Product Description

The first colume of comics collecting the 10th Doctor's complete strip adventures from the pages of Doctor Who Magazine and the Doctor Who Storybook. The famous Timelord and his companion Rose Tyler battle Sontarians, meet mythical monsters and face a terrifying encounter with the new ""Lords of Time""! Original colour strips digitally remastered and collected for the first time ever.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #91278 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 180 pages

Customer Reviews

Good reflection of the TV series mood
I bought this as part of the continuing set of Marvel/Pannini comic strip volumes that started with The Iron Legion a few years ago.
Following the evolution of the Doctor Who comic strip (one of the longest running) from those early days has been interesting. The first Gibbons-drawn strips were light-hearted, reflecting the tone of the series in those days. I used to read them every week as a kid and they were great.
As the strip, and I, matured, the tone became darker, more Science Fiction and larger in scope and ambition culminating in some fantastic multi-layered strips featuring the eighth Doctor.
And then the series came back - which proved a mixed blessing to those who had begun to imagine the programme as much more grown up, much more serious.

I'm not a huge fan of new Who. I watch it, I enjoy it, but I find a lot of it silly (especially the scripts by "legend" Russell T Davies. I have high hopes for the programme under Stephen Moffat (who wrote Blink among others, as well as one of the best sit-coms of recent years, Coupling).
When the series returned Doctor Who Magazine took a turn for the worse - it stopped being a critical (in the good sense) review of the series and turned in to a PR puff-piece, previewing and reviewing new episodes like they were all masterpieces which, a few years on, people are starting to admit wasn't the case.
The comic strip also went downhill. The few ninth Doctor strips have already been released in magazine format (completists like me hope they see a softback release soon) and they were fairly insubstantial and often plotless. The first few tenth doctor strips showed promise but like the TV series eschewed development of character and plot for mindless banter and bonkers "SF" concepts.
I stopped reading the magazine around then!

So now the tenth's reign is coming to an end, Panini are collecting his strips together which gives an opportunity to review them. The title strip here, The Betrothal of Sontar, isn't bad and owes a lot to those eighth doctor epics. There's an attempt to fill in some aspects of Sontaran society (something Doctor Who Monthly did well back in the day). The scripting is sometimes difficult to follow but the artwork is of a consistently high quality.

As for the book itself - well sadly Panini didn't design it to fit in with the rest of the series, adopting the new series logo. You can sort of understand that, but if you look at the seventh doctor volumes that have just come out you'll see they did the same there! Argh! Comic book purchasers are a particular crowd and it's a real shame that the publishers completely failed to judge who buys these and why.

If you're a fan of new Who, it's a good buy. If you're a collector, you have to have it. These aren't the high point of Doctor Who comic strips - for those look to the Stockbridge stories of the fifth Doctor or the epics from the eighth.
But they are, ultimately, fun.