It’s time to finish catching up (pretty much) with the Titan Comics releases by covering “Year 3”, starting with… a story that came out at the end of the run, but as it stars the Seventh Doctor I thought I’d read the stories in Doctor order, rather than release order. Operation Volcano shares a lot of similarities to the Third Doctor Titan story I raved about last year, especially with accurate drawings of the lead cast, but does the story hold up on its own? Well…
A few months ago Big Finish had a big sale on and during it I picked up the five Bernice Summerfield boxsets that take place after her 11 series run (that I won’t be picking up without downloads…) but before her New Adventures range (that I brought as they were released a few years ago), so I thought I’d finally get round to listening to them, now we’re currently in between non-currently-released Who marathons. Epoch kicks things off with… a mish-mash of genres and characters that doesn’t fully work, sadly… It’s not all bad though, so let’s press on with the review!
So the Audio / Comic Companion Debut Marathon comes to a close with the Eleventh Doctor’s Titan Comics companion Alice… plus John Jones and ARC, who last far less, but do travel with The Doctor, to be fair to them! Anyway, let’s have a look at “After Life”, which unlike the 10th Doctor stuff, is actually four short stories with connected themes, rather than all being multi-part affairs…
As we near the end of the Audio / Comics Companion Debut Marathon we reach the Titan comics range, a range I started covering on this blog from “Year 2” onwards, so this is slightly awkward as I’ll be going back to the start, before beginning to tackle “Year 3” in a month or so… Oh well! The Tenth Doctor’s new companion for the range, Gabby, is a fun character and their adventures get off to a good, and less complicated, start… so let’s have a look!
This is a rare one, an IDW comic story (well, stories). I wasn’t a big fan of the IDW series, and re-reading these two confirmed that opinion. Wonky artwork (especially Silver Scream!) and endless, relentless call backs right from the off. The stories aren’t bad, but I just don’t like the presentation, not helped by the fact that I only own them digitally thanks to a Humble Bundle a fair few years ago. Either way though, I consider them “canon” to my personal Doctor Who timeline, so Emily and Matthew are indeed comic companions, so here they are in this marathon! Let’s take a look…
This is what happened a few months ago: Big Finish – “Hey, Mags is back for a new trilogy with the Seventh Doctor!” Me – “… Who?” Yes, I didn’t recognise the name, and even when someone said it was the werewolf girl from “The Greatest Show in the Galaxy”, I thought “Oh her… right. Okay then?” Still, as unnecessary a reunion as it is, has it produced a great story? Not really, but it did at least give off a fresh feeling, hearing the Seventh Doctor with a companion other than Ace is a rare thing, if nothing else. So let’s take a deeper look into the Monsters of Gokroth and see where this new trilogy could lead…
The second half of Ravenous 3 sadly fails to keep up the momentum of its first two episodes, and while neither story were bad, both were lacking in forward momentum and instead felt like two episodes of running on the spot. Still, some good times to be had, and it certainly seems like it’s going to lead to a big conclusion! Let’s take a look.
“Deeptime Frontier” picks up right from the end of Ravenous 2, with The Doctor and co. in immediate danger from the titular threat, but the highlight of this double bill has to be “Companion Piece”, which decides to step away from the core storyline almost entirely and have a bit of a celebration of the Eighth Doctor’s audio history by bringing back a bunch of past companions for a one-off (or a companion piece to the core storyline, if you will!) It made for a fun start to the set, so let’s take a look!
The Comic/Audio Companion Debut Marathon enters the “NuWho” era of Doctor Who (and sadly, but not unexpectedly, skips the Ninth Doctor…) as we get the one and only Tenth Doctor comic companion from Doctor Who Magazine, though the first of three comic companions for Tennant’s incarnation of the Time Lord… So let’s have a look!
Well, this is odd! Only a few months ago I wrote a review for the original comic version of this story as part of the Audio/Comic Companion Debut Marathon, and now here I am reviewing the audio adaptation! Well, some of this review, particularly the look at the story itself, are copied and pasted from that, but with some extra thoughts on the audio side of things, obviously. So let’s once again take a look at “and the Star Beast”, or just “The Star Beast” for simplicities sake…
