REVIEW - Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor - Medicine Man Part 1 - Out Today



Today sees the release in stores and online of the latest issue of the Tenth Doctor Titan Comic Book series. The ongoing series follows the adventures of the Doctor as portrayed onscreen by David Tennant. 

Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor
Year 2 Issue 4: Medicine Man Part 1
It's back to the deep, deep past and the dawn of humanity for the Doctor and Gabby, as their travels take them to the Pleistocene - and the epic struggle between Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon forces for the future of humankind!

Plus: Anubis's galactic quest comes back to haunt them!

Writer: Nick Abadzis
Artist: Leonardo Romero
Cover A artwork (above): Leonardo Romero and Debora Carita

The story so far...
The Doctor and Gabby have had many adventures together – none more terrifying than facing the near-infinite power of Anubis and living to tell the tale! Although they stopped him from destroying the universe, Anubis has tasked the pair with finding a solution to his universe-shattering dilemma... though the Doctor has largely been ignoring him. That definitely won’t cause any problems further down the line... Meanwhile, back in New York City, Cindy, Cleo and Erik were attacked by the terrifying Mr Ebonite – only to be saved by Captain Jack Harkness! But that’s a story for another day. Unaware of their friends’ plight, the Doctor and Gabby have dived into a new adventure, heading into the deep, deep past...

Review
Regular series writer Nick Abadzis joins forces with artist Leonardo Romero this month to bring the first of a two-part Tenth Doctor adventure that sees the Time Lord and his companion Gabby far, far back in Earth’s history, visiting some of the human race’s earliest ancestors.

When Neanderthal painter and doctor Munmeth encounters a strange couple in the forest, a distressed woman in strange clothes and an equally oddly attired but injured man, it’s in his nature to offer them support. However this isn’t the first unusual intrusion into Munmeth’s world. It turns out that both he and his visitors – the Doctor and Gabby, of course – have both had encounters with the same group of extraterrestrial visitors. And like the Doctor he seems to have had the same amount of success in warning those around him that danger is on its way. Why do people just refuse to listen and find out the hard way?

The Tenth Doctor’s ongoing series is now marching confidently into its second year of adventures and as ever there is plenty going on in Abadzis’ latest instalment on a number of different levels. The artistic Gabby is intrigued and amazed to meet another artist, millions of years before there was even the concept of art, and yet here she finds a prehistoric man using pictures to record events in the same way that she does in her diaries that log her travels. Abadzis also has a lot of fun with the TARDIS translator circuits: they’re obviously strained to their very limits in attempting to render the Doctor and Gabby’s words for which there is no local equivalence. Gabby is meanwhile horrified by the impending fate of the Neanderthal people, who will eventually be pushed out of existence by the more versatile and aggressive Homo sapiens and, particularly after she comes to learn more about the gentle, intelligent and perceptive Munmeth, she is desperate for the Doctor to agree that there is a way to change history. 

Romero’s artwork shows sweeping landscapes over an unblemished planet Earth, so fresh and clean looking that it’s almost possible to taste the crisp, icy early winter air; then these scenes become the backdrop for an incongruous space dogfight and abduction. So, with the ‘Sky Hunters’ picking off both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens alike, what implications will this have for the future of mankind? And has Gabby fallen into the hands of the good guys or the bad guys?


Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor Issue #2.4 is available from today from comic book stores or via the Titan Comics website. A digital edition can be purchased through ComiXology.

View an alternative photo cover by Will Brooks and some artwork from the comic below:






Comments