Writers: Scott & David Tipton with Tony Lee

Artists: J.K. Woodward and The Sharp Brothers

IDW, out now

The Doctor and Picard compare notes – and a past adventure is revealed…

The main cover gives away the key part of this issue: a flashback to an adventure shared by the fourth Doctor and Jim Kirk’s crew, battling against the Revenge of the Cybermen model cyborgs. This isn’t the most thrilling of encounters, but it throws up a number of questions: why are these memories resurfacing now? Who is fiddling with the Doctor’s mind (if indeed that’s what’s happening)?

The “classic” part of the story is differentiated with some conventional art, courtesy of the Sharp Brothers, which, after Woodward’s very detailed paintings (particularly this issue), makes for a good contrast. Their work is very clean, and its use of primary colours echoes the palette of the original Star Trek series (although the cyan Cybermen do seem a little out of place – their silver look is lost).

The wrap-around features the Doctor and Picard primarily: Amy and Rory make the tiniest of cameos in the first panel on the bridge, so you almost forget that they’re there at the start of the second section. Riker and Data make brief contributions, but it’s all leading up to a final panel appearance by a key part of the Enterprise-D crew, whose insights have helped in similar situations.

As far as the bad guys are concerned, we see the first real fusion of the two species, with a CyberBorgController who looks cool – but when you start to think about it, makes very little sense… at least as far as we can see from current information.

We’re still getting a lot of questions, but we’re nearly halfway through: time for at least some explanations…  7/10

Paul Simpson

 

2 Comments »

  1. Twice the artwork, twice the narrative, twice the Enterprise personnel and Cybermen, and a multi-Doctor arc to boot.
    While I initially surmised that JK Woodward was more than capable of equally handling the cameo flashback sequence (given the terrific third issue front cover), I was nevertheless impressed with the previously unheard of (at least for me!) Sharp Brothers’ unexpected contribution, artistically speaking. I am now looking forward to the following fourth installment, and the very interesting encounter approaching between the current Eleventh Doctor and Guinan.

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