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“RELATIVE DIMENSIONS: A FESTIVE TOYMAKER TALE”

Relative Dimensions is a quick, lighthearted Christmas-themed adventure that embraces the playful and surreal. It brings back the Celestial Toymaker, years before The Giggle, making it the first modern-era story to feature the classic villain. Here, he is depicted much like Michael Gough’s original version, which adds a nice nostalgic touch.

STUNNING ART, BUT A FLAT SCRIPT

The artwork is easily the highlight, capturing the whimsical and eerie nature of the Toymaker’s domain with impressive detail. However, the writing doesn’t quite match the visual flair—Twelve and Clara feel somewhat flat, and their dialogue lacks the sharpness and familiarity of their usual dynamic. The story moves quickly and flows well, but the characterisation and dialogue occasionally feel clumsy.

VERDICT: A VISUAL TREAT BUT A LIGHTWEIGHT STORY

While Relative Dimensions is a beautifully illustrated and enjoyable festive romp, it lacks depth and strong character work. The Toymaker’s return is a fun addition, but the story itself is fairly simple and doesn’t leave a lasting impact.

📝6/10

Now that was fun, short but sweet but it really works. Bit out of place to be reading this in August, but I could see myself coming back to it for Christmas
Fun characterization for The Toymaker and I like that take on The Doctor’s relationship with him.

Also feeds even more into my reading of 12 as ‘The Endgame Doctor’, a lot of his stories involve him reconciling with his oldest enemies or wrapping up plotlines (until they inevitably come back of course), but yeah, I like how they do that with The Toymaker here.

I wanted to check out this Titan comic to get a bit more of a sense out of the Celestial Toymaker, knowing he's going to be a bit of a thing this year, by all accounts. This story didn't disappoint in that the Toymaker is featured quite well, and the whole comic is heavily enhanced by the gorgeous artwork of Mario Laclaustra and vivid colouring of Carlos Cabrera. They do an excellent job at really giving this comic energy and life. Laclaustra in particular crafts a beautiful comic full of really creative pages, panels, and ideas. I suppose some of those ideas have to come from writers George Mann and Cavan Scott, who have a pretty good story at hand, but also some awful dialogue.

The dialogue of 12 and Clara in particular is so bad is almost ruins the entire experience.

I wish it could have been better, since the art is so good, and the idea of this being a story relatively early in the Toymaker's history, but relatively late in a character like Clara (or really, just the Doctor compared to his first incarnation) - that was interesting, and could have been great, but ultimately feels severely underplayed. I had a lot more fun with the other Relative Dimensions. Oddly enough, even though both projects are very different, they have quite a few similarities, as both stories are Christmas themed and even feature Susan in some capacity. It's all really cool. I wish they did more with these ideas.