Flashback [COMIC/1992.11.?]

★★★☆☆

  John Ridgway's illustrations are seriously good. The details, the lines and shadows, they're all wonderful at any occasion; to have him draw the Doctor's past life on Gallifrey is something of a treat to me. I know there are many who are very much against depicting the Doctor's life before An Unearthly Child (the entire fandom uproar over the Timeless Child, silly and pathetic as it is, proves the point), but I'm all honestly all for it. Gallifrey is such a fascinating planet to explore through stories; The Deadly Assassin, The Eleven, the Gallifrey spin-off, Hell Bent and more -- they've all proven to me that the Doctor's homeworld still has so much potential. It was meant to be married with the visually boundless and imaginative comic medium, and Flashback will certainly convince you to think this way if you weren't doing so beforehand.

  Short as it is, Flashback is still a delightful read that highlights the Doctor's steadfast stance on morality. The First Doctor is sometimes known as a completely brash and morally repugnant fellow, and that cannot be further from the truth. Even in his earliest TV serials, he had a stern sense of good; Flashback takes that approach and shows a Doctor fully entrenched in his political life on Gallifrey, making a hard decision and acting brash to save an innocent life. It's all about the aspect of reflection the Seventh Doctor brings to the table as he shows a hologram of this past event to Benny; perhaps he, the master manipulator with the greyest of morals, needed that reminder of who he really is.