The last collection of Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor year one. This one includes 4 stories!
Laundro-Room of Doom
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The Fountains of Forever
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Spiral Staircase
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Sins of the Father
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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!
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I liked the free comic book Laundro-Room of Doom. It was fun and silly I gave it 8/10
I am about halfway through Spiral Staircase. I think this story is good but does not reach the same quality as before. I also think that it is a bit strange that this is considered multiple stories when they clearly are the same one. Therefore I have chosen not to grade The Fountains of Forever until after I have read this one.
Completely unrelated to the club, I read laundro-room of doom the other day, just binging some comics
Gave it a 7/10, solid, fun story, but nothing particularly grabbing, but hey, what can there be in a 22 page free comic book day issue? (well, I gave Give Free or Die an 8, but that’s personal bias for reasons we’ll get to eventually)
8/10 for the fountains of forever, but after it becomes a sequel to pyramids of mars it starts to lose me
Still a 7/10 for the second and third parts, but I was really liking the smaller scale stuff of the first, and don’t think it needed to be what it ended up being
I guess they wanted a big climax for the end of the 10th doctor’s first year, but it didn’t feel needed at all, and I’d’ve much rather something smaller scale and character driven like they seemed to be setting up with Cindy’s return and generally lower stakes of the first part
oh well, still enjoyed it, it’s a missed opportunity, but what they did was fun enough
Also with that I should be getting Comics Level 4 which is fun!
I am completely with you that the beginning of this story is much better than the end. I often think that this is the case. I am not that big of a fan of bombastic endings.
My grades are the same as yours and I like that I can set a different grade at the start than the end but to me, this is one story not three and as a whole I give this story 7/10.
As I was reading I caught myself wondering at one point when “Fountains of Forever” was ending and when “Spiral Staircase” was starting, until I realised that, oh, I just finished part two of Spiral Staircase
I binged the rest of the Tenth Doctor run yesterday.
Laundro-Room of Doom
THis was a fun little piece. Nice to see bits of the TARDIS that haven’t been seen for a while.
The Fountains of Forever
I thought the setup was interesting. Kinda reminded me of the black market in Hawkeye. The new characters are interesting, for the most part, but Cleo tends to talk in an ‘explainy’ way for the audience’s benefit, and Cindy is very aggressive. She has reasons, but the passive-aggressive nature just turned me off a little. The artwork for the Ninth Doctor was great.
Spiral Staircase
This very much felt like the middle part of the story. While not much happened to begin with, the second issue really ramped it up again. The cult people we’re interesting antagonists, but my god were they shouty. I liked Dorothy a lot. The all white outfit was chefs kiss. The Doctor tended to look like a generic white man in this part. Anubis’ design looks good.
Sins of the Father
While this last part didn’t really have the satisfying conclusion I hoped for, I still rather enjoy it. The idea that Anubis is just a grumpy Gus that wants to go home was fun. The Doctor helping him being a possible recurring plot point is interesting. Anubis remind me of Lord Berrus a lot, which isn’t a bad thing. The art was still solid, but there were more ‘comic book’ moments than had been shown previously.
While this arc had interesting elements, it didn’t really have a conclusion. While I know whats coming, this arc was a 3.5/5 (7/10) at most. Enjoyable, but not great.
I read the first two stories today. I love the cover for this volume, it looks so cool!
Laundro-Room of Doom (fun title!) is a short romp, but I appreciate how it takes place within the TARDIS and features a Clayface rip-off. It’s fun but pretty inconsequential, so a 6/10.
I agree that it’s difficult to distinguish between the following three stories, which are just three parts of one big story. This one is mostly build-up but feels very DW with its secret organisations, relationship troubles, alien tech and stuff. Cleo is an interesting mix of River Song and Captain Jack, and I liked the little nod to Henry van Statten as well as the 9th Doctor cameo. This is a 7/10 for me.
Haven’t read this yet, but all the mention of Sins of the Father was bugging me, because I could’ve sworn that came later in the run. The answer is, collection naming is weird. So, the story, Sins of the Father is issue 15 collected in Volume 3. The collection/trade paperback Sins of the Father is Volume 6 and collects Year 2 issues 11-14. How does this make any sense to those reading the collected editions and not the individual issues?
I read Laundro-Room of Doom last night and got part way through The Fountains of Forever before falling asleep.
I liked Laundro - a fun, short romp and I much prefer the artwork in this volume to either of the previous ones.
Fountains has started strong and its good to see Dorothy Bell. In the Doctor Who Comic monthly which I first read a lot of these in, there was a weird time where they had two titles and when they sort of merged or something Foutains of Forever got skipped so I never read it but read later stories where Dorothy was this character I should have known stuff about but didn’t.
A good fun story that actually answered a question I’d always had about how the Doctor (& some of the companions, particularly Adric, Nyssa & Tegan) managed to keep wearing the same outfits for long!
I just don’t understand why they put it here though, as The Fountains of Forever clearly follows directly on from Echoes. Would have been better to put it at the end as an Appendix.
I forgot to write something about the last two chapters of the three-part finale despite finishing the collection a few days ago.
The Spiral Staircase and Sins of the Father kind of dropped the ball for me. After plenty of build-up, these ended up being chatty and slow, and I didn’t feel particularly invested in the characters. Bringing back the Osirians with Anubis is a cool way to hark back to Classic Who, but Anubis himself ends up being very underwhelming (I get that they are teasing his return further down the line, but still).
The art is consistently good and they get Ten right for the most part. I’m also bummed about how they kind of forget about Gabby during this entire adventure, as she barely gets anything interesting to do.
The Fountains of Forever seems to be going on for, well, forever! But I’m wondering if I’ve moved into Spiral Staircase and not realised. Where does Fountains finish? (I’ ve just got to the bit where the Doctor and Cindy have been dumped out of portals back to Earth and Dorothy and Gabby are, I think, on the Osirian ship.)
I gave it 8/10
Not a criticism just find it amusing.