Doctor Who: The Third Doctor #1

Out this Wednesday is the newest in the ever-expanding Titan Comics Doctor Who line. Doctor Who: The Third Doctor features the likeness of Jon Pertwee, who played the Doctor between 1970 and 1974.

Paul Cornell, who’s written Doctor Who novels and actual TV show episodes, knows his stuff. This five-issue story, “The Heralds Of Destruction”, feels faithful to the period and the characters. But for me, that’s the problem. The third Doctor was kind of like a sci-fi James Bond, since he was trapped on the planet without use of his TARDIS. The episodes are often drawn out, moving slowly to modern eyes.

This issue, I felt the same way about. It’s great, for example, to see Jo Grant and Mike Yates having dinner together before being summoned by the Brigadier to help investigate “something enormous and under intelligent control [that] just crash-landed in Bedfordshire.” That’s not the only character-based interaction scene I enjoyed, but the bigger plot is the usual “alien invaders, let’s have a useless shootout” typical of the UNIT stories. However, the final page cliffhanger is promising enough to bring me back.

Cover by Josh Burns

Artist Christopher Jones sometimes gets the likenesses just right, and sometimes they’re a little off. (I thought he did best with the Brigadier, interestingly.) That’s a typical hazard of this kind of project, and his work is still readable and attractive. Here are some preview pages to give you an idea of his work. They also provide glimpses of two favorite supporting characters from the period (one is the car).

I’ve already posted the five variant covers for this issue, but there are an additional two retailer exclusives:

Forbidden Planet/Jetpack variant by Boo Cook

Diamond UK variant cover by Andy Walker

(The publisher provided an advance digital review copy.)