by: Jason Vaughn

If you’re not already a fan of what the Guinness World Records has deemed the most successful and longest running sci-fi series of all time, allow me to introduce you to the “Doctor.”  I think the 10^th Doctor, David Tenant, said it best:

“I’m the Doctor. I’m a Time Lord. I’m from the planet Gallifrey in the Constellation of Kasterborous. I’m 903 years old and I’m the man who is gonna save your lives and all 6 billion people on the planet below. You got a problem with that?”

Unless you’re slow, you’ve already caught on to the fact the Doctor is an alien, and the last of one of the most powerful races in the galaxy, the Time Lords. The Doctor travels through time and space armed with only his wit, a sonic screw driver, a time traveling spacecraft in the shape of a 1950’s style London police call box, and the occasional traveling companion (a.k.a. the obligatory damsel in distress.) As you’d expect, an entity as old and as powerful as the Doctor amasses a vast collection of enemies as he travels the universe fighting for the little people (which more often than not is the planet Earth.) Oh, and his being burdened with constant guardianship over the time stream is kind of a pain in the ass, too.

Terms like “it’s bigger on the inside” and “behind the sofa” entered into my childhood lexicon at an early age as I fell in love with the classic series played on Saturday mornings after my cartoon faves “Dragon’s Lair” and “The Real Ghostbusters.” So needless to say, I was completely stoked when I heard in 2005 that a new season of the hit BBC series was going to be airing on the Sci-Fi Channel. I was equally as thrilled to learn there would be an accompanying comic series as well.

IDW continues their current series based on the show with the first issue of “Doctor Who” arriving on the shelves this Wednesday. But hold on a sec, I bet you’re saying to yourself, “Wait a minute, how can this be the first issue of a series that’s been ongoing for years?”  Ah, now see, that’s because the Doctor has changed over the years and the creators of the show had the forethought to instill a little bit of mythology into the Doctor’s physiology to cover their own rear-ends in case their lead ever left the show, or started to develop an ego the size of the Tardis’ interior. It’s fairly ingenious because if the Doctor is ever gravely injured, he can regenerate, but it results in his appearance and personality changing. It’s one of these types of regenerations that has lead us from IDW’s previous book starring the much beloved 10^th Doctor, exuberantly performed by the talented thespian David Tenant, to our current 11^th Doctor played by newcomer Matt Smith.

In this inaugural issue, we catch up with the Doctor and his two current companions from the show Amy Pond and her fiancé Rory Williams (who we all know is just an obstacle the writers put in between the attractive “damsel” Amy and the newly young Doctor) as they’re forced to land on an alien planet after the Tardis is infected with spam like holographic images and phisher like emails personified. But as is par for the course when traveling with the Doctor, the trio find themselves in the midst of an invasion by intergalactic mercenaries. Scribe Tony Lee’s story feels like it was lifted straight from the show, as if somehow the idea was pitched and the powers that be turned it down for budget issues but said, “That’d make a good graphic novel though.” And I’m digging how artist Andrew Currie has managed to capture the likeness of the leads so accurately, the panels feel as if he had the cast stand in as models while he was working. Currie seems to have duplicated Matt Smith’s wide gamut of emotions from that of an exasperated baby sitter, to contemplative scholar, to mischievous alien, with what appears to be great ease.

My only problem with the issue, and the series before it as well, is there are certain elements in the show which are naturally lost in print translation, and their loss lessen my enjoyment of the book as a “Dr. Who” property. To me, one of the reasons “Dr. Who” is such a time honored property is due, in large part, to the “cheese factor” of the show. You just don’t get the same effect in print as you do on film when it comes to low budget effects. Nothing can replicate watching a grown man walk around in a tin can screaming “Exxteerrrminaaate!” (I don’t know. How would you make special effects in a comic book seem cheesy? Put glitter on the paper?) Another small issue is the absence of the Doctor’s delivery. We can all agree that 90% of the time we have no idea what the hell the Doctor is talking about. It’s not so much the incomprehensible techno babble which tickles our inner nerd as it is the delivery of those lines from Tenant and now Smith. They both have their own unrestrained way of piping us like the Piper himself into the Doctor’s outlandish adventures keeping us coming back for more.

But with my completely unreasonable complaints aside, I’m sure long time fans of both the book and the show will describe this first issue in one word, “brilliant!”

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