Dog of War!

The Eleventh Doctor, Amy and Rory materialise on a battleground in the middle of the English Civil War, somewhere outside Bristol, in this Doctor Who Adventures comic strip.

As usual with these strips the plot is very slight.  The TARDIS crew witness a Royalist dog with an alien-charged bark.  With a bit of sonic jiggery pokery, the Doctor reveals a dog-like alien piggy-backing the poodle with vague plans to ‘influence the King’.  The Doctor whisks said alien pooch off in the TARDIS and allows the Civil War to continue on it’s preset course.

This story is as barking as it sounds.  The Roundheads apprehend the Doctor, Amy and Rory only for them to be rescued by Prince Rupert of the Rhine and his Super Poodle.  The Roundheads are placed in a trance by the poodle’s super bark but the Doctor reveals the alien influence and leaves.  Surprisingly, this story was written by Big Finish go-to writer, Eddie Robson, but then there’s only so much plot you can get into four pages of colourful frames.  Amy and Rory do nothing but then three regulars don’t lend themselves to this format at all so again, Robson is fairly blameless.

Although, as a story, this is fairly unsatisfying, I do admire the Doctor Who Adventures comic strips for their variety of historical settings.  The DWA strips do tend to focus on bizarre alien planets or modern day settings, but the fact they are even willing to venture into periods of history which their average reader probably won’t know much about shows a desire to, ever so slightly, stick with the series original educational remit.

Here we have the English Civil War and the real historical personage of Prince Rupert of the Rhine and whilst this and the fact it occurs near Bristol are the only historical facts laid down in black and white, if these strips send even one child off to check Wikipedia for a bit more background information then the Doctor’s work is done.  The comic strip is even specifically dated to the 26th July which got this child checking Wikipedia to find that ‘the Storming of Bristol’ did indeed occur on this date as part of the English Civil War.

The one thing I will say about these strips, though, is I really don’t like the way the various alien races are drawn.  Something about them always feels too cartoony.  The dog-like alien in this story is ‘Scrappy-Doo-like’ in appearance and is purple.  Surrounded as it is by historical detail, it stands out as too unrealistic.  In the alien planet set stories, the designs are even worse.  To be honest I’m not a massive fan of the DWA style of artwork but I can tolerate most of its idiosyncrasies, just not the aliens.