• A Review by Finn Clark

A Review by Finn Clark 16/10/00

The Glorious Dead is the longest Doctor Who story ever. Admittedly this isn't so if one measures in episodes or pages, but this tale was nine months in the telling - longer than The Daleks' Master Plan, The War Games and Trial of a Time Lord put together.

Alas, I don't think this did it any favours. It tries to be epic and plays interesting games with the DWM strip conventions, but at the end of the day a casual reader simply won't remember what happened in the earlier episodes. I've just reread all ten episodes and been astonished by how neatly it hung together as a complete story. Foreshadowings became obvious. Stuff I'd forgotten fell into place. More importantly, I could follow the subplots (!) without the distracting fragmentation of monthly publication. But what did I think of it?

As the capstone of the post-Threshold story arc, it does an efficient job. It's almost impossible to create a story arc in Doctor Who without taking away the TARDIS, but for five years the DWM team have worked like beaten dogs to give ongoing significance to their stories. The Glorious Dead is a terrifying sequel to The Road to Hell, not to mention two completely different links to The Fallen. Admittedly the first of those is a practical joke, but it's a good one.

That was the March issue cliffhanger, remember? In fact the cliffhangers are probably the best parts of The Glorious Dead, with the issue 289 one being an all-time classic DWM stunt in the tradition of Ace's death and the "regeneration".

Unfortunately that's where things start going wrong. On learning that the Doctor's on a higher level of reality, we lose interest in the events on Paradost and Dhakan. The reported nature of Episode Four helps make it seem less immediate too - which is a shame, since the adventures of Izzy and Kroton actually provide the story's emotional core. The Doctor's confrontations in the omniversal spectrum are all very flashy, but it's pure comic-book stuff. We've seen it before, especially against this particular foe.

But back in the real world, the Ash Wraiths are invading Paradost and committing atrocities. Izzy and Kroton really do prevent a planetary invasion. Appalling atrocities are committed; what Morningstar has made of Dhakan is compared by the Doctor with Auschwitz. This should matter... but what really sticks in the reader's mind is that Cardinal Morningstar is really < SPOILER >. Okay, yes, this is a story of mind-bending revelations. I counted six or seven "what the f*ck" moments in this ten-part story, any one of which could easily be the main twist of a more ordinary tale. The consequences of his past adventures are perhaps the most shocking, as this is the first time we've seen the Doctor's intervention leave effects like that.

But for the first three episodes, Paradost was a real place. Its introduction in episode one was beautiful, perhaps Martin Geraghty's finest hour (though I still adore his work on Endgame in DWM 244-247). If we could have felt its pain in later episodes this could have been a classic, but unfortunately we didn't. One minute Izzy and Kroton are having a character moment, then suddenly Morningstar's going home to Dhakan. And throughout we're more interested in what's happening to the Doctor.

Ah yes. The omniversal spectrum.

Here the comic strip is on firmer ground, though unfortunately these sections have less potential than the Izzy-and-Kroton ones. The Doctor's home life is a hoot and the fantasy sections are quite enjoyable, though they go on too long. Doc Gallifrey, Tardis Tails, Lord Quiquaequod, Charlie Doc, Joe Smith PI, the Sonic Screwdriver... yeah yeah, we get the message. Then, once the exposition's out of the way, the Doctor's duel is readable without being involving. Even when he gets a sword through his chest, we're not worried. We know it's not "real".

Mind you, the character development of the < SPOILER > is fascinating. At one point he even asks the Doctor not to judge his servant too harshly - "[he] walked my path without question for centuries... like all of his kind, he sees only what he most desires." This is a tired and world-weary nemesis, shorn of his insane hatred and all the more dangerous for it. He doesn't rise to the Doctor's baiting. He's an angry man, but no longer stupidly so. When he finally defeats the Doctor, his words to him are almost comforting. "It's over," he then says, "at long, long last..." Their relationship has turned on its head. He calls the Doctor his "dear, foolish friend," though the Doctor's hatred of him is almost palpable. This is the most interesting thing to be done with the character in over two decades, including the novels.

But then we reach the end. I'd like to quote Alan Moore:

"There is also the very real possibility that any storyline involving so many characters in more than a superficial fashion is going to degenerate into incoherence and gibberish, becoming a sort of comic book babel of difficult-to-explain powers and origins and characterisations topped off with a muddy cosmic conclusion, some of which I feel that I certainly feel prey to in my recent "Crisis in Heaven/American Gothic conclusion in Swamp Thing."

(This was from an unpublished series proposal for DC, by the way, after Swamp Thing and Watchmen but before his falling out with the company.)

The Glorious Dead was hampered by excessive fragmentation rather than too many characters, but it definitely has a muddy cosmic conclusion. Izzy gets to be cool, as with Kroton in episode eight, but it still feels a bit anti-climactic. There's some mystical bafflegab, then Kroton walks into a big shining light and presses the reset switch. He gets a few character moments, but they're too fleeting and (in the case of the mnemonic crystal) lean too heavily on the visuals to do the job.

In my opinion an awesome ten-part Doctor Who comic strip story could be told, but this wasn't it. I admire its ambition. I think it improves beyond measure if you read it en bloc instead of month by month, despite some stonking cliffhangers. Give it a go; you might be surprised. Unfortunately I don't think it helps the reader to connect with its events, with one of its plot threads being set in Not Real Land and the other being apparently just a subplot. You can see the potential in the Dhakan/Paradost material, but it's never quite realised. Admittedly this could be related to the fact that I find Izzy uninteresting and was never overwhelmed by this version of Kroton.

But it could have been worse, says he, remembering what happened to Abslom Daak... :-)