Time & Time Again [COMIC/1993.11.25]

★★★★☆

  Anniversary stories are a fickle thing; they're focused on spectacle and celebration by definition, and that often means we get rather underwhelming adventures held up to gether by multi-Doctor interactions, sticky tape and foolish hope. It's not bad if your cup of tea that day is the interaction of two (maybe even three) different Doctors, but I personally find most anniversary stories to have a quality unbefitting its celebratory status. 

  So by rights, Time & Time Again should be yet another okay to good story that I remember years later as 'that one time Marvel Comics did a 30th anniversary special'. It turns out, though, that by holding up the middle finger to all the criticisms and fully indulging in fanwank while making sure it's fun, one could make a pretty darn great Doctor Who story that lives up to the anniversary. The equation was pretty simple: be creative. The comic format is just the medium to let your imagination run free a bit, and Paul Cornell's just the man for that. We have Benny and the Second Doctor and co. speaking in Dr. Seuss lingo inside the Land of Fiction, we have Ace nicking rapiers and cricket balls, and the Seventh Doctor spending time with the Sixth, contemplating their lives. These moments are so fun to read, thanks to both Cornell and the interminable talents of artist John Ridgway (if you've read this blog before, you know how much I'm devoted to him!). I live for moments like the short talk Six and Seven have as Six fishes for gumblejacks with Frobisher; it's a great multi-Doctor interaction that dispenses with the usual comedic tropes and gets on with showing how these two very different Doctors nonetheless have a mutual understanding. I love how Cornell writes for Sixie, quite melancholy under the pompous guise and critical of his successor's treating everyone and everything as his chess pieces -- it shows so much about Six's character and why I love him so much. 

  I decided I'd review something to celebrate Doctor Who's 59th birthday, and I'm more than glad I chose this comic strip to check out. Time & Time Again carries the beating heart of the mythos, the willingness to be good and celebrate the past, while shifting the focus to the future. Underneath all the cameo monsters and the Black/White Guardians, what you have is a pretty subtly written tale. With these trappings, though... it's simply such fun. Happy 59th, Doctor Who!