s energies in his last moments created the Tef’Aree, a non-linear being from fifth-dimensional space able to exist in all moments. As the Tef’Aree, he manipulated the Advocate and set up the whole series of situations that would eventually result in his own creation. And if that doesn’t make your brain hurt then you’re just not thinking about it hard enough.
 

SCRIPT: Richard Starkings, from a plot by Gary Russell
ART: Adrian Salmon (art), Kris Carter (colour), Ceri Carter (colour assist)
LETTERS: Richard Starkings
DESIGN: Amauri Osorio
EDITOR: Denton J. Tipton

COVER DATE: August 2009
IN DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE: The Age of Ice
IN DOCTOR WHO ADVENTURES: Sweet Dreams - The Sparkling Planet
REPRINTS: Reprinted in the ‘graphic novel’ Through Time and Space, released by IDW in December 2009.

When Lady Adjit Kwan becomes Empress of the royal house of Adjit Assan on the male-dominated Draconia, Earth dispatches adjudicators to try to avert the brewing civil war. However, their spaceship is destroyed. Unaware of these events, the Doctor is heading to the opera on Coronis Minor, but he and Donna end up on Draconia and, thanks to the psychic paper, are soon recognised as Earth adjudicators. Attacked by the brothers of Fuseck Kljuco, the Doctor is taken prisoner, and Donna survives thanks only to the intervention of Ice Warriors. The Ice Lord insists that they must rescue the Doctor or impose martial law on Draconia. The Doctor meets Fuseck Kljuco, a scarred Draconian, who knows the Doctor cannot be the adjudicator as their ship was destroyed hours ago. He locks the Doctor up awaiting execution. Donna and the Martians are led to the Empress' throne room. The Ice Lord explains that the house of Jandi Hussan does not wish to accept the rule of women. In prison, the Doctor befriends a female Draconian prisoner named Agita and releases her and himself with the sonic screwdriver. They head for the palace. Discovering the prisoners gone, Kljuco decides he must kill the Empress himself. Donna berates the Draconian houses for not accepting female rule and they heed her words and unite. The Doctor and Agita arrive. Kljuco gets inside the palace and, jumping between the Martians, fires his gun at Empress Kwan, but Agita gets in the way and is killed by the blast. Kljuco is restrained by the Martians. The Ice Lord tells the Draconian representatives they should immediately ratify Kwan as Empress and place Kljuco on trial for treason.

SCRIPT: Tony Lee
ART: Matthew Dow Smith (art), Charlie Kirchoff (colour)
LETTERS: Chris Mowry (3), Robbie Robbins (4), Neil Uyetake (5 - 6)
EDITOR: Denton J. Tipton

ISSUES: 3 - 6
COVER DATE: September 2009 - December 2009
ON TV: The Waters of Mars, The End of Time
IN DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE: The Deep Hereafter - Ghosts of the Northern Line
IN DOCTOR WHO ADVENTURES: The Curse of Vladula - We Will Rock You
REPRINTS: Reprinted in the ‘graphic novel’ Fugitive, released by IDW in March 2010, and then in Winter’s Dawn, Season’s End, August 2013 (see cover below).

The Doctor is placed on trial by the Shadow Proclamation for transgressing the laws of time and saving Emily’s life when she should have died. Acting as prosecutor is Mr Finch (from School Reunion). Acting in defence of the Doctor is the Advocate, who sees no way for him to win the trial and urges him to escape. The Doctor is unable to do this and is sentenced to imprisonment on the planet Volag-Noc. However, aboard the prison barge he is incarcerated with a Draconian, a Sontaran and an Ogron and, learning his name, the Ogron attempts to throttle him.

The Doctor escapes the Ogron then, getting his fellow prisoners onside and learning that they are all diplomats seeking peace at a conference on Luna IV, he takes control of the ship. Finch sends gunships to destroy them, but the Doctor forces a crash landing on a barren desert world.

The Doctor and his fellow prisoners survive the crash, but the Judoon, under orders from Finch, land nearby. The Doctor’s party take control of the Judoon ship and blast off for Luna IV. Meanwhile, the Advocate and the Shadow Architect learn of Finch’s attempts to half the peace process but are unable to stop him and the Advocate is killed. Emerging from hyperspace above Luna IV, the Doctor finds a welcoming committee of Judoon and Krillitane.. Finch threatens to kill every member of the Shadow Proclamation unless the Doctor surrenders. The Doctor complies but threatens to bring Finch’s plans to an end.

The Draconian, Sontaran and Ogron have summoned their own forces who dispatch the Krillitanes, but Finch escapes with the Shadow Architect. The Doctor’s party rescue her and reveal Finch to actually be a shape-shifting Gizou. The Shadow Proclamation reveals that the Doctor’s trial was a set-up to draw Finch’s plans into the open. They return him to Hollywood 1926 to collect the Terronite Transference machine where he invites Matthew Finnegan and Emily Winter to travel with him. However, the Advocate is not dead, and Finch is in her employ. The Doctor now has the machine that will allow her to control the most powerful weapon ever devised.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Oh Lord, more fannish dribble that manages to make Doctor Who feel tired, stale and running out of ideas. Here we have yet another plot entirely crafted out of continuity, dragging in School Reunion, The End of Time, The Brain of Morbius, The War Games/Trial of a Time Lord, Battlefield, Ogrons, Sontarans, Draconians (who for some mysterious reason see the Doctor as an enemy), Stockbridge, and even Charley Pollard from Big Finish’s audio productions. The plot is slight and many of the twists are frankly unbelievable, particularly the Advocate’s plans and Finch’s role in them. The artwork is rudimentary at best.
 

SCRIPT: Charlie Kirchoff
ART: Tom Mandrake (art), Charlie Kirchoff (colour)
LETTERS: Chris Mowry
EDITOR: Denton J. Tipton

COVER DATE: September 2009
IN DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE: The Deep Hereafter
IN DOCTOR WHO ADVENTURES: The Sparkling Planet - Foot Soldiers
REPRINTS: Reprinted in the ‘graphic novel’ Through Time and Space, released by IDW in December 2009.

Aiming to witness The Beatles' famed rooftop concert in 1969, the Doctor and Martha instead find themselves in rural England in 1669, where there appears to be an outbreak of the Black Death, three years after it was supposedly eradicated. Villagers claim to have been cured by a faith healer, who the Doctor decides to visit at the local church, suspecting a connection. Martha stays behind to help care for the sick, but is attacked by one of the doctors who are actually aliens. The Doctor is led to the faith healer by Father Chadwick Vita and realises that he is not the source of the plague, Once outside he encounters Martha, who has been infected. The doctors reveal themselves to be Macro-Virus. The Doctor barricades himself in the church but some of the infected villagers transform into Macro-Virus. Father Vita and the Doctor try to protect the healer from the oncoming Macro-Virus. The Doctor realises the healer's true identity, and makes its full strength return by urging it on to be brave and save the Father. The healer multiplies and defeats the Macro-Virus. The Doctor takes the original healer into the TARDIS where it heals Martha. The Doctor then takes it and its new army home to defeat the Macro-Virus there.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
The artwork is glorious, detailed and atmospheric with excellent colour work that really helps to sell this slightly strange but largely enjoyable high-concept tale. The setting and the use of plague doctors is vaguely reminiscent of the Battles in Time strip Plague Panic.
 

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Tony Lee probably bathes in continuity. He probably eats it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He probably saves some for supper. He probably sleeps in a bed of it and wears it out to the shops. Here we get the Tenth Doctor showing off all his previous outfits, mention of Adric, the Cloister Bell, Castrovalva, K9, The TV Movie, Turlough, The Invasion of Time, An Unearthly Child, and Boomtown. If the elements were woven into a coherent story I wouldn’t mind so much, but they’re not, and the plot remains annoyingly incoherent. The title on the comic book version is spelled wrong too.
 

SCRIPT: Tony Lee
ART: Al Davison (art), Lovern Kindzierski (colour)
LETTERS: Neil Uyetake
EDITOR: Denton J. Tipton

ISSUES: 7 - 8
COVER DATE: January 2010 - February 2010
ON TV: The End of Time Part Two
IN DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE: Ghosts of the Northern Line - The Crimson Hand
IN DOCTOR WHO ADVENTURES: We Will Rock You - Junk Food
REPRINTS: Reprinted in the ‘graphic novel’ Tessaract, released by IDW in October 2010, and then in Winter’s Dawn, Season’s End, August 2013 (see cover below).

As the Doctor gives his new companions, Emily Winter and Matthew Finnegan, a tour of the TARDIS wardrobe, the vessel is invaded by dimension-hopping aliens called the Acari led by the Advocate. They are intent on killing the Doctor. The breech of the TARDIS by the Acari spaceship forces the TARDIS interior to rearrange itself, displacing the console room. Unless they find an echo of it, the TARDIS will implode. The Advocate places doubt into Matthew’s mind about the Doctor's morality by urging him to read the secret diary of Turlough, while Emily stumbles through a tear in time and discovers the Tef'Aree, beings from outside linear time, who sentence her to death for trespassing.

The Tef’Aree spare Emily, hoping that she can save them. Because the Doctor is psychically linked to the TARDIS, the trauma of having the Acari ship aboard causes the Doctor to undergo temporary mental instability and his past selves begin to bleed through. However, his attempt to restore the TARDIS is too late and the TARDIS is destroyed. Only Emily survives in the Tef-Aree dimension. They return her to the TARDIS seconds before it is destroyed where she helps the Doctor save the ship. The Acari ship separates from the TARDIS, but not before the Advocate takes the Terronite technology. Before they can enjoy their victory, the Doctor's mobile phone rings. Martha Jones calls with an urgent appeal for the Doctor to return to Earth and help UNIT solve a mysterious new problem.

SCRIPT: Tony Lee
ART: Blair Shedd (art), Charlie Kirchoff (colour)
LETTERS: Robbie Robbins (9), Neil Uyetake (10 - 12)
EDITOR: Denton J. Tipton

ISSUES: 9 - 12
COVER DATE: March 2010 - June 2010
ON TV: The Eleventh Hour - The Big Bang (Season 5)
IN DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE: The Crimson Hand - Supernature
IN DOCTOR WHO ADVENTURES: Junk Food (10th Doctor) - The Stray (11th Doctor)
REPRINTS: Reprinted in the ‘graphic novel’ Tesseract, released by IDW in October 2010.

Summoned to Greenwich Park by Martha and Captain Magambo of UNIT, the Doctor, Emily and Matthew. The trees have been moving, three people have been ingested by them and the trunks have been marked with Enochian symbols, a language invented by mathematician and magician John Dee to converse with angels. The Doctor realises the ‘angels’ have been trapped beneath the observatory for four hundred years, but have now emerged through the trees in the park. While he sends Martha and Matthew to investigate Crane’s house, the Doctor, Emily and gardener Mr Crane head into the passages beneath the park to communicate with the ‘angels’, in actual fact aliens waiting in suspended animation for the Doctor to come and take them home. With a UNIT soldier, Martha and Matthew search Mr Crane’s house. Matthew discovers a sketch of the Advocate, but the soldier takes it from him, urging caution in his dealings with the Doctor. The soldier is really the Gizou in disguise. Martha, meanwhile, discovers an alien dossier on the Doctor and realises he is being set up. Believing the Enochai’s story, the Doctor sets them free, but it is a trick. John Dee trapped them, but now they are free to take over all of the trees and claim the Earth.

Martha and UNIT retreat in the face of the rampaging trees. The Enochia realises the Doctor has not removed the forcefield trapping it and orders Crane to shoot Emily. The Doctor and Emily escape but plunge down a hidden shaft into an ancient cavern where they discover a spaceship. It is a stripped down colony ship containing thousands of Enochians in stasis. A holographic projection of John Dee informs them that the Enochians are energy beings who plan conquest. Emily escapes to the surface but Crane catches the Doctor and the Enochian orders his imprisonment. However, before this can happen, the Advocate arrives and opens the stasis pods, releasing the Enochia. UNIT are driven back by the trees, but the situation becomes even worse as the Enochia flood out of the ground.

The angels trap Central London in a forcefield as an all-out battle begins with UNIT, a battle in which UNIT is seriously outgunned. Matthew, Martha, Captain Magambo and several UNIT troops end up trapped in an underground bunker. The Doctor, meanwhile, speaks to one of the angels and realises it is the Gizou in disguise. The Gizou reveals that the whole scheme is a set-up. The Advocate appears to Martha and the trapped humans and proposes a way of ending the crisis, by striking at the Enochian ship. Crane, who overheard the Gizou, rescues the Doctor. Martha, meanwhile, escapes the bunker, finds Emily and, with the help of the Knights Arboretum, a select group of gardeners of which Crane was once a member, is reunited with the Doctor. Returning to the bunker, the Doctor confronts the Advocate, but Magambo refuses to allow him time to develop an alternative solution to the Enochia threat and insists on following the Advocate’s plan. She arrests the Doctor.

With the help of the Knights Arboretum, Martha and Emily rescue the Doctor . Mr Crane, meanwhile, has returned to the ship on a suicide mission to destroy it. The Doctor arrives and launches the ship into space, which draws all the energy creatures up with it. The Advocate’s bomb is no longer needed, but the countdown was accidentally started. Mr Crane spotted it in the nick of time, but if he raises his finger from the button, the ship will explode. The Doctor can do nothing to save him so escapes using a pair of angel wings. The Advocate uses Crane’s death to finally destroy Matthew’s faith in the Doctor and Matthew elects to instead travel with the Advocate.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
The continuity references are kept to a reasonable minimum, though they do still intrude occasionally (especially the in-joke to David Tennant playing Hamlet), but this is altogether a much better and more exciting story, despite occasional forays into incoherent motivation - why, for example, does the Gizou disguise itself as an Enochian? Matthew Finnegan’s story arc finally comes to fruition and, although a little less chat about Adric and Turlough would have been nice, it looks set to reach an exciting conclusion in the final ongoing Tenth Doctor strip from IDW...
 

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Pulling together all the threads from the last twelve issues, plus acting as a sequel of sorts to The Time Machination, this story takes in some serious twists and turns and revelations along the way and can become quite complex, but it retains an emotional core that pretty much holds it together as an exciting and satisfying story. It does perhaps become a little too clever for its own good at that end, but this does at least make you want to reread the previous adventures, even if it throws some of the events of those adventures into a dubious light (why, for example, would the Tef’Aree even consider killing Emily for entering its domain? Why does it refer to itself as ‘we’ and also as a race when there is but one?). It’s been a bumpy and uneven ride, but ultimately a rewarding one.

SCRIPT: Tony Lee
ART: Matthew Dow Smith (art), Charlie Kirchoff (colour)
LETTERS: Robbie Robbins
EDITOR: Denton J. Tipton

ISSUES: 13 - 16
COVER DATE: July 2010 - October 2010
IN DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE: Planet Bollywood - The Golden Ones
IN DOCTOR WHO ADVENTURES: Mistaken Identity - Cell Shock
REPRINTS: Reprinted in the IDW trade paperback Doctor Who Volume Three Final Sacrifice, released January 2011, and then in Winter’s Dawn, Season’s End, August 2013.

Oxford University, 1906, and Robert Lewis and his colleague Eliza Cooper of Torchwood visit Professor Alexander Hugh and his assistant Annabella Primavera to take part in a demonstration of a time machine built from cannibalised alien technology. However, their first trip takes them to a war-torn alien world, and straight to the Doctor and Emily. Their arrival attracts attention and soon the whole group is arrested by the Soul Free. They are observed by the Advocate who has completely brainwashed Matthew against the Time Lord. The planet has been fought over for thousands of years by the Soul Free and the Terror Farmers, who both claim it as their home. The proof lies in a sealed temple called Kol’Ne Wah. The Soul Free are led by Finch, now calling himself Lau’Tan, who claims he now opposes the Advocate, and who explains that the device that the Advocate took from the TARDIS was created by the Tef’Aree. Just then they are attacked by the Terror Farmers, Annabella killed, despite the Doctor’s insistence that she was supposed to live, and Lau’Tan wounded. However, he is fit enough to disguise himself as the Doctor and turn himself in with the now captured Emily. As Matthew begins to realise the true nature of the Advocate, she commands Emily and Lau’Tan to fight to the death.

Emily and Lau’Tan attempt escape but are overpowered and thrown in cells. The Doctor, meanwhile, leads his group to the Temple of Kol’Ne Wah. While Matthew realises he’s been duped and enlists Lau’Tan’s help in putting things to rights, Emily receives a visit from the Tef’Aree who tell her that she must stop the Advocate’s device which ‘reboots’ planets, but in order for the device to be stopped it must first be started. Matthew rescues her, but it soon transpires that this is Lau’Tan in disguise, sent by Matthew to get Emily to safety and give her Turlough’s faked diary while he spies on the Advocate. At the temple, the Doctor’s party enters and quickly see that it is in fact a spaceship. The Time Lord is intrigued by the mix of technology and takes a harddrive from the ship. However, as they leave, they are ambushed by the Terror Farmers. While Robert Lewis is enlisted into the service of the Advocate, the Doctor and Professor Hugh make the safety of the TARDIS and listen to a heavily degraded message on the harddrive from Earth Colony One, a lost and misplaced expedition, who made contact with the Tef’Aree and were given a terraforming device with which they hoped to make the colony self-sufficient. But the Doctor realises that the Terror Farmers (Terra Firma) will defeat the Soul Free (Sol Three) and become the Terranites.

The Doctor realises that the Advocate plans to use Matthew’s un-irradiated human DNA to reactivate the terraforming device which will wipe out the whole planet even as they head into war. In his cell, Matthew receives a visit from the Tef’Aree and suddenly understands everything: his and Emily’s sacrifice will save the planet. He and the Advocate teleport up to the orbiting terraforming device and the Doctor follows in the TARDIS, but not before he has put Professor Hugh down in the middle of the fighting to urge the two sides to get to safety aboard the colony ship. However, Lewis won’t listen. As the Advocate tries to get Matthew to activate the terraforming device, he finally reveals his true allegiance. She shoots him and uses his palm to activate the device. Squabbling on the ground between the Terror Farmers and the Soul Free is brought to an instant end as the device begins to erase anything that wasn’t on the planet a few thousand years before. They all run for the temple. The Doctor confronts the Advocate, but she reveals that she has rigged the terraforming device such that only Matthew can switch if off, and if he does it will kill him. Robert Lewis destroys the colony ship’s force field which protected it from the terraforming device then makes to shoot Eliza who sided against him with the Doctor. Emily jumps in the way and falls to the ground. Now the Advocate wants to know if the Doctor is prepared to sacrifice his other friend or the entire planet below.

Emily recovers, saved from the blast by Turlough’s diary while Robert Lewis is destroyed by the terraforming beam. The force field around the colony ship cannot be repaired, but Lau’Tan realises it can be replaced. He transforms himself to replace the damaged component and restart the shields while Emily gets everyone safely inside. Matthew distracts the Doctor, grabs the Advocate and slams his hand onto the terraforming  controls. He and the Advocate die instantly, but the device is deactivated. The Doctor takes Matthew’s body to the surface of the planet where a Tef’Aree appears and tells him and Emily that it was once Matthew, transformed through sacrifice and the merging of energy with the Advocate into a fifth-dimensional being. He gave the Earth colonists the technology and created the Advocate so that his human self could one day be empowered and become the Tef’Aree. The Doctor is appalled by the level of manipulation, but the Tef’Aree is unmoved and vanishes. Eliza elects to remain on the planet and help to rebuild it. The Doctor takes Professor Hugh and Emily back to Oxford, 1906, in the TARDIS. Here he explains that Annabella Primavera, like Emily, was a fixed point in time and space, but while Emily was supposed to have died, Annabella was supposed to have lived. Emily must now take her place to mend the web of time. It was Annabella who discovered Archie Maplin (see here) and eventually set up United Actors in Hollywood. The Doctor heads off for an adventure on Mars...

SCRIPT: Jonathan L. Davis
ART: Kelly Yates (art), Phil Elliott (colour)
LETTERS: Robbie Robbins & Neil Uyetake
EDITOR: Denton J. Tipton

REPRINTS: IDW’s trade paperback Doctor Who Volume Three Final Sacrifice, January 2011, and then in Winter’s Dawn, Season’s End, August 2013.

The TARDIS is forced to land by a tractor beam operated by Mr K, Safety Patrol, Interstellar Traffic Division who, realising that the Doctor is piloting a six-man craft single-handed, grounds the ship. He is in the year 6558 AD, forty clicks from the Antarean third moon and is soon being interrogated by Mr K who decides that the TARDIS is a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands and confiscates it. However, when the Doctor deactivates Mr K’s advanced technology, it becomes apparent that the space station is just an illusion created so that he can drain off the TARDIS’ power. The Doctor disconnects the drain and leaves.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Okay, so the plot doesn’t sound much on paper, but this is nicely characterised with a fine sense of humour and is an engaging distraction. The artwork is rather nice too.

SCRIPT: Matthew Dow Smith
ART: Matthew Dow Smith (art), Charlie Kirchoff (colour)
LETTERS: Neil Uyetake
EDITOR: Denton J. Tipton

REPRINTS: IDW’s trade paperback Doctor Who Volume Three Final Sacrifice, January 2011, and then in Winter’s Dawn, Season’s End, August 2013 (see cover above).

Douglas Henderson is running from an alien when he sees the TARDIS, a familiar sight for him that he has seen many times throughout his life. He meets the Doctor who deals with the alien and then takes him aboard the TARDIS. There the Doctor reveals that Douglas is far from ordinary and is in fact a living, thinking doomsday device left over from some great war but now banned by the Shadow Proclamation. The TARDIS is transmatted to an orbiting ship controlled by more aliens who want to use Douglas to destroy their weapons, but Douglas decides only he has the right to use himself as a weapon. He wakes up on a bench in a park, his energy having disabled both fleets. The Doctor reset him whilst he was going off, leaving him with just enough energy to live a normal human lifespan. But this is all Douglas ever expected or wanted. The Doctor departs.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Effective and oddly poignant, though the artwork isn’t always as strong as it might be.

SCRIPT: Al Davison
ART: Al Davison
LETTERS: Neil Uyetake
EDITOR: Denton J. Tipton

REPRINTS: IDW’s trade paperback Doctor Who Volume Three Final Sacrifice, January 2011.

Aboard the TARDIS, the Doctor has a bad dream in which he sees Sarah Jane, a variety of familiar aliens, Adric, Turlough, Susan, Astrid Peth and Kamelion. He meets a blue-skinned alien that plucks a ball of guilt, fear and anger from the Doctor’s chest and seals it in a drum. He then meets his future self who assures him that they are going to be fine. When the Doctor awakes, he wonders if the TARDIS is sometimes syphoning off his bad dreams.

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
Less like a story and more like a piece of random weirdness from a 1970s Doctor Who annual with additional continuity thrown in for good measure. Why do writers think the Doctor spends his every spare moment fretting about Adric’s fate? Apart from as a piece of nostalgia, though, it’s hard to fathom the point of this odd strip. The artwork is generally very good, which is just as well as it has to carry most of this strip without dialogue.

SCRIPT: Tony Lee
ART: Matthew Dow Smith (art) Charlie Kirchoff (colour)
LETTERS: Robbie Robbins
EDITOR: Denton J. Tipton

REPRINTS: IDW’s trade paperback Doctor Who Volume Three Final Sacrifice, January 2011.

The Doctor and Emily arrive at the Shady Grove Rest Home in the 21st Century where an old man named Barnaby Edwards is celebrating his birthday. Although the Doctor doesn’t recognise him, Barnaby insists 

he travelled with the Doctor when he was a young man. The Doctor gave Barnaby an envelope and told him to guard it with his life. He now returns it to the Doctor before dying, contented. The Doctor isn’t upset - he will have the pleasure of meeting Barnaby as a young man sometime in his own future. Inside the envelope is the charred remains of Turlough’s diary and a warning that Matthew Finnegan is in danger. The Doctor and Emily head off to find him and to stop the Advocate’s plans (see here).

ALTERED VISTAS SAYS:
The bulk of this story is quite sweet and emotional. It’s just a shame that Barnaby Edwards is also the name of one of the Dalek operators on the new series!