Alongside launching a brand new Doctor Who ongoing comic series in North America, IDW have also been releasing a fantastic series of Doctor Who one-shots, showcasing stories and art from a variety of incredibly talented  creative teams, such as: ‘The Whispering Gallery’ by Leah Moore & John Reppion, with art by Ben Templesmith; ‘The Time Machination’ by Tony Lee, with art by Paul Grist; and ‘Autopia’ by  John Ostrander, with art by Kelly Yates

The latest entry in this line of done-in-one Doctor Who stories is named  ‘Room With a Deja View’. Released this Wednesday, the story is brought to you by Rich Johnston, who you my be familiar with from the popular Internet column ‘Lying in the Gutters’ as well as his new blogsite www.bleedingcool.com. While Rich is primarily a journalist, this far from his first comic work, with his past works including the excellent Flying Friar, and the industry parodies Civil Wardrobe, and Watchmensch. The art for the comic is provided by Eric J, whose artwork you may be familiar with from the Dark Horse comic series Rex Mundi.

The story begins with the Doctor materializing in a part of the Universe known as ‘The Dead Zone’, being the closest a Galaxy gets to absolute nothingness for millions of light years. At first the Doctor revels in this rare period of solitude, a respite from a life of action and adventure. However, as is the Doctor’s nature, he soon becomes bored and irritable with having nothing to do, and when a unexpected distress call smashes his reverie, he jumps at the opportunity to respond to this emergency. The emergency signal that the Doctor has stumbled upon seems to originate from a lone space station floating deep within The Dead Zone, the only object existing within a hundred million light years.  Upon boarding the space station, the Doctor is met with the usual welcome wagon, and is quickly subdued and detained by the ship’s guard force.

When he Doctor awakens, he finds himself in a sick bay, being observed by two bizarre looking aliens, apparently Gasbags, from Gallubitus Xenax. His observers soon identify themselves as inspectors Mozz & Looz, the ship’s security chiefs (spot the in-joke). As soon as they discover that the Doctor is a legendary Time-Lord, they are extremely eager to ask for his help solving a recent murder case aboard the ship. Before escorting the Doctor to the crime scene, Mozz & Looz first show the Doctor around the station and tell his about the deadly plague that has been ravishing the nearby galaxies, and driving people to this last point of refuge. It seems the plague is transmitted not only by contact, but through electronic communications,, spurring the Doctor to quip that it is a “communicative disease” – for this play on words of ‘communicable disease’ I both want to shake Rich Johnston by the hand, and slap him in the face! ;p

When the Doctor arrives at the scene of the crime, he discovers a murder case most peculiar in nature. It seems that a being named ‘TX’ was caught sending an emergency distress signal from the station’s defunct communication centre, a crime due to the ban on electronic communication designed to stop the spread of the plague. Upon being apprehended by a station guard, TX hit the guard hard in the head with a wrench (or spanner) knocking him dead. At first it all seems like a standard crime, TX was even caught on camera committing the crime. However, things are never that easy for the Doctor, and we soon learn that TX is a member of a rare species of alien known as ‘Counters’, who live their lives on the opposite timeline to all other species IE. they live life backwards. This forms a quandary, because to TX this murder, which to him is really a resurrection, has not yet occurred, so in his culture, no crime at all has been committed. TX also carries great news/dire warnings of an event of  beautiful creation  / terrible destruction for all people in this sector of space. Also, why does TX act like he has known the Doctor for his whole life, and why does he keep calling him mother???? It’s a predicament  far too complicated for Mozz & Looz to solve, and it’s up to the Doctor to use every trick that he has acquired over his vast Millenia of time-traveling experience to not only solve the crime, but perhaps save the lives of thousands of people!

That’s all I can tell you about the plot, because to tell you anymore would be to ruin it for you, like telling someone that hasn’t seen Sixth Sense that Bruce Willis’ character is dead…. oh crap, I hope you’ve all seen that film At the start of the comic Rich offers a warning to readers that “parts of this comic may read better backwards rather than forwards.” What he means by this is that parts of the story only make sense if experience from the perspective of TX, a character who experiences time in reverse. Therefore, these parts of the story should be read from back to front, and from bottom to top, much like one would read traditional Japanese Manga. As a helpful hit for when to read the story in this way, look at the page backgrounds around the panels, or “the gutters” if you will (get it!) When the comic should be read normally the gutters will be red, and when they should be read in reverse order the gutters will be blue. If you are familiar at all with the TV show, you’ll know that Rich has borrowed this motif for his rather original storytelling technique.

So what did I think? I absolutely loved it! Rich has managed to tell a perfect done-in-one story here that uses the unique nature of the Doctor’s time-traveling abilities to reinvent the classic locked room mystery. The forwards/backwards story-telling method that Johnston employees in the comic is a stroke of pure genius, and makes what could otherwise be a straightforward murder case into a tale of complex paradoxes, and thought provoking moral issues. Tricks and baubles aside, Johnston writes a wonderful Doctor Who, who is both intelligent, wily and charismatic. It’s a great version of the Tenth Doctor, with just a peppering of the sillier elements of his previous incarnations. This is by far Johnston’s most accessible comic work to date, but I imagine there will be a few people out there that label what he has done with this story as ‘pretentious’, just on principle. I can’t comment on that, because I’ll freely admit that I’m a bit of a comics snob, and sometimes I like to be made to work for my entertainment, rather than just having it handed to me. If you can read a comic in five minutes, it probably isn’t worth your time, and this is a comic that you will read, then read again backwards, then read again forwards, trying to figure out if there are any plots holes. Trust me, there aren’t!

The art for the comic by  Eric J is really nice, and he draws a great version of David Tennant that has a great range of very emotive facial expressions. My one criticism  is that the inking on some of the lines on the Doctor’s face looks a little heavy to me, making him look quite odd in some panels. However, I am just looking at a digital version of the comic, so that might effect the contrast somewhat. I really like his depiction of the multiple-tentacled ‘gasbags’ Mozz & Looz, the design is very cool and the level of detail makes it look like it must have taken him ages to draw them.

If you are a fan of Doctor Who you will most likely love this witty, cerebral, and original story. Rich Johnston and Eric J have managed to pack a lot of story into these 22 pages, more than many comics mange in an entire mini-series. I was completely taken by surprise by this amazing story, and will definitely be picking up a copy!

Non-Who fans be warned though, you might want to start off on something a little simpler.

Pull the issue on Comixology:

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