Comic Book Review: Doctor Who: Once Upon a Time Lord written by Dan Slott, art by Christopher Jones, Matthew Dow Smith & Mike Collins
Among the many spinoffs of the long-running Doctor Who franchise have been quite a few comic strips and comic books. These have been highly variable as to quality, but give multiple writers and artists a crack at the many fun characters that have appeared over the years. This special allows Dan Slott, perhaps best known (for better or worse) for his Spider-Man run, to try his hand.
“Firelight” has medical student Martha Jones abducted by beings known as the Pyromeths. The opening panels have each of the previous Doctors explaining the Pyromeths to their companions, including fan favorite Frobisher. (You don’t know Frobisher? I won’t spoil the treat!) They are beings who love stories told around a fire.
Which wouldn’t be bad in and of itself, but they abduct random beings to tell them stories, and if the stories ever stop–so do you. Forever.
In this case, the Tenth Doctor has taken Martha to the county fair on Gobalabinko, where they serve a drink that tastes exactly like Earth ginger ale! Which is amazing in that it’s 827 light years from Earth and they arrived at it completely independently. While the Doctor heads off to fetch the drinks, Martha wanders around and comes across some sad little children looking at a vacant puppet show.
Once she agrees to tell the kiddies a story, they whisk her off to their home dimension and reveal their true identity. Martha’s going to have to come up with a heck of a tale!
And so she does, telling a fantastical adventure of the Doctor as he searches for the most valuable thing in the universe. His quest takes him from an ocean world with a gigantic fish monster, to an Egyptian pyramid where Nazis find out they’re not the scariest things there, to “The Realm of the Dead” where he must battle a greatest hits collection of his old foes to win through.
The twist in the tale is that this story is true, and at the end, the Doctor does indeed find the most valuable thing in the universe.
“Rhyme or Reason” takes up shortly thereafter, as Martha finally get to try the fizzy drink. There’s a bit of a hiccup in the TARDIS translation circuits, and that reminds the Doctor of a story that happened when he was traveling with Rose Tyler.
In 2005, Rose and the Ninth Doctor have been captured by the Terileptils, aliens who are planning to hit Earth with a de-evolution ray that will revert all life back to at best worms, so they can sell the planet to gourmets. Rose tries to let the Doctor know she’s managed to conceal his sonic screwdriver so they can use it to escape by speaking in Pig Latin.
Unfortunately, it turns out that the translator circuits perfectly translate Pig Latin into Terileptilese. Oops.
However, after a bit of chasing about, the Doctor hits on the use of homonyms, words that sound the same as what he wants to say, but mean different things. The translator flawlessly interprets the words he and Rose (once she catches on) are saying, but they’re gibberish to the aliens.
The first story is mostly nifty for letting the artists run wild with all the cameos and action sequences. The second story is more a showcase for the author’s wordplay humor, which is something that would be funnier in a much tinier dose.
These are perfectly acceptable Dr. Who stories, but I can see why Mr. Slott feared he would not be invited back.
Content note: Some bad people die. Middle schoolers on up should be okay.
I recommend this primarily to Dr. Who fans who will enjoy all the cameos.
Sounds interesting. Martha was one of my favorite companions!