This one was a little awkward to review as it had an issue per Doctor with a linking narrative with a meet up at the end, the same set up as the next 50th Anniversary thing I’m looking at in this marathon but that I’ve split up into four whereas this I’m keeping together and that’s because the individual stories are much shorter, being single comic issues, unlike Destiny of the Doctor, which is comprised of roughly one-hour audios. Anyway! Prisoners of Time was IDW’s contribution and it had some good ideas but it was ruined by a really… really naff villain reveal and attempt to make an emotional moment out of it that only served to make me laugh. Let’s take a look!
So for the first seven stories we just see a shadowy figure watch over events followed by the issues ending with the Doctor’s companions mysteriously vanishing, starting with “Unnatural Selection”, the First Doctor story. It starts off weird (not just because they chose Ian, Barbara and Vicki as the TARDIS team) as The Doctor has arrived at a specific time period to meet a friend, something that makes no sense in this era as he should be unable to pilot the ship (Ian and Barbara should be pee’d off given his constant claim that he can’t get them back home!) but it’s later turned into a Zarbi invasion of Earth, of all things. Does anyone actually like “The Web Planet”? Well, anyway, Ian drives a train into the main Animus intelligence to end it. Very odd. “Bazaar Adventures” is the Second Doctor issue and sees The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe arrive at the universe’s biggest trading post (in the “Police Box section” coincidentally) and our lead spots some Voraxx traders, famous for the slave trade. He intentionally gets Jamie captured by them so he can home in on their holding pens and there he releases two captured Ice Warriors, who then lead an uprising. Not a lot to chew on in this one…
This is one of the only stories where I actually liked the artwork…
The Issue 3 / Doctor 3 story is “In with the Tide” and sees Liz Shaw call The Doctor, who is with Sarah Jane, back to Earth because the Brigadier is acting crazy, and it turns out he’s possessed by an alien parasite. The Doctor extracts it and finds out it belongs to a species called the Remoraxians and they plan to flood Earth so they can take over. They’re stopped when The Doctor, his two companions and the Brigadier convince them that humanity will willingly destroy themselves along with them if they try to enact their plan, so they bugger off. Simple enough! The Fourth Doctor takes centre stage in “A Rare Gem”, which sees him, Leela and K9 arrive on Agratis, a simple planet that has become a tourist trap due to the fabled “Jewel of Fawton”. As they arrive though they find the planet crawling with Judoon as the Jewel has been stolen, so while Leela and K9 do battle with the Rhino Police The Doctor and local Curator Frez go in search of his daughter’s boyfried Roget, who apparently stole it. After a bit of a runaround Roget reveals that the Crystal was stolen from the caves they were in and when he places it back crystalline creatures rise from the walls. The Judoon leave as the Jewel had been returned to its rightful place.
The Fifth Doctor story is “In Their Nature”, which sees The Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa and Adric arrive in the middle of a Rutan-Sontaran battlefield, something oddly rarely seen in the franchise. They end up in the clutches of the Rutans then saved by their enemies, who know they’re doomed to fail but charge headlong into battle anyway as the TARDIS group retreat. At this point The Doctor begins to remember his companions vanishing in the past. “Facades” is the Sixth Doctor story and sees him paired with Peri and Frobisher. They’re at a nature preserve (for penguins, naturally) but are beset by Autons under the control of the Tremas version of The Master. They’re swiftly defeated by some machine trickery but the key thing is when the mysterious man kidnaps Peri it turns out to be Frobisher disguised as Peri, doing so under the orders of the Tenth Doctor. He breaks free in the mysterious man’s base. “Cat and Mouse” is the Seventh Doctor story and sees him and Ace helping out in a 19th century castle full of sick people only for it to turn out that the head of the castle Alan Campbell is actually the Tremas Master again! Very 80s. The Master was using unconscious creatures called Aeroliths in his plans but The Doctor wakes them up and they chase The Master throughout time, and will apparently never stop until they catch their pray. The Master laughs about working with an acquaintance of the Doctor’s future before departing.
This feels very “DWM Eighth Doctor light-hearted one shot comic” in visual style. I assume they got the original artist?
The Eighth Doctor’s story, “The Body Politic”, is a rather disappointing one where he tries to take Grace on a TARDIS trip despite her declining last time and she doesn’t really enjoy herself though does end up helping settle a dispute, and that’s about it. I understand not wanting to use a Big Finish companion or something but they could’ve done better than that. Anyway, at the end The Doctor calls out his companion kidnapper before he appears but still fails in stopping him from nabbing Grace and departing. This brings us to the Ninth Doctor story, “Mystery Date”, sees The Doctor and Rose visit a large monument that was supposed to be on a deserted planet but it turns out an obscenely wealthy man actually lived there, kept alive for centuries via technology, who tried to keep Rose with him as she reminded him of his deceased wife. Rose declines and so he sees the error of his ways and self destructs the building, or something? Very odd. BUT it’s here we get the wettest of all wet fart reveals as the mysterious cloaked figure turns out to be Adam from that one Ninth Doctor episode. Remember? What’s that? No? Oh yeah, right. Well after upsetting The Doctor and getting a weird head implant before being left on Earth he had to live a dull life to make sure nobody found out about it and that drove him to be bitter towards The Doctor, to the point where he’s now kidnapping all his companions to get back at him. Hmmmm… Great. Still, all these years later, and I can’t help but laugh at this attempted drama. Adam was such a forgettable, nerdy character I don’t buy the evil villain schtick one bit.
The Tenth Doctor story, “Quiet on the Set”, is at least a good laugh as it has The Doctor and Martha having to deal with Dominators and their Quarks. A proper mishmash of old and new there, complete with over-the-top 60s Dominator outfits. I mean, thanks to the magic sonic The Doctor stops the Dominators’ plans quite easily, but hey-ho. Afterwards The Doctor sees Adam coming and calls for him but is zapped unconscious before he can do anything. The Eleventh Doctor story is where the overall arc kicks off before the final issues, so I’ll talk about those in the Spoiler section. I will say that the artwork varies from “okay” to “stylized in a way I don’t really like” to “really bad”, never really hitting a level I’d call good. It’s never as bad as some of the other IDW crossover’s art, but I’ll discuss that in the review for “The Forgotten” in a week or so…
The Continuity:
What a strange mash up this confrontation is…
The biggest one I suppose is Adam himself, who first appeared in Ninth Doctor TV story “Dalek” and left in the following story “The Long Game” because The Doctor thought he was too much of knob (and he was right!). The First Doctor story saw the return of the Zarbi from “The Web Planet”, the Fourth Doctor issue had the Judoon, who first appeared in Tenth Doctor TV story “Smith and Jones”, the Fifth Doctor saw him encounter Rutans, who have still only made one TV appearance in Fourth Doctor TV story “The Horror of Fang Rock”. There were also Sontarans but I haven’t got all day to list those stories off, same goes for the Tremas Master and the Autons as seen in the Sixth Doctor issue.
Grace is from the Eight Doctor’s debut appearance, “The TV Movie”, while the Quarks and Dominators that appear in the Tenth Doctor issue are from the Second Doctor TV story “The Dominators”. Given the nature of the comic there are off-hand comments that link to other stories but that’s all the major ones!
Overall Thoughts:
It’s all The Doctors, but pretty well drawn! Take that “The Forgotten”!
“Prisoners of Time” has some fun mini-stories, though often with pretty poor art, and has a fun multi-Doctor moment in the final part (making up for the terribly drawn one from “The Forgotten”) but the key reveal and villain is just so comically bad and the ending so unjustified that I can’t give this a good rating. It’s the kind of “fan wank” that makes a 10 year old’s fanfiction look good.
So in the eleventh issue Doctor #11 and Clara are running from killer ducks before they’re zapped by Adam and Clara is taken. The Doctor remembers everything and goes on a hunt for his old “companion”, eventually taking him to a massive fortress in the middle of the Time Vortex where he not only meets Adam but also the Tremas Master, fresh from surviving torture via the angered Aeroliths, and who has been helping Adam get revenge (because that’s what he wants too!) It was fun to see the Eleventh Doctor interact with the Tremas Master, that’s a combination I never thought I’d see… for good reason, obviously. The issue ends with Adam holding a switch that will kill all of his companions (who are being kept in tubes across the back wall of the room) and says that The Doctor gets to pick one companion who gets to live and that the rest will die.
As far as armies go, they’re mostly non-combatants so… Not super helpful…
The finale opens with Adam about to press the button only for the remote to turn out to be Frobisher in disguise, while The Doctor summons his ten previous selves due to the castle being out of time and therefore paradox free.The Master unleashes an Auton army but Frobisher releases all the companions, leading to a weird mass battle, during which Adam finds out the truth about his new ally when the Master reveals his real plan of wiping out all life in the universe, which isn’t really The Master’s M.O. (no point in being the Master of nobody) but hey, let’s go with it. Adam tries to stop the Master but is stabbed for it, though a short while later he destroys the console the Master needed for his plan. Adam then dies in The Doctor’s hands, asking if the titular Time Lord was wrong about him after all, which they agree and then all mourn him at a collective funeral.
“Good enough?! You tried to kill all my friends bar one a few minutes ago you twat!”
I’m sorry, but what on Earth is this writing?! The guy legitimately tried to press a button that would’ve killed all of The Doctor’s companions from Susan to Clara just a few minutes ago and just because he didn’t want to see all life in the universe destroyed doesn’t mean he’s a good guy now and The Doctor would forgive him, let alone put a grave stone with his name on it and a description calling him a “true companion”. No true companion would be willing to kill all of The Doctor’s old friends because he feels slighted! Blimey. Adam in general was bad enough, this ending is just… crap.
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