Tony gets festive, with
barely a ‘Bah, humbug!’ to be heard.
The Thirteenth Doctor’s
an awkward one.
At least, she’s
awkward in comic-books because, like the Tenth, her default position
is enthusiasm, rather than, say, the survivor-guilt of Nine, the
off-beat bandy-legged Chaplinry of Eleven or the taciturn left-field
enigma of Twelve. By basing their everyday personality in smiles and
banter, both Ten and Thirteen render themselves a little more tricky
to actually pin down, both in terms of the subtleties of their faces
for comic-book art and the quirks of their personalities in terms of
driving stories forward.
Which is why you need
to choose your writers and artists well when you’re delivering a
13th Doctor story, especially if that story is going to
replace the old tradition of an on-screen Christmas Special. We know
she has a thing for New Years, but does the 13th Doctor
even Christmas, Fam?
Course she does –
again, the keynote of her personality, at least prior to the debut of
Series 12, is that initial reaction to her regeneration – moments
of bafflement growing into a grin lit by inner sunlight and an ‘Oh,
brilliant!’ There’s almost literally nothing more Christmassy,
more ‘Child waking up to see that Santa’s been’ than that
reaction. Perhaps perversely given the harsh truths of TV scheduling,
there’s almost never been a Doctor more suited to Christmas
Specials than 13.
Step forward then, Jody
Houser to write the 13th Doctor’s festive comic-book
special, and the artistic team of Roberta Ingranata, Giorgio Sposito
and Valeria Favoccia to turn that story into over a hundred pages of
Christmassy artwork, coloured by Enrica Eren Angioline and Tracey
Bailey. All hands on deck – Team Tardis are going on holiday!
Yeah.
You heard me.
Annnnd you know how
well the Doctor’s determination to have a holiday usually turns
out. This time though, in a particularly New Who vibe, the Doctor
lets the Tardis pick the destination – more, as she says, even than
she usually does. And all is fun and games at a kind of Space
Disneyworld until Graham tries his luck at the interstellar
equivalent of a coconut shy, and loses. When you lose at this
particular game, it turns out, the vendor wins more than your money,
and the chase is on to rescue Graham, and lots of other hapless
ball-chuckers, from his clutches. Bwahaha…
Here’s an important
thing about the vibe of the 13th Doctor’s era that’s
perfectly captured in this comic-book. There have been days and
they’ve been many, when that story of companion-capture and rescue
and winning through, would in itself be quite enough story to weave
at least an ordinary, non-Christmas story out of.
Here, in the era of the
13th Doctor, that’s barely act one of the storytelling.
It’s the sneaky mince pie you snaffle on the way to the Christmas
Dinner table. Houser captures this sense of having a mini-adventure
that leads to a chilly, minor-key, hairs-on-the-back-of-your-neck
realisation, that draws us further into The Bigger Adventure
perfectly, because while there are a good number of panels devoted to
showing us the reality of this Graham-centred malarkey, it turns out
each of the Tardis Team have different memories of what happened and
how. That in itself is a significant thread that leads them to a
bizarre conversation on a planet that each of them swears blind
they’ve never been to before, and the now-traditional moment of
13th Doctor determined scrunch-face of definitive
involvement comes when it’s revealed that someone somewhere is
operating a slave workforce for nefarious purposes – it’s not
exactly a sweatshop of elves, working themselves to death to make all
the toys in time for Christmas, but if you squint your eyes, you can
get there. Has something gone wrong with the Doctor’s mate Jeff, or
is there something even odder going on?
Spoiler alert: there’s
something even odder going on.
The something even
odder involves the logical, folklorically-established enemy of
Christmas, delivered in a way which is more than a horn-tipped
head-nod to the Nimon – mythology and technology combined for
purposes which on the one hand are nefarious, and on the other hand
are almost inevitable. There’s even a touch of Monsters, Inc
about the inevitable aspect of this storyline, the lengths to
which people will go to get what they absolutely need, even if what
they absolutely need involves hurting other people, being key to the
drama. There’s also – and you won’t believe how pleased we are
to write this down – an elf with attitude, much hiding in
impossible closets (Thank you, CS Lewis), and a more-than-solid
handful of lovely callbacks to Doctor Who of old, synthesised into
the new. There’s the setting right of memories, the sonic-twiddling
dismantlement of techno-gubbins, and the freeing of
perception-filtered slaves, all en route to a slap-up
Christmas lunch, a wreath of holly on the Tardis door, an extra,
cheeky mince pie just when you think you’re stuffed to
bursting-point with twinkly goodwill, and essentially, everything
you’ve come to think of as essential from a Doctor Who Christmas
Special.
But there’s also a
distinct 13th Doctor vibe to the whole thing. What does
that mean? There are beaming smiles at the Fam, and declarations that
13 has chosen her friends well – that kind of ego-boosting,
confidence-polishing thing at which the 13th Doctor is
especially adept, blending ‘infinite secrets of the Time Lords’
with ‘Northern Mam, wiping smudges off her charges’ faces before
sending them out into the school of the universe’ in her approval
of her pals. There’s also a somewhat trademark declaration of who
she is and what her plans are (look out for that in a signature panel
of gorgeous artwork). There’s sitting quietly with confused folk,
all Patrick Troughton cross-legged and respectful, and there’s the
assured unravelling of a deeper reality in speeches that are less
grandiose than some of her predecessors, but more empathetic, hitting
characters more quietly and deeply where they live to move the action
along. Ultimately then, what you get from Mind Out Of Time is
an entirely believable 13th Doctor Christmas Special that
you’ve never yet seen on-screen, handled by a writer strongly
attuned to the rather tricky personality-essentials of the 13th
Doctor, and delivered with some solidly twinkly and resplendent
artwork (the villain-reveal is another key page over which to stop
and drool).
Along the way, there’s
also artwork which – as with early Tenth Doctor releases from Titan
– is more notional than specific, the 13th Doctor’s
face being another tricky one to pin down in its essentials, but this
sense of proximity, rather than precision, is more or less fitting
for a story determinedly moving forward at pace, rather than
necessarily lingering in one place for too long. As Christmas stories
on TV are notorious for this need of pace so as to capture and keep
the attention of various relatives wandering through the room as well
as the hardcore fans in the household who shush at them every time
they ask stupid questions, you actively go with this sense of forward
motion. And it’s important not to overstate this element too –
whenever the ‘camera’ of the panel is supposed to be focused on
the 13th Doctor’s face, she’s recognisably there,
which means that sense of rapid forward motion and occasional facial
sketchiness is more a deliberate pusher of pace than it is an
indicator of deficiency on the part of the artists.
Time Out Of Mind
then is a selection box of good things, from an initial premise
that’s familiar to Who fans from as far back as The Romans –
Team Tardis on a holiday that goes a bit wrong – to a distinctly
Chibnallian chill as the initial story becomes only a marker of
something deeper and darker going on, through a festive adventure
very much in the Russell T Davies vein, that pits the newest of the
Time Lords and her Fam up against the forces of an existential
anti-Christmas evil, allows them to win through with a bit of
twiddling, a calm speech or two, a bit of a stand taken and a
determinedly silly hat, and straight on for the pleasure of Christmas
Dinner. It’s a thing of surprises, and smiles, and that ‘You
shouldn’t have, but I’m glad you did!’ reaction that all the
best Christmas presents bring. If your relatives are senseless clods
and didn’t get it for you for your Christmas, do yourself a
favour and give yourself a belated Christmas gift. January’s harsh
– make yours better with Time Out Of Mind, available now.
Tony lives in a cave of wall-to-wall DVDs and Blu-Rays somewhere fairly
nondescript in Wales, and never goes out to meet the "Real People". Who,
Torchwood, Sherlock, Blake, Treks, Star Wars, obscure stuff from the
70s and 80s and comedy from the dawn of time mean he never has to. By
day, he
runs an editing house, largely as an
excuse not to have to work for a living. He's currently writing a Book.
With Pages and everything. Follow his progress at FylerWrites.co.uk
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