The Friendly Place

Fun setting, nice set up, decent plot, nothing too much to write home about. I do like that it’s doing more with the the new companion, showing her skills and more contrasting her depression with surroundings, also some fun set ups. Do wish it was a longer first story too though

This one's alright. It's clearly setting up something bigger and I think it's done that quite well, but its plot is not the best. I felt that the resolution was too sudden and unjustified. The setting is a cool idea. The characters and art are solid.

🙏🏼27/50 = 😶Average! = ✊🏼Skippable!

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

WHY SO UNSERIOUS?

The Friendly Place takes the Doctor and Alice to an amusement park on an alien planet. He's sulking because they've arrived too late to see the paradise the planet used to be, but Alice is enjoying herself.

Eleven is well characterised here, showing how he goes from serious to childish and back again in a blink.

The big mystery here is how everyone seems to be nice and act calm, even the children, which the Doctor finds suspicious. What's up with these comic stories and their preoccupation with emotions?

We meet the various park employees, who are all cheerful to the point of being eerie.

It is strange to see Alice holding the enemies at gunpoint in two subsequent stories. This truly shows that she is a no-nonsense character.

This is another very brief story, so there's a lot of expository dialogue before the story quickly tightens the tension and reaches a quick climax.

It makes perfect sense for the alien monster to act inside a theme park, where employees constantly bribe the guests with various free stuff they don't need or want in exchange for removing their bad moods.

There's an epilogue here that teases the return of the Entity further along the line.

I definitely agree this is a pretty average comic. I do like how so far these Titan books are contained to single issues - that's nice, even if this one does seem to be building towards larger ideas. August Hart recognizes the Doctor and Alice, even if they haven't met him yet, so we are clearly having some fun with continuity and time travel here.

The setting is very interesting and there are some really cool ideas and pages here dedicated to the Doctor's sadness over this once beautiful planet turned into a theme part. If the story were more about that I would be very happy overall. Instead I think it falls apart a bit, focusing instead on this corrupt company using this entity to eat negative feelings out of its victims, creating a happy if somewhat mindless workforce for them to abuse. It has a lot of potential as a story, but doesn't really quite lead to an overly fulfilling experience. It has a lot of dialogue and plot points that feel a bit overdone in the franchise - like the Doctor's big brain being able to just overload the entity by virtue of him having so many complex ideas in his head. I'm not a big fan of the direction this comic takes, but it is creative in a lot of little ways story-wise and does have some striking artwork. Alice also has a lot of potential as a companion overall.