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locker_monsterI finally found all the issues for Doctor Who: The Forgotten. I had pretty much given up on the IDW Doctor Who comic book series, but I just couldn't resist a multiple Doctor story. And really, the only way we would get a ten Doctors story is in print. Unless some miracle happens for the 50th anniversary; we can all dream, right? ;-)
Anyway, one reason I gave up on the Doctor Who comics was the art. It was slightly cartoonish, which was fine, but it just didn't work sometimes. In one comic, the Doctor was wearing a grey suit and a sweater vest and Martha was in a skirt. Um, did anyone bother to watch this show? The Doctor wears brown and blue and we have never seen Martha in a frilly skirt. So The Forgotten made me slightly more hopefully when I saw it was being drawn by Pia Guerra, the same artist who drew Y: The Last Man. Her stuff isn't too wild, more understated I think, but she thankfully doesn't go off into crazy frames and body parts that are out of proportion to the rest of the body. I have no clue who Tony Lee is, never read any of his stuff, but it's obvious he's a fan, just what you need when writing mutliple Doctors.
So, quick overview of the plot. The Doctor and Martha awake to find themselves in a museum dedicated to the Doctor, only they have no memory of arriving and the TARDIS is missing. The museum is full of stuff the Doctor has encountered over his many incaranations. Actually, that was one of the neat things. There were tons of stuff in the background and a super dedicated Whovian would have known each and every one of them on the spot. Anyway, some dude in the shadows, with a goatee, is watching them the entire time, plotting to take the rest of the Doctor's regenerations for himself.
Making the comic book version of the character look like the actor shouldn't be a top priority, but I think Guerra makes Ten look enough like David Tennant. Some of the other Doctors aren't that great, but in some of the later issues it's not Guerra doing the art (she had a real life thing and had to back out of two issues). I was really only interested in capping frames of the Doctors, so apologies for not showing any of the Companions. Well, a few sneak in.
One of the awesomer panels, I must say. A little eerie and very nostalgic. I think nostalgia is the main driving force of this comic. It's written by a fan for the fans. The panel also sets up the rest of the story. The Doctor mysteriously loses all his memories from his past incarnations, leaving only some his memeories of being Ten. To help jog is his memory, Martha hands him the object that goes with each incarnation, restoring that part of himself. Walking stick, recorder, car keys, jelly babies, cricket ball, cat pin, umbrella, cravat, and psychic paper. Poor ol' Eight only gets a cravat. Poor ol' Eight didn't get a lot of things, but what do you want when you only have one canon adventure to go off of.
So the first memory the Doctor gets back is of his first incarnation, naturally. One, with Susan, Ian, and Barbara, land in ancient Egypt and as usual, they run amok with the locals.
Lee makes references to the serial "The Aztecs", which also had the group landing in a tomb. There's also a reference to the ancient Egyptians being aliens, which is in line with another serial. Stargate wasn't the first to suggest the Egyptian gods were something else. ;-) I like how One's, and Two's, adventures are in monochrome, matching their eras of black and white television.
Oh, another great thing. After each memory is restored, Martha, who's been listening to the Doctor recount every tale, asks what happened to the Companions that were with that incarnation. So you get some bittersweet recollection from the Doctor.
There's plot between each memory, but it's mostly just the Doctor and Martha being chased around the museum by old enemies of the Doctor while mysterious goatee guy watches and gloats, like any good Doctor Who villain.
The adventure with Two, Jamie and Zoe has them on a space station overrun with space snakes. Two uses his recorder to put the snakes to sleep, with some math help from Zoe, and some distraction by Jamie. At one point, Jamie starts singing a song to make the snakes chase after him. Apparently it's a song about the Doctor, Jon Pertwee um, "sung", at some point. I saw a YouTube thing of it at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
scans_daily , but I can't remember the name exactly. So another obscure references from Lee. Two looks like Two, but Zoe and Jamie never look quite right; you could mistake them for anyone if you weren't aware of who they are.
"Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow!" Yay, way to go Lee for working that in. That and the Brig's "five rounds rapid." Oh, and Bessie, too. Three, Jo, and the Brig driving around in Bessie, being chased by mechanical greyhounds. Seriously. Bessie really doesn't save the day here, per se. The car helps Three, Jo, and the Brig to escape, but Three stops them by making a dog whistle that puts the space greyhounds to sleep. Still, the adventure has all the elements of Three's era: UNIT, Bessie, and Earthbound.
At some point between adventures, the Doctor realizes the TARDIS is gone, like, doesn't exist anymore gone. It's the first clue that everything isn't as it seems.
Issue #3 is where the comic changes artists. I can't recall who took over for Guerra, but whoever they were, I didn't like their stuff as much. This feels very much like Four to me, though, grinning in the face of danger while Romana just shakes her head. In this adventure, Four and Romana are in Paris at the turn of the millennium, and Romana gets a nice line about "Weren't we just here?" They end up in the catacombs after chasing a mime and they meet a Minotaur wearing a beret. I am seriously not making that up. Four uses a bag of jelly babies to distract the Minotaur to grab some key thingy to save the day.
For whatever reason, Five's playing cricket (again) at the beginning of his adventure. Cricket balls can be very handy though. Here, Five uses one to trick some Judoon looking for some glowly whatis Five used to keep when he was exiled on Earth. I'm beginning to sense an animal theme running through each adventure. Or a majority of Doctor Who aliens have looked like animals over the years. Tegan and Turlough are the Five's Companions here and it was probably around this point I started to wonder why certain Companions were being chosen over others. I mean, when I think of Five, I think of Tegan, Nyssa, and Adric. When I think of Four, I think of Sarah Jane. Thankfully, Lee makes up for this at the end of the comic, but I'll go into that later.
Ah, and here's Six in all of his multi-coloured glory. Peri's on trial for murder and Six is acting as her defence. It should be noted that the artist put Peri in a low cut shirt. *shakes head* Poor Peri; yes, the girl has boobs but she didn't need to show them off in every episode. There's some technobabble as Six explains why Peri couldn't have killed anyone and he uses his cat pin to demostrate why. I just like the line from Six at the end about how he wishes never to be in a court room again. Ha.
I've always felt sorry for Seven, having to wear all those question marks and carrying that umbrella. Yes, the show is called Doctor Who, but the character's name isn't. You don't need blatant question marks on every piece of clothing to make a point. Um, anyway... Seven and Ace arrive on a planet to stop a plague of Gallifrian origin. Ace uses some Nitro 9 along the way. :-) Who would have guessed that umbrella contained a cure-all elixir. There's also a quick line from Seven, wishing he had some all purpose I.D.
It's here, at the end of issue #4, that we find the Doctor isn't actually in a museum. He hears the Cloister Bell, which is only heard inside the TARDIS, on Gallifrey, or inside the Time Lord Matrix, a vast computer that storages every brain wave pattern and memory of every Time Lord (or so I can recall vaguely). Since two out of three shouldn't exist, it's safe to assume the Doctor is in the TARDIS, which is he. But there's a horrible bug thing on his chest! Oh, and Martha recognizes the Cloister Bell, which she shouldn't because she's never heard it before, so naturally the Doctor starts to become a little suspicious of his constant companion throughout this whole thing. But that bug thing. It leads towards the biggest let down of let downs. But I digress...
Eight, the loneliness Doctor of them all. I only say that because he's the only Doctor in the comic who doesn't get a Companion. Seems the rights to Grace and any other new character created for the TV movie are a bit complicated, so she can't appear in any of the spin-off media. Which is sad, really. But it plays into Eight's adventure; he's a prisoner on some planet in the middle of the Time War. He ends up cell mates with a Chantho type alien and they plot to escape. Eight uses his cravat to slide down a cable to get out of the prison, which is fine, but he doesn't get anything cool like the other Doctors. Ooh, a cravat. And it's not canon, but Eight finds a key that's part of a larger weapon that can wipe people out of existence, which suggests that's how Eight stops the Time War.
And I'm sure you've all been waiting for this last adventure. ;-)
Nine and Rose! The two of them land in WWI on Christmas Day, 1914. They're wearing those brown coats because it's cold but if you want to imagine Rose is wearing Ten's brown coat, hey, why not. ;-) This adventure is full of cute little references, making it one of my favourites. A soldier mentions a Captain Harkness, who was shot in the head but didn't have a scratch on him, and Nine says he's never heard of him, which is funny and a little sad at the same time. Immortal Jack is running around out there and Nine won't know about him for awhile. Nine also identifies himself with the psychic paper as Brigadier Bambera, a character from a serial called "Battlefield". Anyway, Christmas Day, the two sides stop fighting long enough to play a game of football, with Nine as ref. It's a cute little story; no aliens, no fighting, just people.
Back with Ten and Martha, she hands him the fob watch and the rest of his memories as Ten come back. Turns out, this story is post-Journey's End and Martha really isn't Martha. Martha's actually... the TARDIS? And while the Doctor is on the TARDIS, his mind is in the TARDIS Matrix. Everything was an elaborate ruse, created by mysterious goatee guy. Who is revealed to be...
Ten II? That's right, an evil Alt!Ten. You can tell he's evil because of the goatee. :-) So by now you're thinking "WTF?!" Why is Ten II evil and in the TARDIS Matrix? And why does he want the Doctor's remaining regenerations? Just reading to this point, I was thinking, "Okay, that's an interesting twist." I wasn't expecting Ten II. Fans were speculating that goatee guy was the Valeyard, another evil version of the Doctor. I actually thought the Black Guardian, who had a goatee too, but an all powerful being probably has better things to do than torment the Doctor.
So a showdown between Ten and Ten II. Awesome. Then the disappointment comes to call. No offense to Tony Lee, but the reveal ruins everything.
Turns out, it's not Ten II. It's actually the bug on the Doctor's chest I mentioned earlier. It was on Calufrax Minor, one of the planets that Davros stole. Bug thing was on the Crucible, for whatever reason, and couldn't get back to its planet before the Doctors and Donna sent it back. So it stowed away on the TARDIS, wanting revenge on the Doctor, and was psychic enough to create a link to the TARDIS Matrix. So the big, mysterious bad of the whole comic is some bug creature we've never heard of or seen before.
Oh well, the short adventures with the other Doctors makes up for this in a way. So the Doctor, with memories restored, runs off to find the TARDIS and to stop bug thing. Along the way he asks Martha/the TARDIS to change her appearance, the sight of Martha bringing back recent, and unpleasant, memories of "Journey's End". So the TARDIS turns into Harry Sullivan, a Fourth Doctor Companion. From this point on, the TARDIS continues to change her appearance to suit the situation, a nice notion after the bug reveal. So Companions who didn't appear in the adventures get their moment here: Harry, Leela, Mel, Steve, Kamelion, a quick mention of Polly and Dodo, Nyssa, Adric, and finally Sarah Jane. The only ones left out are Vicki, Katarina, Sara Kingdom (if you count her as a Companion) Ben, Victoria, Liz, and K-9 (!). I assume Jack and Donna don't appear due to rights and such. So, a nice kiss to the past. But wait!
It wouldn't be a multiple Doctor story without a moment like this:
All ten Doctors form out of the objects associated with them to confront Fakey!Ten II. Bug thing is stopped when the Doctor updates the Matrix with the fact that he's the only Time Lord, and thus bug thing can't exist within the Matrix. The Doctor has a moment with himselves before they fade away.
The Doctor finds his way back to the TARDIS, or, at least the mental exit from the Matrix. Before he leaves, he asks the TARDIS a favour:
Who will it be?
Just a quick aside, the TARDIS can look like every Companion, and think like them too, because of the psychic connection. Or so I assume. I guess the TARDIS, being in your head, picks up on your brain pattern.
Anyway, the one Companion the Doctor wants to see is... Susan. I'm sure different people were expecting different Companions, but I'm fine with this. They never had a proper good-bye and she was family after all. Interestingly, the TARDIS decides on Susan's older appearance from "The Five Doctors" to appear before the Doctor. If there was one thing that was missing from "The Five Doctors", it was a moment between the Doctor and Susan. The story ends with the Doctor waking up on the TARDIS and he flies off, once again alone. It's not exactly an upbeat ending, not after the Doctor had a chance to see some old friends, but loneliness is very much part of the Doctor's life.
I had high hopes for this story. Multiple Doctors? Awesome. The Villain? Not so much. Still, it's a good read and a nice nostalgia trip for the Who fans. I read somewhere Tony Lee will be writing another Doctor Who comic, with an original Companion, that will lead into the introduction of Eleven. It might actually be enough for me to check out the comics again.
Anyway, one reason I gave up on the Doctor Who comics was the art. It was slightly cartoonish, which was fine, but it just didn't work sometimes. In one comic, the Doctor was wearing a grey suit and a sweater vest and Martha was in a skirt. Um, did anyone bother to watch this show? The Doctor wears brown and blue and we have never seen Martha in a frilly skirt. So The Forgotten made me slightly more hopefully when I saw it was being drawn by Pia Guerra, the same artist who drew Y: The Last Man. Her stuff isn't too wild, more understated I think, but she thankfully doesn't go off into crazy frames and body parts that are out of proportion to the rest of the body. I have no clue who Tony Lee is, never read any of his stuff, but it's obvious he's a fan, just what you need when writing mutliple Doctors.
So, quick overview of the plot. The Doctor and Martha awake to find themselves in a museum dedicated to the Doctor, only they have no memory of arriving and the TARDIS is missing. The museum is full of stuff the Doctor has encountered over his many incaranations. Actually, that was one of the neat things. There were tons of stuff in the background and a super dedicated Whovian would have known each and every one of them on the spot. Anyway, some dude in the shadows, with a goatee, is watching them the entire time, plotting to take the rest of the Doctor's regenerations for himself.
Making the comic book version of the character look like the actor shouldn't be a top priority, but I think Guerra makes Ten look enough like David Tennant. Some of the other Doctors aren't that great, but in some of the later issues it's not Guerra doing the art (she had a real life thing and had to back out of two issues). I was really only interested in capping frames of the Doctors, so apologies for not showing any of the Companions. Well, a few sneak in.
One of the awesomer panels, I must say. A little eerie and very nostalgic. I think nostalgia is the main driving force of this comic. It's written by a fan for the fans. The panel also sets up the rest of the story. The Doctor mysteriously loses all his memories from his past incarnations, leaving only some his memeories of being Ten. To help jog is his memory, Martha hands him the object that goes with each incarnation, restoring that part of himself. Walking stick, recorder, car keys, jelly babies, cricket ball, cat pin, umbrella, cravat, and psychic paper. Poor ol' Eight only gets a cravat. Poor ol' Eight didn't get a lot of things, but what do you want when you only have one canon adventure to go off of.
So the first memory the Doctor gets back is of his first incarnation, naturally. One, with Susan, Ian, and Barbara, land in ancient Egypt and as usual, they run amok with the locals.
Lee makes references to the serial "The Aztecs", which also had the group landing in a tomb. There's also a reference to the ancient Egyptians being aliens, which is in line with another serial. Stargate wasn't the first to suggest the Egyptian gods were something else. ;-) I like how One's, and Two's, adventures are in monochrome, matching their eras of black and white television.
Oh, another great thing. After each memory is restored, Martha, who's been listening to the Doctor recount every tale, asks what happened to the Companions that were with that incarnation. So you get some bittersweet recollection from the Doctor.
There's plot between each memory, but it's mostly just the Doctor and Martha being chased around the museum by old enemies of the Doctor while mysterious goatee guy watches and gloats, like any good Doctor Who villain.
The adventure with Two, Jamie and Zoe has them on a space station overrun with space snakes. Two uses his recorder to put the snakes to sleep, with some math help from Zoe, and some distraction by Jamie. At one point, Jamie starts singing a song to make the snakes chase after him. Apparently it's a song about the Doctor, Jon Pertwee um, "sung", at some point. I saw a YouTube thing of it at
scans_daily , but I can't remember the name exactly. So another obscure references from Lee. Two looks like Two, but Zoe and Jamie never look quite right; you could mistake them for anyone if you weren't aware of who they are."Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow!" Yay, way to go Lee for working that in. That and the Brig's "five rounds rapid." Oh, and Bessie, too. Three, Jo, and the Brig driving around in Bessie, being chased by mechanical greyhounds. Seriously. Bessie really doesn't save the day here, per se. The car helps Three, Jo, and the Brig to escape, but Three stops them by making a dog whistle that puts the space greyhounds to sleep. Still, the adventure has all the elements of Three's era: UNIT, Bessie, and Earthbound.
At some point between adventures, the Doctor realizes the TARDIS is gone, like, doesn't exist anymore gone. It's the first clue that everything isn't as it seems.
Issue #3 is where the comic changes artists. I can't recall who took over for Guerra, but whoever they were, I didn't like their stuff as much. This feels very much like Four to me, though, grinning in the face of danger while Romana just shakes her head. In this adventure, Four and Romana are in Paris at the turn of the millennium, and Romana gets a nice line about "Weren't we just here?" They end up in the catacombs after chasing a mime and they meet a Minotaur wearing a beret. I am seriously not making that up. Four uses a bag of jelly babies to distract the Minotaur to grab some key thingy to save the day.
For whatever reason, Five's playing cricket (again) at the beginning of his adventure. Cricket balls can be very handy though. Here, Five uses one to trick some Judoon looking for some glowly whatis Five used to keep when he was exiled on Earth. I'm beginning to sense an animal theme running through each adventure. Or a majority of Doctor Who aliens have looked like animals over the years. Tegan and Turlough are the Five's Companions here and it was probably around this point I started to wonder why certain Companions were being chosen over others. I mean, when I think of Five, I think of Tegan, Nyssa, and Adric. When I think of Four, I think of Sarah Jane. Thankfully, Lee makes up for this at the end of the comic, but I'll go into that later.
Ah, and here's Six in all of his multi-coloured glory. Peri's on trial for murder and Six is acting as her defence. It should be noted that the artist put Peri in a low cut shirt. *shakes head* Poor Peri; yes, the girl has boobs but she didn't need to show them off in every episode. There's some technobabble as Six explains why Peri couldn't have killed anyone and he uses his cat pin to demostrate why. I just like the line from Six at the end about how he wishes never to be in a court room again. Ha.
I've always felt sorry for Seven, having to wear all those question marks and carrying that umbrella. Yes, the show is called Doctor Who, but the character's name isn't. You don't need blatant question marks on every piece of clothing to make a point. Um, anyway... Seven and Ace arrive on a planet to stop a plague of Gallifrian origin. Ace uses some Nitro 9 along the way. :-) Who would have guessed that umbrella contained a cure-all elixir. There's also a quick line from Seven, wishing he had some all purpose I.D.
It's here, at the end of issue #4, that we find the Doctor isn't actually in a museum. He hears the Cloister Bell, which is only heard inside the TARDIS, on Gallifrey, or inside the Time Lord Matrix, a vast computer that storages every brain wave pattern and memory of every Time Lord (or so I can recall vaguely). Since two out of three shouldn't exist, it's safe to assume the Doctor is in the TARDIS, which is he. But there's a horrible bug thing on his chest! Oh, and Martha recognizes the Cloister Bell, which she shouldn't because she's never heard it before, so naturally the Doctor starts to become a little suspicious of his constant companion throughout this whole thing. But that bug thing. It leads towards the biggest let down of let downs. But I digress...
Eight, the loneliness Doctor of them all. I only say that because he's the only Doctor in the comic who doesn't get a Companion. Seems the rights to Grace and any other new character created for the TV movie are a bit complicated, so she can't appear in any of the spin-off media. Which is sad, really. But it plays into Eight's adventure; he's a prisoner on some planet in the middle of the Time War. He ends up cell mates with a Chantho type alien and they plot to escape. Eight uses his cravat to slide down a cable to get out of the prison, which is fine, but he doesn't get anything cool like the other Doctors. Ooh, a cravat. And it's not canon, but Eight finds a key that's part of a larger weapon that can wipe people out of existence, which suggests that's how Eight stops the Time War.
And I'm sure you've all been waiting for this last adventure. ;-)
Nine and Rose! The two of them land in WWI on Christmas Day, 1914. They're wearing those brown coats because it's cold but if you want to imagine Rose is wearing Ten's brown coat, hey, why not. ;-) This adventure is full of cute little references, making it one of my favourites. A soldier mentions a Captain Harkness, who was shot in the head but didn't have a scratch on him, and Nine says he's never heard of him, which is funny and a little sad at the same time. Immortal Jack is running around out there and Nine won't know about him for awhile. Nine also identifies himself with the psychic paper as Brigadier Bambera, a character from a serial called "Battlefield". Anyway, Christmas Day, the two sides stop fighting long enough to play a game of football, with Nine as ref. It's a cute little story; no aliens, no fighting, just people.
Back with Ten and Martha, she hands him the fob watch and the rest of his memories as Ten come back. Turns out, this story is post-Journey's End and Martha really isn't Martha. Martha's actually... the TARDIS? And while the Doctor is on the TARDIS, his mind is in the TARDIS Matrix. Everything was an elaborate ruse, created by mysterious goatee guy. Who is revealed to be...
Ten II? That's right, an evil Alt!Ten. You can tell he's evil because of the goatee. :-) So by now you're thinking "WTF?!" Why is Ten II evil and in the TARDIS Matrix? And why does he want the Doctor's remaining regenerations? Just reading to this point, I was thinking, "Okay, that's an interesting twist." I wasn't expecting Ten II. Fans were speculating that goatee guy was the Valeyard, another evil version of the Doctor. I actually thought the Black Guardian, who had a goatee too, but an all powerful being probably has better things to do than torment the Doctor.
So a showdown between Ten and Ten II. Awesome. Then the disappointment comes to call. No offense to Tony Lee, but the reveal ruins everything.
Turns out, it's not Ten II. It's actually the bug on the Doctor's chest I mentioned earlier. It was on Calufrax Minor, one of the planets that Davros stole. Bug thing was on the Crucible, for whatever reason, and couldn't get back to its planet before the Doctors and Donna sent it back. So it stowed away on the TARDIS, wanting revenge on the Doctor, and was psychic enough to create a link to the TARDIS Matrix. So the big, mysterious bad of the whole comic is some bug creature we've never heard of or seen before.
Oh well, the short adventures with the other Doctors makes up for this in a way. So the Doctor, with memories restored, runs off to find the TARDIS and to stop bug thing. Along the way he asks Martha/the TARDIS to change her appearance, the sight of Martha bringing back recent, and unpleasant, memories of "Journey's End". So the TARDIS turns into Harry Sullivan, a Fourth Doctor Companion. From this point on, the TARDIS continues to change her appearance to suit the situation, a nice notion after the bug reveal. So Companions who didn't appear in the adventures get their moment here: Harry, Leela, Mel, Steve, Kamelion, a quick mention of Polly and Dodo, Nyssa, Adric, and finally Sarah Jane. The only ones left out are Vicki, Katarina, Sara Kingdom (if you count her as a Companion) Ben, Victoria, Liz, and K-9 (!). I assume Jack and Donna don't appear due to rights and such. So, a nice kiss to the past. But wait!
It wouldn't be a multiple Doctor story without a moment like this:
All ten Doctors form out of the objects associated with them to confront Fakey!Ten II. Bug thing is stopped when the Doctor updates the Matrix with the fact that he's the only Time Lord, and thus bug thing can't exist within the Matrix. The Doctor has a moment with himselves before they fade away.
The Doctor finds his way back to the TARDIS, or, at least the mental exit from the Matrix. Before he leaves, he asks the TARDIS a favour:
Who will it be?
Just a quick aside, the TARDIS can look like every Companion, and think like them too, because of the psychic connection. Or so I assume. I guess the TARDIS, being in your head, picks up on your brain pattern.
Anyway, the one Companion the Doctor wants to see is... Susan. I'm sure different people were expecting different Companions, but I'm fine with this. They never had a proper good-bye and she was family after all. Interestingly, the TARDIS decides on Susan's older appearance from "The Five Doctors" to appear before the Doctor. If there was one thing that was missing from "The Five Doctors", it was a moment between the Doctor and Susan. The story ends with the Doctor waking up on the TARDIS and he flies off, once again alone. It's not exactly an upbeat ending, not after the Doctor had a chance to see some old friends, but loneliness is very much part of the Doctor's life.
I had high hopes for this story. Multiple Doctors? Awesome. The Villain? Not so much. Still, it's a good read and a nice nostalgia trip for the Who fans. I read somewhere Tony Lee will be writing another Doctor Who comic, with an original Companion, that will lead into the introduction of Eleven. It might actually be enough for me to check out the comics again.
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Date: 2009-02-24 01:46 am (UTC)