In Review: Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor #2.1

Synopsis: The Doctor and her friends find themselves in London in 1969 where they find themselves in danger of meeting the 10th Doctor while he and Martha try to get back to 2007.

Review: Writer Jody Houser gives herself the challenge of writing her first multi-Doctor story, but added to the challenge is the fact that she is writing the story in the same timeline as the classic episode ‘Blink’, which is still widely regarded as one of the best stories from the modern era of the series.

The Story

Hoping to visit Woodstock to take in some music. The Doctor, Graham, Ryan, and Yaz find themselves in London of 1969, but it happens to be at the same time as when The 10th Doctor and Martha Jones were there when they encountered the weeping angels in the episode ‘Blink’.

Fully aware of the implications of this and the fact that the 10th Doctor and Martha were taken from 2007 and are without there Tardis. The 13th Doctor is wary of crossing paths with her predecessor so has Graham, Ryan and Yaz follow him while she pays a visit to Martha Jones who is working at a 1960s fashion store.

The Artwork

Roberta Ingranata returns to her art duties and provides some really nice work. I particularly enjoyed her take on London as we see the Doctor and her friends land in and around the Houses of Parliament where we catch a glimpse of the iconic Big Ben. Ingranata catches the likeness of the 10th Doctor and Martha really well and manages to give us some quite nice action beats as the 13th Doctor’s companions try to keep up with him.

I especially liked the panels where we see the 10th Doctor messing around with his technology in order to trace a temporal disturbance.

Overall

Jody Houser captures the mood of ‘Blink’ brilliantly. I loved how we get a scene where The 13th Doctor meets Martha and seeks fashion advice while simultaneously trying to ascertain if Martha knows anything that can be of use. We also get a nice moment where the 13th Doctor acknowledges the fact that Martha was sweet on her predecessor and chastises herself for not having noticed it saying that her 10th incarnation was kind of thick-headed when it came to noticing whether or not women were attracted to him.

The issue closes out with a nice cliffhanger that will most likely be followed up on in the next issue.

Overall. I really enjoyed this first issue of 2020, which is basically issue one of volume two of 13s comic book adventures. Houser continues to write the 13th Doctor better than she is written in the television series, but for how long remains to be seen. Given that the new series recently started and seemed to have shown a little improvement over last year’s poor showing.