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TARDIS Guide

Overview

Released

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Written by

Paul Cornell

Publisher

Titan Comics

Pages

128

Story Type

Multi-Doctor

Time Travel

Past, Future, Alternate Reality

Story Arc (Potential Spoilers!)

Time War

Inventory (Potential Spoilers!)

Sonic Screwdriver

Location (Potential Spoilers!)

Marinus, Paris

Synopsis

Clara Oswald asks the Twelfth Doctor about the planet Marinus, to which he claims to have never heard of. He asks her why she asked him about it, but she lies and claims she heard the word in a dream. Later, when the Doctor is asleep, Clara enters the control room and uses the telepathic circuits to direct the TARDIS to land in Paris, 1923. As she steps outside, she thanks the TARDIS for bringing her here. She pulls out a photograph and looks at it, the picture showing the Twelfth, Eleventh, and Tenth Doctors on it. Clara remarks on how she must prevent this event from happening, for the sake of everything.

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6 reviews

There's a few moments of cringe, but this story is overall just a whole bunch of fun featuring a ton of Doctors and companions in the first crossover from the Titan comics era.


Guardax

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This review contains spoilers!

Cornell is easily one of my favorite Writers in the World of Who, so it was no surprise that I really was excited to get around to this one and well..

IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!

It's a perfectly fun Multi-Doctor Story. Cornell gets them all right, the Dialogue feels very natural for all of them. And I must admit I really enjoyed the Conflict between 12 and 10. There are a lot of lovely References to the Past, which I enjoyed quite a lot. The Alternative Version of the Doctors are fun and the Outro with 9 is lovely! And of course the Plot is just so much fun, really I am not sure how to better describe than: "Fun" and this is meant as a Compliment. Cornell knows *exactly* what kind of Story he is writing here, and it's a blast!

As for the Things outside the Story.. well the Art is uhh.. fine I guess? You see who is who, but honestly it's nothing spectacular. I wish the Action Scenes were drawn with more impact, which.. well felt lackluster at times. A Comic lives and dies at times with its Art, so this does bring down the Comic for me a little.

I might be a bit of bias because I love Multi Doctor Stories, but this was just so much fun!


RandomJoke

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This review contains spoilers!

I thought Four Doctors was fine, not my favorite out of the comics I’ve read but enjoyable. I got a kick out the inter-Doctor interactions, but they quickly became a little grating. I found that the interactions between the companions (Clara, Gabby, and Alice were all excellent choices) to be far more compelling. Similarly to what others have said, the plot ends up very convoluted by the end (I love a Weeping Angel as much as the next guy, but really? It felt a little gimmicky as a time travel “device”). The strongest parts of the comic to me have little to actually do with the Doctors. I will admit though, I thought the Dalek Bomb was a cool concept and with a little tweaking it could have been perfect, the idea of impactful moments where the wrong choice was made that spurred a domino effect always interests me. And that ending, I will always be a sucker for Nine.


InterstellarCas

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This review contains spoilers!

8️⃣🔽 = ENJOYABLE!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“DAY OF THE DOCTOR(S)!”

Multi-Doctor stories are always great fun, and Paul Cornell brings one of them for the Titan Comics line, bringing together Doctors Ten to Twelve as well as a couple of cameos from other incarnations to defeat a universe-shattering threat together.

Right off the bat, Cornell opens the story on Marinus (see The Keys of Marinus, 1964) during the Time War and introduces a cool new redesign of the Voord (it’s about time!). He then finishes the first issue by bringing back his own monsters, the Reapers (see Father's Day, 2005).

We learn by the end of issue 2 that the cool Voord are the baddies here, and I'm all in for it. They end up slighly underused, and their new abilities make them almost unrecognisable, but they are undoubtedly cool.

Further on, Cornell continues to throw in new ideas and take left turns as an excuse to play around with alternate timelines while referencing New Who. This is also where things turn very convoluted.

After two breezy and fun issues, the third and fourth are a bit heavier and less fun.

What makes this story exciting is that it is likely the only time we'll see the Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Doctor in a story together, given that Peter Capaldi isn’t very keen on returning to the role himself. It's also fun to see this as a take on The Day of the Doctor (2013) in the Titan continuity, with two original Titan companions (Gabby for Ten and Alice for Eleven).

And sure enough, Cornell goes all in on the typical bicker and banter between the Doctors. He doesn't simply redo what Moffat did with Ten and Eleven in the 50th and adds a characteristically grumpy Twelve that I could easily imagine Capaldi playing.

It's fascinating how Cornell builds most of the story around a possible future version of Twelve (a sort of Valeyard), had things gone down very differently for him.

This is constantly action-packed and fun, and it flies by instantly. Most of it is action, followed by comical banter and very little introspection or actual fleshing out of the plot—but that's fine because it's all fun.

The art is fine, but the faces aren't always accurate, especially on Tennant and Smith.

A nice little nod to the fantastic Ninth Doctor there at the end!


MrColdStream

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This review contains spoilers!

I really liked this, and reading it after the series’ leading up to it this time instead of on it’s own without context for the new companions made me like it even more. I love the touching on the time war and how it affected other species, the new Voord designs are a real treat. The glimpse we get of War is very fun to see, and that moment at the end with 9 is just fantastic.

I also love seeing more time war tech here, the idea of a bomb that rewrites your history to make another universe possible is great, and I love the glimpses it gives up into these possible realities where our doctors failed, all of them in such different ways (especially 11 and 12). The Voord 12 is a really fun villain, harkening back to classic who which feels right for something like this, while at the same time being and feeling like a big enough threat as well.

The character stuff is a treat, the companions interacting with each other is great, and I love all the moments of the three doctors saying 'We need to…" (or something to that effect) in unison, before all shouting different ideas.

If I had any complaints it would be with the art, I think some characters look a bit off at times, mostly Cindy and Clara can be a little hard to tell apart in some shots, Cindy looks a bit off a lot actually, but still really fun.


JayPea

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Quotes

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DOCTOR: So now all right, okay -- we're going to have some kind of 'Multi-Doctor... Event!' Whether you like it or not!

— Twelfth Doctor, Four Doctors

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