‘Doctor Who: The Lost Dimension #5’ Review
Written by Emma Beeby, Gordon Rennie | Art by Ivan Rodriguez, Wellington Diaz, Anderson Cabral | Published by Titan Comics
The previous four issues of this ‘event’ series have been good enough, but I still have this nagging feeling something is still missing. Don’t get me wrong, multiple Doctors is always fun. You could have multiple Doctors doing their laundry for twenty pages and I’d still read it. This year’s event though just lacks the structure of previous ones, and has felt to me more suited to have had the story told in their individual books, with stories crossing across books when required. The actual ‘team up’ element has been pretty minor, with the individual Doctor’s mainly having individual adventures loosely connected by the overall Void storyline. It still reads fine, of course, just not quite the book I was expecting.
Issue 5 is a bit different in a couple of ways to what we’ve seen already. Firstly, it is a super sized special, and a little change of pace as it features two stories. Secondly, the first story is headlined by a Companion, honorary Time Lord Professor River Song herself, with the second story featuring the most famous Doctor of them all, The Fourth Doctor. Well that grabbed my attention all right. We drop in on River Song doing what she does best, putting herself and others in danger. All in a good cause of course, but still…She discovers a failed Silurian colony, that should be abandoned but apparently isn’t. The people there seem to be aware of the Void but want out, and think River can help. Maybe she can, as soon as she’s survived the dinosaur attack…
The second story puts us back on firmer Time Lord territory, with a visit to the TARDIS, The Fourth Doctor, and companion Romana. The TARDIS is of course nowhere near where it should be, and has managed to smack into a big fleet of menacing ships. The ships turn out to be the Krotons, who The Doctor has met in the past, and they are fighting against another foe, the Quarks, that it turns out shouldn’t be there at all, as they exist in another time and place completely. Turns out that various alien races have been able to jump across the Void and enter our dimension from their own. Enter The Ogron Confederation of Planets just to cement that point, although rather more smarter Ogrons than The Doctor recalls.
Clearly more powerful versions of familiar foes are entering our universe from their own, and The Doctor has a theory on this. After escaping using Emmeline Pankhurst’s parasol (don’t ask), The Doctor tries to negotiate with all three empires to avoid a space war. He explains they shouldn’t be here, and his theory is they are more powerful versions of this universe’s races because the Daleks don’t exist in their dimensions to subjugate them. They all decide to subtly retreat back from whence they came. War avoided, The Doctor needs to find out what is allowing dimensional breaches, and how to stop them. That’s a story for another issue though.
Another issue that was decent enough, but little more. The River Song story, by Emma Beebie and Ivan Rodriguez just felt a little inconsequential to me. Only 11 pages of story meant the script needed to be very tight, but when you throw in that two pages were full page panels and a couple of others had minimal dialogue, you can see this was more about Ivan Rodriguez’s art, which was very good by the way, than Emma Beebie’s script. River’s dialogue was very good though, capturing her personality spot on. The second story was longer, and Gordon Rennie wrote an excellent Tom Baker adventure, though again it was a slight addition to the main Void storyline and not really a tale that needed to be told. The art, by Diaz and Cabral, was too cartoony for me, and their Fourth Doctor looked more like Colin Baker than Tom.
This added very little to the main storyline but was fine enough for what it was. I hope this storyline starts to gather a bit of momentum soon, as it really needs a shot in the arm. Too much filler at the moment unfortunately, though it’s not too late to get back on track.
*** 3/5
