Fearing he is lost in a parallel world, the Doctor finds a magnetic anomaly eminating from the North Pole, can the Doctor set history back on course?
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Not great. The Doctor isnt really in this one much, the explinations are lacking/confusing, The Monk doesnt feel like The Monk, and its bizzar in insisting that the American guy has never killed when he did so in his introductory story.
4 Likes
A really weird story with psychic soldiers, Ice Warriors, a blazing fast companion introduction & The Monk who’s just kinda here :/
Just a bit of wasted time imo
4 Likes
Verdict after Issue One - Hmmm it seems we may be in for more of the same as the last couple of stories. What on earth is with the Doctor attempting to commit suicide out of nowhere and then immediately shrugging it off? I suppose it makes some sort of sense if he thinks it will just take him out of one reality and return him to the ‘right’ one, but that’s hardly explained and still feels completely out of any and every character he’s ever had…
Verdict after Issue Two - Well I certainly didn’t expect the Ice Warriors. There’s an awful lot of technobabble here, and I’m still baffled that we’ve ended up with Gus as the companion after the previous episode. Saving his life is one thing, but taking him on this escapade (and him accepting it all without blinking) is a very odd choice…
Verdict after Issue Three - What on earth is going on? This is getting a little tiresome…
Verdict after Issue Four - Right. The Monk. That did cross my mind when I saw how he was drawn, but equally he seems to be about half Peter Butterworth’s height. I suppose I should have learnt about the weird proportions in these strips by now. Also, Ice Warriors driving a buggy??
Verdict after Issue Five - What actually is this? Why is it almost entirely shooty-shooty-bang-bang? Are we supposed to be following what’s going on? Are we still in an alternate Earth?
3 Likes
Verdict - Ummmm. Right. So how do the soldiers have psychic powers and why is the Doctor not concerned by this? And why is the Monk completely useless? And why was Gus even there, bringing him along as a companion is bizaare? And why did they wait until now to say that the Doctor was on a specific mission, not a holiday, given that the reveal does absolutely nothing of merit? And what was that resolution, it was completely nonsensical? And why is the Monk’s TARDIS a police box? And why does the Doctor’s face look like that? And why is the Doctor a bit of a douche? And what’s going on with all the other dangling threads from previous stories? And is the time warp categorically fixed now? And how can one writer start off so spectacularly well and then reach a point such as this? These comics are tiring.
4 Likes
I’ve read this one twice in the last six months and I still don’t think I understand it.
It seems to be saying that all of the previous Fifth Doctor stories have occurred in a parallel universe? At least since the Doctor returned from wherever in The Tides of Time.
SAG 3 are an odd concept because we have hardly any explanation for them here, or in their other appearance in The Stockbridge Horror.
The Monk and the Ice Warriors are both sort of just here and it’s not a worthy outing for either of them. The Fifth Doctor continues to be some sort of depressing influence and Gus is an odd idea for a companion - is he the soldier who shot the Japanese soldier in Lunar Lagoon or not?
I get the impression the writers of the Fifth Doctor strips were trying to do something ‘meaningful’ with the strip rather than just telling stories. There seems to be a lot of soul searching and ‘big’ concepts going on but none of them are presented with much conviction or well-integrated into the world of Doctor Who.
After The Tides of Time and Stars Fell on Stockbridge, I thought we were in for a bit of a renaissance but these latter strips have been sorely lacking.
7 Likes
I’ve yet to complete this story – and I’ve every faith that it’ll find some way to let me down after the goodwill the first stories earned – but I cannot fault this panel!
Rarely has the DWM range left me with my jaw agape at its visuals. I recall the Event Synthesiser from ‘The Tides of Time’ having a similar effect, but this is something else entirely; this is where the ‘stylised’ (if it can be called that) illustrative type in these issues really works! Having it in monochrome like this also gives it another haunting element, making the dark spots darker—is that in the bottom right the horned head of some winged creature? For all the faults I’m likely to find with this story as a whole, this page is great!
4 Likes
I can now say with confidence that the best parts of this story were superficial. Its depiction of time corridors was visually striking, as well as the frosty setting and the exterior design of the Ice Warriors’ ship, were all great. Unfortunately, ‘4-Dimensional Vistas’ is all over the place, and not in the ways one may hope from its title…
Under different circumstances (and better writing) I would be leaping for joy at the return of the Monk and the inclusion of the Ice Warriors, but both are used so poorly here that I find it redundant. I also get the impression, however inaccurate it may be, that these stories act more as a retroactive justification for throwing in SAG-3 as some cool military OCs; as far as taskforces go, Doctor Who has them in buckets, and these bland archetypes offer little intrigue beyond the ham-fisted presence of elementarily supernatural abilities which, along with the Doctor’s characterisation here (as in other stories in this range) feels woefully out of place.
The ending gives a nice segue into the next story, and I did like the slight re-contextualisation that the Doctor had a reason for being on Earth in ‘The Tides of Time’, but having it all culminate in this feels like such a waste, not only of the characters but of the potential those previous stories had. Where ‘Lunar Lagoon’ escaped with a 6/10, ‘4-Dimensional Vistas’ is too long to have the same luck. A 5/10 feels generous enough.
5 Likes
This was just a big mess, and I understood nothing of the plot. These strips are really hit or miss (mostly miss).
5 Likes
What a strange story. So many weird ideas, from a depressed Doctor to an American soldier companion, Ice Warriors and the Time Meddler, and alternate Earths and psychic soldiers. None of it really gels. One moment it’s panel after panel of exposition, and the next it’s page after page of shootouts and explosions.
Like many ambitious comic-strip epics, 4-Dimensional Vistas overreaches. It is packed with imaginative concepts and spectacular visuals, but inconsistent pacing, underused villains and an oddly passive Doctor prevent those ideas from coming together. There is plenty to admire, yet the story never quite lives up to the scale of its own imagination.
5.2/10 - Middling
3 Likes