Script: Alan Barnes Art: Martin Geraghty, Robin Smith
A Review by Noe Geric 17/10/25
The Keep is more of a premise than anything else. It's here to settle what will come in Fire and Brimstone. That means there's not a great deal happening, really. That doesn't mean it's bad, but while Izzy should've been the focus after her introduction in the middle of a big villain comeback in the previous opus, The Keep is more interested in the Doctor. For the readers, the McGann incarnation was as new as the companion, featured in just a TV Movie, but in the end it all feels rather flat.
Martin Gheraghty’s artwork is as good as ever, always epic and detailed. But the script doesn't give anything really substantial: the far future is a deserted world with no more sun. There's a Transmat war, a great idea wasted with the ''I don't show, just talk'' and the villains are just some mercenaries squatting outside the titular Keep.
We're introduced to the robot Marques, the scientist Crivello and the Cauldron (an artificial sun). But it's just plot and exposition... Reading the commentaries at the end of the graphic novel, it was apparently supposed to save Fire and Brimstone from all this exposition that would just blow your mind. I get we got that mediocre story to save another. The Keep isn't bad, just not really interesting taken alone.
There are some great moments: Izzy's references to SF shows are always fun to hear. But the idea of transmat war felt particularly wasted with just a panel telling briefly what it was about. Instead we got some thugs apparently related to Magnus Greel in some way, but not really memorable. It seems like I'm bored having read it, but it's not that dull. Just that it's as if I was reviewing Mission to the Unknown but with the Doctor in it, making it less memorable (because it hasn't the particularity of being Doctor Who without the titular hero).
It's worth the artwork and fans of the Eighth Doctor can't refuse more McGann in visual medium. I admit I've read Fire and Brimstone not long after so I understand how The Keep fits with it. But back when it was first published, you had to wait three months before you could get what it was all about. Unsettling but entertaining! 7/10