To Parley with a God

I’m going to be fairly critical of this third volume for the Doctor, but I want to be clear about something: my issues with this book aren’t just about the book itself. In a way it’s a solid adaptation of Doctor WhoThe longest running sci-fi franchise (at least in terms of sheer seasons), Doctor Who has seen cancelations, relaunches, and reboots, but the core of the series remains the same: a madman in a box traveling through time and space., in so far as there are plenty of strange, weird, and goofy stories that have come out during the run of the show, and on paper these stories seem pretty terrible. You can have an episode like “The Idiot Lantern”, or “The Rebel Flesh”, or “The Zygon Invasion”, and these would all seem to have pretty awful premises to them. Doctor Who is, at its core, a kind of cheesy version of sci-fi, but it’s lovable because it tries so far.

What makes any of these (and many other) episodes work, even when the stories themselves should be garbage, are the actors performing the characters. I’ve noted before that I don’t really feel like I’ve gotten a firm grasp of the companion paired with the Tenth Doctor in these books, Gabby, because the book hasn’t done a great job developing her as a character. That is and isn’t fair, I suppose, since we have met her family, have seen her going about her life, have learned about her aspirations and dreams and desires. She is a fleshed out character in concept, but the character on the actual comic page feels soulless. She’s a generic female companion going through the motions as every female companion has done since the 2005 continuation series began.

The fact that these characters, and these stories, aren’t being performed by actors makes it harder to invest in the tales being told. And when the tales are very weird and kind of ridiculous, like we have here where an ancient alien artifact awakens a long dead Egyptian god (who is actually an alien as well), we need something that we can latch onto. There is nothing wrong with this story in the grand scheme of Doctor Who because “The Fountains of Forever” is no more or less silly than anything else Doctor Who has tackled in its 60-plus year history. But the soul of the story is somehow missing, in part because we don’t have actors giving it their all to sell the material. The writing on the page has to be good enough and, frankly, it just doesn’t feel like it is.

Robbie Morrison handled writing duties on this book (as they did on “The Weeping Angels of Mons”), and credit where it’s due, I think this book is better than the first volume, “Revolutions of Terror”, that was written by Nick Abadzis. While I don’t think Gabby is still a very interesting character, Morrison has a knack for fleshing out and giving life to all the side characters that populate the story. They clearly interest him much more than the two main characters, as Gabby is a largely passive presence while the Doctor is reduced to little more than a guy who says technobabble and then gives speeches about “the good of the universe”. Our mains are going through the motions, but the side characters give this story some life. Which is good because without them this book would be a slog to get through.

The book itself focuses on the Doctor and Gabby, back in NYC so she can do a quick visit. When the Doctor hears about a curious auction going on, he wanders over to take a peek. There’s some alien tech on sale he’d rather get into his possession lest someone nefarious get a hold of it. And his supposition is correct as someone nefarious does want to get their hands on it: Cleo, an acquisitions agent working for a cult devoted to the old gods. But first Cleo has to get it from a rich actress, Dorothy Bell, who wants the tech because she thinks it can heal her ailing body. It does, in a way, by merging Dorothy with a sentient alien A.I., but that is only the start of the problems.

With the merge, the new hybrid-Dorothy accidentally awakens one of the last Osiran vessels, a giant, golden pyramid, which now hovers over NYC demanding the return of its “key”. That key is Dorothy, and with her the ship, powered by its own A.I., the Seeker, intends to resurrect its sole, sleeping occupant, Anubis. As we learn, the Osirans all left after a great battle between its royal members, and Anubis was left behind to guard the gate to the next realm. The alien just wants to return him, but if he were to access the gate it could destroy this universe. The Doctor, Gabby, and Dorothy have to find a way to stop him.

The book builds itself well on old lore from classic Doctor Who. There are plenty of references to old episodes where ancient Egyptian tech (from the Osirans) was used. This book sort of acts as a sequel to “Pyramids of Mars” from the thirteenth series of the old show, and I can appreciate a deep cut storyline as much as the next guy. There’s no denying that it’s goofy and strange, but as I noted before, that’s kind of Doctor Who’s style. You enjoy the show because it embraces its silliness and doesn’t shy away from it. I just wish it could play better on the page.

I think part of the problem here is that the book has to explain a lot to the readers just to make things make sense. It either has to stop the story in its tracks so the Doctor can describe Osirans, their tech, their history, their philosophy, or it has to breeze past all that leaving readers in the dust. There isn’t really a happy middle ground here, in large part because of the way the story is framed and paced, but I don’t think that would be as big of a deal if there was a charismatic lead at the center of it all.

There isn’t, though, as the Tenth Doctor under Morrison’s care is a real dud. The Doctor is sometimes described as their otherworldly, alien force that sits outside of time, always observing it. You don’t really sense that on the show because the actors performing as him are so good, giving the character manic energy, and joy, and life. But here all of that energy is missing. The Doctor comes across as very flat on the page, just spouting dialogue without ever really feeling like he means anything or cares. The Doctor we know from this era seems to be missing, despite the book doing its best to make the character look like David Tennant.

It just might be that a story like this would work better as a television episode instead of as a comic, except that the budget to do all these that happen here (like Dorothy rebuilding skyscrapers in NYC, or the giant Osiran ship, or the multiple scenes with Anubis appearing) would all be pretty expensive to film. You can get away with sequences in a comic book that you could never do on a budget-conscious show like Doctor Who. Credit the book for being ambitious, but it doesn’t feel like that ambition really pays off here.

The book simply feels uneven. It doesn’t lack for ambition, and it does feel like it’s trying, but the very soul that makes Doctor Who breathe, that gives it the life it needs to work as a series, still can’t be found in these comics. I want to like these stories because I like Doctor Who, but so far we’re three books into this Tenth Doctor run and I have yet to find a compelling hook that makes me want to continue. If I didn’t already own these volumes I probably would have stopped already, and I really couldn’t blame anyone else if they chose to end their run here as well.