Script: Jody Houser Art: Rachael Stott
Yet Another New Beginning by Jason A. Miller 27/5/22
A New Beginning is the trade paperback version of the first four issues of Titan Comics' new 13th Doctor Series. As such, it's the first comic available to feature the 13th Doctor, Graham, Yazmin, and Ryan.
I purchased this at Forbidden Planet in London during my vacation there in August 2019. I have to confess I've only been an intermittent Titans Comics' purchaser. They focus mostly on the New Series Doctors, with less output for the Classic Series, and I'm still, after all this time, more of a Classic Series guy. And the 13th Doctor's first season, which aired at the end of 2018, didn't really impress me enough to want to run out and buy comics based on her rocky first Chris Chibnall-produced season. But I was at THE Forbidden Planet, and had to buy something, anything -- and I already owned most of the Who novels and non-fiction books that they had for sale. So, A New Beginning it was.
(Well, that, and a little K9 toy, which sits on my desk at work and, in John Leeson's voice, tells me "Affirmative, Master!" whenever I tap the button. Never getting tired of my talking K9.)
The four-part story contained in A New Beginning is very, very faithful to the Chibnall/Whittaker era, and you can say that as both a good thing and a bad thing. Jody Houser, who I knew best from her comic adaptation of adaptation of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, writes a very lively script. Her Doctor genuinely sounds like Jodie Whittaker as we heard on TV in 2018, and her Yazmin, Ryan and Graham -- who, as three companions shoved into small stories, don't have a whole lot to do here, just as on TV -- sound like their TV counterparts.
The story is fairly derivative, and reminded me a bit of the plot involving villainous Tim Shaw in The Woman Who Fell To Earth, Whittaker's TV debut. The bad guy in A New Beginning is a horned demon, looking like a reject from Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel. He's called the Hoarder, his head is covered in jewels (as Tim Shaw's was covered in the teeth of his victims), and his game is kidnapping time travelers and forcing them to commit increasingly heinous thefts in his name. The Doctor rescues one of the time travelers, a scientist named Perkins, and helps him vanquish the bad guy and release the prisoners (including Perkins' ethically compromised boss).
Houser tells her story largely in two- or three-page scenes, flitting rapidly back and forth between a few different locales, with the occasional voiceover transition between scenes (admittedly, one of my favorite literary techniques). Rachael Stott's visuals are gorgeous: bright colors, vast sets, huge piles of riches, shadows when needed and a fabulous amber color scheme for the TARDIS interior. The story is slight but vibrantly told; Whittaker's Doctor is nice to those who deserve kindness (she shows remarkable compassion to a desperate would-be TARDIS hijacker) and cruel to those who deserve contempt (witness how the Hoarder is defeated). The dialogue is funny, and the visuals mask the fact that, spread out over what would have been four months' worth of comic book issues, the plot is paper-thin.
Titan likes to organize their releases by "season" format, so that each calendar year sees three trade paperbacks, loosely linked, with no real continuity carrying over into the following season, so that you can start each new year afresh. A New Beginning is the first trade paperback of this first Titan Jodie Whittaker season, and as such there are a couple of dangling plot threads (an interstellar war, a race of alien cops) that are sure to be picked up in Volumes 2 and 3. This volume might merit a re-read in a year, such that some of the seemingly disconnected scenes will make more sense after we get the next two trade paperbacks.
As it is, A New Beginning is just that: a new Doctor, three new companions, a new house style. But, at the same time, it's very traditional to the year-2018 Chris Chibnall format. While Houser writes well for this TARDIS team --- her pacing is expert and her dialogue is cracking -- the story itself is honestly not much better than most of what we got on TV during Whittaker's first ten episodes. I'd say that I'm looking forward to Volume 2... but I might wait until my next London trip in order to buy it.