IDW Comics The Time Machination

Published

2009

• A Review by Finn Clark

A Review by Finn Clark 15/10/12

It's the second in IDW's six-issue series of self-contained Doctor Who stories by lots of different writers and artists. This time all of the creators are British, even the colourist, and most of them had already worked in the Whoniverse. Tony Lee, the writer, is IDW's main man for Doctor Who and has also contributed to DWM. Paul Grist, the artist, had done good work with Torchwood. Finally, there's colourist Phil Elliott, an artist, editor and self-publisher who as it happens had coloured the first seven issues of Grist's Jack Staff.

The story's a load of gibbering fanwank, mind you.

15-20 years ago, Tony Lee would have fitted right into the Virgin NAs. His Doctor Who work hasn't been making him look particularly good so far, but he's got the fannish self-indulgence down pat. What he's perpetrated here is a prequel to Talons of Weng-Chiang in which Tennant's Doctor dresses up in Tom's Sherlock Holmes outfit and meets up with an H.G. Wells who's name-dropping Timelash. His idea of explaining the word "TARDIS" is to say that this stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space (note the singular) and there are references to Ghost Light, Shada, The Unquiet Dead, Boom Town, Tooth and Claw (TV version) and the fact that the Doctor saw the eruption of Krakatoa, as mentioned in Inferno and Rose. We also have a couple of Torchwood agents running around, whom I assumed were meant to be Harriet Derbyshire and Gerald Carter from To The Last Man (and Grist's comic strip Circles for Rift War in Torchwood magazine) until I realised that the dates didn't match up.

Let me put it this way. Lee's out-wanking Gary Russell's story in the same IDW collection (Through Time and Space) and that's a crossover for the Draconians and Ice Warriors set around the time of The Curse of Peladon. Put this together with Lee's previous thing for IDW, The Forgotten, and I'm starting to feel fear at the idea of him sticking around.

The plot's not actually that bad, but it's weighed down by these encrustations. There's no emotional or thematic weight to it, unless you think fanwank counts. There's a mildly clever bit of time-twisting and a satisfying downfall for a bad guy.

As for Paul Grist's work, it's in his usual style and as satisfying as always. I like Grist. There's a lot of character in those slightly primitive lines and I think he does particularly well at capturing the essence of Tennant's Doctor. It feels as if the man's alive in these pages. Look at panels like "the problem is that they'll be looking for me" or "be a good chap and pass me the... oh." Good, aren't they? It's quite a gift to bring someone alive like that and feel true even within this kind of art style, although as it happens Grist's also drawing quite a close likeness. Out of curiosity, I've just got out his Torchwood stories in the Rift War collection, which were drawn to a much larger page format and coloured in several very different styles. It's an interesting comparison. I've decided that I like him in US format and with these flat blocks of colour, because it emphasises the page design and makes Grist feel even more Grist-y. I particularly like his line quality, which gets lost a little when he's reduced from UK magazine size.

This isn't a bad story at all. It's just so choked with old continuity that's it's practically the living dead. Nevertheless the plot's not bad once you've stripped away the gubbins, while the art's by Paul Grist. Almost despite myself, I like it.