Comic Club: Four Doctors

It is time for the first crossover event.

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Please discuss below - no need to finish it first, discuss as you go along but please add spoiler tags for anything that could be considered a spoiler!

If you’ve previously read the book and want to join in the discussion, that’s great too!

Participating in the Comic Club will earn you a badge :medal_sports:

6 Likes

Nvm everything else im joining this comic club because I NEED to see Paul Cornell write comics. I’m sure he’s really good but i dont know if im ready for how good. I know he writes other comics as well he actually knows how this stuff works. Gonna be a world of difference compared to Cavan Scott last time. The Cornell fan mind has taken over again. No coherent thoughts in this head.

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I agree with @Owen that it’s exciting to see a comic story written by the one and only Paul Cornell!

I read the first issue already. What a fun start to the story. All the usual multi-Doctor shenanigans, and two delightful surprises: the opening scene on Marinus with an awesome redesign of the Voord (they are finally cool monsters); and the cliffhanger, which brings back the Reapers (they should’ve been used again on the main show!).

Cornell gets the Doctors right, and I love how well he imagines a multi-Doctor story with Tennant, Smith, and Capaldi, something we are very unlikely to ever see on TV or hear on audio.

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This is why Cornell is the best writer. Glad to have come back to absolute peak.

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Okay, so Cornell is obviously not trying to make a sensible comic story here. He’s just having fun. But what immense fun it is.

I’m not gonna be able to write a coherent review. Instead you get this: warning, long post probably

I recently watched the first two episodes of The Keys of Marinus (were amazing btw), and the Voord were just silly goobers in diving suits. The worst they could do was take a knife with them to go stabby stab. Now they are a bunch of Marvel Venom’s (hivemind, the glorp suits, it’s literally Venom) who noped out of existence to preserve their superiority. My experience with these guys doesn’t go further than this, so please correct me if I’m wrong, but this reads like Cornell taking a monster that everyone forgot, to plaster this ‘has evolved beyond during the timewar’ idea on. There’s nothing especially Voord-y about the Voords here. They’re pretty much a blank slate as a far evolved different version. I think. If this is the case, it’s still a cool references at worst.

Dialogue’s between Doctor’s is delightful. There’s not much more to them aside from having the most dumb fun with them as you could have, but that’s what these crossovers are for. That’s the goal this comic aims at. Optimal stupid ‘multi-Doctor event’, as it says. For the slightly more serious moments we have companions. Not that they get highly emotional beautiful scenes or something (maybe attempts at them) but they’re not as zany. (Plus there is reference to Gabby sketchbook so like best thing ever)

I like Cornell bringing his own monsters from the objectively greatest piece of television ever broadcast back. They’re more an excuse to have the kinda filler-y part 2 than an actual story point but uhhh Fathers Day is peak fiction so i dont care

Fitting with such an event anniversary or whatever this was comic, the plot is ridiculously stupid and convoluted. Lots of referring back to NuWho things from the later Moffat era that I don’t understand because I haven’t seen it. Like if it isn’t too big a spoiler can someone explain to me why there is evil Doctor Who? Was that supposed to be his Valeyard phase or something? Or is the situation really just Clara left him and that’s it?

Not per se the biggest fan of everyone dies, but actually, the last 100 pages you just read actually took place in a now deleted timeline. Or it doesn’t, because Gabby and Alice do remember, and 11 still needs to do something which will impact the previous timeline, and i don’t actually get all this timeline stuff, and i was never one caring much for logic anyways, so it’s fine. Of course the thing is that this new timeline is a pay off for all work they did in the old timeline. Only, the work they did in the old timeline was; found out that future Doctor Who is bad guy. I know the real point is more having fun with three Doctor’s, but it’s still a bit of a disappointing conclusion.

The art is okay. Everyone looks always like they’re super uncomfortable. No one knows how to stand like a normal person. Such strange posing. It’s also stiff as heck. There’s moments where it’s really good, (the page where the Doctor’s get their memory wiped uses the electricity visuals very well) but those moments are in the minority. Paneling is better than in Weapons of past destruction, and that’s all the compliments i can give.
I personally find the style in general a bit unappealing. Those faces more often than they should’ve, put me off. In that regard it’s not bad in a technical sense. I just don’t like it.

The one page gags are great. The one about French comics is a 10/10 and the rest was ok i suppose.

The ending with Nine is literal perfection.

Not Cornell’s greatest work, but it seems like he had fun. In the end so did I. 8/10

Edit: the prologue with War is so forgettable that i forgot to write about how forgettable it was

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This one was fun. Some interesting time travel stuff, good doctor-to-doctor interactions and some cool concepts with their alternate selfes.

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The dalek bomb that gets set off changes each of the doctor’s histories to have made an awful decision. For 10 it’s letting Wilf die and becoming The Time Lord Victorious (which we see flashing forward after we see Wilf’s death, the others we just see the flash forwards, not the moment of change) in End of Time, for 11 it’s accepting a quiet life with River while the universe is broken, all of time happening at once in The Wedding of River Song, and for 12 it’s not forgiving Clara in Dark Water, leading to him becoming lost and lashing out, eventually being taken in by the Voord who’ve taken themselves out of time after the time war. He then realises he’s not meant to exist, so sets events in motion so that he does.

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So the situation really is just that Clara left him, and the version portrayed here just kept being emo about it? As I haven’t seen Dark Water, it sounded a bit too silly to have such weight connected to it here. Maybe I’ll get it when I’ve seen the episode!

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8/10

I really liked this, and reading it after the series’ leading up to it this time instead of on it’s own without context for the new companions made me like it even more. I love the touching on the time war and how it affected other species, the new Voord designs are a real treat. The glimpse we get of War is very fun to see, and that moment at the end with 9 is just fantastic.

I also love seeing more time war tech here, the idea of a bomb that rewrites your history to make another universe possible is great, and I love the glimpses it gives up into these possible realities where our doctors failed, all of them in such different ways (especially 11 and 12). The Voord 12 is a really fun villain, harkening back to classic who which feels right for something like this, while at the same time being and feeling like a big enough threat as well.

The character stuff is a treat, the companions interacting with each other is great, and I love all the moments of the three doctors saying 'We need to…" (or something to that effect) in unison, before all shouting different ideas.

If I had any complaints it would be with the art, I think some characters look a bit off at times, mostly Cindy and Clara can be a little hard to tell apart in some shots, Cindy looks a bit off a lot actually, but still really fun.

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Ah right, yeah not seeing Dark Water would explain it. It’s definitely worth watching, and I think with the weight of the scene it’s leading on from, it works here (at least for me) very well.

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I believe I will be more appreciative of that scene after then! I think a standalone comic shouldn’t rely so much on an outside source for the emotional gravitas of a scene to hit at all, but it’s fun for fans of the era.

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I finished this last night, and it was a fun read! The first two issues are fast-paced and fun, and the latter three are a bit slower and more convoluted. Cornell has a great grasp on the three (technically five?) Doctors and the two original companions, and I enjoyed the obligatory bickering and bantering, which was luckily toned down a bit when it was time to be serious. The plotting was a bit weak early on and then quite intricate in the later issues, so this was a pretty back-heavy story.

I liked what Cornell did with Twelve in particular here, highlighting him in his first (?) multi-Doctor event. And as I said above, seeing the Voord here in a new guise was cool, even if they ended up somewhat underused ( ). The “evil Doctor” thing felt a bit too much for me, even if it was thought out well.

I liked the small nods to other New Who adventures. It gave this a celebratory feel. The intro with War felt like a cop-out, while the outro with Nine was a nice little touch (and a tongue-in-cheek reference from Paul to his own time writing for the show).

The art was mostly good, at least in the action scenes and splash pages. The faces were quite off a lot of the time, on Ten and Eleven mostly.

I give this an 8/10.

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I think the action looked really lifeless and awkward tbh. No sense of movement at all. If you’d allow me, these panels i grabbed real quickly are ridiculous.

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I agree that the splash pages were pretty good though! The artist manages to give a feeling of grandeur really well.

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Fair point. I’ve seen better, but it worked for me! Also, I felt that the art was stronger in the first issues and then turned sloppier in the later ones as if they ran out of time or something.

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Agree with that as well. First two issues it felt more polished

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I read this a few years ago and wasn’t very impressed. I’d rather have had Nine more involved and just don’t care for the tropes on display. I’m also just not big into comics or DW revival expanded media to begin with lol, so I’m also just really not the intended audience :woman_shrugging:

(although out of the DW revival expanded media that’s out there, weirdly the comics might appeal to me most even tho it’s usually my least preferred medium)

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Which tropes is it you’re not a fan of, and why don’t the comics usually appeal to you?

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This comic is soooooo! good. seeing 11 and 12 interacting is amazing also the ending with

9 was perfect

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Never had much interest in the comics but finding out this was Cornell has made me curious … :eyes:

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For a big crossover story written by Cornell I actually found Four Doctors very disappointing. The dialogue and writing felt so off to me I was surprised this was from the legendary Who writer. It’s a 6/10 for me.

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