The Twelfth Doctor’s first year is ending in this last collection. What did you think?
Unearthly Things
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The Hyperion Empire
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Relative Dimensions
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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!
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Unearthly things is my favourite of these three. I like the historical setting, and it’s well executed imo. The Hyperion empire is good concept and especially art-wise, but it feels a little too big for me? I feel like too much of the earth gets destroyed and these villains worked better as a threat. It’s got great side characters though. Relative dimensions was a good little adventure.
Solid story that I could definitely see being at home on screen, gave me Tooth and Claw or Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror vibes in terms of being a fairly standard but still fun celebrity historical, just a shame it’s as short as it is
Interesting that somewhere in the middle of this comic they flip from mid season 8, to mid season 9 (given Danny was mentioned before, and now The Doctor is taking up the mantle of president of earth again after Death in Heaven). Not sure why Kate’s drawn with grey hair, that was a bit weird. Overall I quite liked this, it felt like a good climax for 12’s first year, and… wait there’s one more? Okay then? But yeah, the Hyperion are a fun returning villain, one that you could imagine on the show, but probably wouldn’t get for budget reasons. I liked the characters in this as well, and the ending worked really nicely for me.
I do agree that the constant end of the world stakes do feel not great when we’re getting them so often, but still very fun
Now that was fun, short but sweet but it really works. Bit out of place to be reading this in August, but I could see myself coming back to it for Christmas
Fun characterization for The Toymaker and I like that take on The Doctor’s relationship with him.
Also feeds even more into my reading of 12 as ‘The Endgame Doctor’, a lot of his stories involve him reconciling with his oldest enemies or wrapping up plotlines (until they inevitably come back of course), but yeah, I like how they do that with The Toymaker here.
I actually felt that this didn’t suffer too much from being a single-issue story - it was paced well & the main characters were developed enough.
Nothing especially original here, and the “reveal” of the main character’s identity at the end was pretty obvious from the start, but I still enjoyed it and it felt like it could have been a TV episode.
I read this anthology a while ago, but I will try to remember how I felt.
Unearthly Things
I thought that the premise of the celebrity historical was interesting. It did feel a little bit like a nineteenth century novel, seeming to take cues from contemporaries of Bronte like Edgar Allan Poe.
Hyperion Empire
I thought that the destruction of the ISS was an effective device to start the story. I suppose it did feel a little bit too much like “Fractures” at points. Interesting that the comics want to develop recurring villains.
Relative Dimensions
This story seemed fun. I thought it was interesting how Susan was used as a lure. The art in this seemed clever and interesting. A bit of lighthearted holiday revelry.
Here are two quotes that I added from “Unearthly Things.” A friendly reminder to feel free to add your own quotes that you like from the comics.
I’ve got so behind on Comic Club but here I am trying to catch up. I’d never read this one before because it doesn’t seem to have been reprinted in the Doctor Who Comic (a few stories got skipped for no apparent reason).
Guessed almost as soon as Charlotte appeared that this was a celebrity historical, not least because I’ve recently listened to The Window on the Moor with her sister, Emily. I wonder if the sister’s ever compared notes about the mysterious Doctor they all met (and poor Anne probably felt terribly left out).
The story felt like it jumped around a few times and I thought I’d missed a page but loved the visuals of the tiny spiders and the ‘spider’ alien. Also, there was more than one panel where I wasn’t sure if it was Clara or one of the other female characters. In fact Clara seemed rather underwritten and underused in this.
Finished The Hyperion Empire today. Really enjoyed that, although I’m not a fan of the art style (the same artist as Weeping Angels of Mons, I think). Loved the apocalyptic elements and the characterisation of the Doctor. Really loved Fireman Sam and the slimy Minister for Public Hygiene (reminded me of the nasty civil servants from the Pertwee era like Chinn and Walker). The climax seemed a bit quick and this art style doesn’t always make it easy to work out what’s going on but there were some panels I loved (like the Marvel-esque image of Clara, Sam and the Fire Angel emerging from the TARDIS guns blazing).
Where have people read Relative Dimensions? I know I’ve read it before but I can’t work out where. It isn’t in the Hyperion trade (despite what TARDIS wiki says) and I can’t see where else it was published.
I remembered where I read Relative Dimensions and so had a re-read. I do love a Toymaker story and this one has some superb visuals and lovely callbacks to past stories. I remember I last read this as part of a mini-Christmas marathon and it does have a festive feel. 4/5.
Unearthly Things - This was a fun short story that was set in an interesting setting. I think that this has been my favourite of all 12th Doctor Stories so far. 3.5/5
The Hyperion Empire - This was a fun story. I am usually not that big of a fan of stories that are too epic but this was a fun one. I liked the fireman and felt like they did a good job with the Doctor and Claras characters. My biggest problem was the art, especially of the people that we were supposed to know. I often needed to think to understand who a character was. 3.5/5
Relative Dimensions - This was also a fun read. An interesting take on the Toymaker before his return last year. 3.5/5 This was by far the best of the 12th Doctors comic club.
If I would rank the there year one comics I would rank the 12th the lowest. I think that it suffers a bit from being the one that is based on the show right now and not being of former doctors.
I also think that 12’s run feels the most like they’re just trying to make Doctor Who stories instead of Doctor Who Comics.
Ten has Gabby as a new companion who’s an artist, we get to see her sketchbook and a lot of the stories are to do with different forms of the arts.
Eleven plays around with the fact it’s a new medium a lot in some really fun ways. Space in Dimension Relative and Time and Four Dimensions especially were just really fun to read and something you just couldn’t do in any other medium.
Twelve doesn’t do anything with the format (other than being unrestricted by budget) and at times I feel I’d just rather be watching the show
