We were a fan of Time Lord Victorious (TLV) as soon as it was announced — when it was little more than a dusted-off title, and a picture of a battered David Tennant decked out in natty Time Lord threads. It’s a year of ‘the unprecedented’, but the canonical fabric of some of genres biggest franchises have already stolen a march on that. Genre IPs that crossed so swiftly, so successfully, and so smoothly into the mainstream have run into increasing problems with the fanbases that sustained them for years. Devotees of Star Wars and Game of Thrones sign petitions to force rewrites of storylines (specifically, conclusions). Growing numbers of Whovians and Trekkers cherry-pick the parts of the sagas’ history they prefer. Thanks to high profile acquisitions and partnerships, these are storms that can dent networks and corporates.

Doctor Who is not alone in facing a split fanbase; it’s a hazard of surviving the best part of six decades. Thanks to its ownership and narrative, the BBC phenomenon could well be the first of the big-hitters to leave canon behind. In the meantime, or possible as a teaser, it’s acutely primed for a special project like TLV, a story that can sail over or dig into those fan divisions.

Challenges victorious

Our interest was piqued by the BBC’s enigmatic crossover project that intended to drag three past, but recent, Doctors back to the Dark Times of the Who universe. It soon became apparent that we were just as interested as others were perplexed. There were complaints about the opaque concept and lack of information, that they couldn’t ‘get involved’. Hard to understand why the draw of a three Doctors, Daleks and the Dark Times isn’t enough.

We have fond memories of a similar project, from another great franchise, that gave us a ‘new hope’ (almost said ‘experiment’, but that wasn’t the point at all). In 2008, non-Disney Lucasfilm’s last big hurrah was Force Unleashed: a multi-platform storyline carved from the franchise’s past peak. It was slightly higher-powered than TLV, led by huge-scale console games and toys, but it was arguably the most exciting slice of Star Wars that decade. It captured the imagination with lightsabers, a doubling down on force powers, and some well-applied Vader — which doesn’t seem too far removed from the Beeb’s approach. Promised spectacle, we wouldn’t want to jump into this adventure too aware.

Multi-Doctor fatigue is something to be mindful of, especially with the ubiquitous Tenth Doctor — we looked at that in our review of the recent Big Finish release Out of Time. But the reduction to three Doctors and the stewardship of James Goss and his team is a good sign.

Journey victorious

The cross-platform nature of the project, though integral, is easier to criticise. To capture every part of the project, still growing after launch, would be a considerable outlay. It may not even be possible given current lockdowns; I’m thinking particularly of a rather striking vinyl out at the end of November. Anticipating this, Goss and co have stuck with an arc that’s more than the sum of its distinct parts. The BBC quickly established separate story strands, where fans could opt to follow one of the main protagonists through the adventure, reaching a satisfying conclusion thanks to that happy balance of self-contained stories and different formats. There’s even a ‘shape your own adventure’ quiz to help you the right route in over at the Doctor Who site.

Of course, it’s a tricky balance. One person’s gripping cliff-hanger is another’s failed conclusion. And being Who, there’s a crucial temporal dimension. Following the natural timeline of release, the suggested journey we’re following still incorporates jumps, cliff-hangers and flashbacks. These cover a multitude of sins, but they can also elevate the project into something surprising and memorable.

Let’s see which way it goes with our first dip into the arc. As usual, on Jokerside, this isn’t so much a review as an immersion of the storyline, experience and consequence.

Starting victorious

A Dalek Awakens (on YouTube)

COVID hasn’t helped ANYTHING this year, not even the Daleks. An Escape Room adventure pulled into the head of the timeline, manifested in TLV consciousness as the storyline trailer. It’s sumptuous and straightforward. Doctor now bad, lone Dalek survivor only chance for help. TLV needed to set out it’s substantial yet simple credentials; this worked well.

https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2Fnyst-hYHa2c%3Ffeature%3Doembed&display_name=YouTube&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dnyst-hYHa2c&image=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2Fnyst-hYHa2c%2Fhqdefault.jpg&key=a19fcc184b9711e1b4764040d3dc5c07&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=youtubeSomeone left the Dalek out.

Defender Of The Daleks #1 (Titan Comics)

Defender came on the back of a team-up of Doctors 10 and 13, part of the Tenth Doctor’s concerted comeback. Tenant’s incarnation is the most popular of the New Series, and the actor’s a legendary fan. His continuing adventures are welcome. But it’s as much of a shame that it coincides with the unfairly attacked Thirteenth incarnation, as it is fascinating that this rage-filled, bounding enthusiast is now framed as a petulant hanger-on.

The Tenth Doctor’s final year was a gift to Who-lore and a fascinating one. There are significant gaps, an under-explored character arc on television, the remodelling of this chirpy Doctor, and a new title for him: Time Lord Victorious.

Funny then that the opening salvo of TLV is pretty much an extended joke: the Doctor trying to evade some very persistent Daleks (He will not evade us for long”). Another chase. They want him, do the pepperpots, they want him bad. “What?” If this suffers from anything, it’s coming at the front of the arc. We never believe that the Daleks are malevolently staking the TARDIS, even if it takes the Doctor a while to catch on. The splash pages are fun, but there’s a lack of focus on the time the Doctor’s great foes take to track him down. A sense of time could have built up the big revelations of this opener a bit better. The big comeback (think Vader-style) is the return of the gold-domed Emperor Dalek. As the Doctor says, “Because paradoxes can never just bring back someone’s pet hamster”). The Emperor takes the same classic, stunning design it ever did (more on that next time) and writer Jody Houser is quick to assert his status, catching the Doctor out with a ‘just like a Dalek’ quip. The Gold one’s return is possible thanks to a gigantic paradox the Doctor takes a little too well: The Time War erased.

The Emperor has a rival in the battered Prime Strategist that makes its mark at the end. Kind of sarcastic, kind of individual, it’s a good antidote to the prattling Doctor; one of the supporting personalities that this arc will depend on (The Force Unleashed had similar, although it dragged in few of Star Wars’ major players).

I stuck my head into the SDCC TLV panel a few months ago, and it was fascinating hearing the creative team’s approach. There’s a fair few pages here, and Roberta Ingranata’s soft, flowing representation of the era feels like an epic washed in watercolour. The palette and tone is something different. There’s an undeniable desolation in the gold interiors and blue space that backs many of the travelling scenes. Crucially, the art doesn’t suck you right back to the TARDIS of 10 years ago. It takes you just close enough. Houser’s script lets things pelt along leanly, and between the two, the Tenth Doctor’s well captured. If I was to don my robes of pedantry, some of the Doctor’s dialectal phrasing sticks, but that’s when the broader canvas comes to the rescue. The biggest surprise may be that it’s the Hond that are the scourge of the Daleks here — not quite the threat from the Dark Times we were execting. Still, the Doctor’s note that he’s there “to stop bedtime stories comig true” could be the slogan for TLV. We leave the Doctor in mortal peril on Skaro, as the clay-like menace corners him in the brilliantly named Vault of Obscenities. What could possibly happen next?

Doctor Who: The Official Annual 2021 (Penguin Random House Children’s and BBC Studios)

A pit-stop is what happens next, or perhaps a restless monster grabbing the limelight. Never in the annals of the universe has a Doctor Who annual been read so early by so many. Not all of it, of course; we have to save something for New Years Day and the glorious 2021 of promise. No, we’re here to leap back in time with the curio of The Dark Times, a paper naturally edited by one Melody Malone. It’s a simple trick to introduce the Kotturuh, bringers of death to the Dark Times, without spoiling much. It’s also an excuse for (cough) Melody to doll out some secrets she’s snaffled from the Black Scrolls of Rassilon.

Talk about scope. There’s having the Dark Times, and then there’s packing them out with a cowled Bringer of Death. Unpredictable, mysterious, and thanks to their classic reaper garb, not immediately floating on bizarre crystalline protuberances. The Kotturuh’s introduction doesn’t need to do much beyond set them up as the big bad. What’s nice is the dip into the other species of the Dark Times that the show’s dug up over the years — from Classic Series Daemons to the Eternals who made a belated reappearance in this year’s Series 12. The annual doesn’t stop there, adding a nice primer on other players, including the key Daleks and a first glance at Brian the Ood. Not crucial to the arc then, but rather lovely content for an annual.

Talking of Brian, we dodged the Brian the Ood t-shirt release, lovely as it is.

Monstrous Beauty #1 (Doctor Who Magazine #556, Panini)

The DWM comic strip has played a hugely important part in Who history, so it’s only right it gets in on the act — in no less than a pull-out section for its first issue. Interesting to see the two comic strands of Who go head to head in this format.

Confession: Since my early days scouting through Who-lore in the 1980s and 1990s, I’ve always been fascinated by the Great Vampire. Legends built up by Terrance Dicks, I had to make do with a few comments in The Five Doctors, the Vampire ‘sequel’ of 1980’s State Of Decay, and the sequel to that sequel (The New Adventure’s Blood Harvest). If TLV can do anything, it can put this right.

So we find the Ninth Doctor and Rose in a strange place that makes the Doctor’s skin crawl. He may have read the preface, chilling verse taken from the Tears of the Kotturuh. Their dread is growing nicely, but it’ll be some time before we meet them. There are others to meet first, and unfazed by Defender, Monstrous Beauty goes for surprises. Writer Scott Gray keeps the action popping from the second page and peels out revelations at an expert pace. This is some first-class comic writing, we might even say textbook. With minimal text, Gray captures the Dark Times brilliantly with Rose’s throwaway lines. A strangely difficult concept simply expressed in New Series terms.

There are critical statements on Who-lore to make, and it won’t be surprising to throwaway comments from the Classic Series find new meaning in the three-part strip. I don’t want to spoil anything, but have to blurt that we finally see vampires attack at their peak and the Doctor manages to lose his companion to a giant bat. As the show only dwelt on the long aftermath of the Time Lords’ war with vampires, there’s a lot to explore. And from swarming cucurbites to Friar Grystok and the Three Mad Sisters, Gray seizes his chance. The art team, led by penciller John Ross do too. The style is distinct and captivating.

Monstrous Beauty is a chance to merge space opera with the gothic feudalism of State of Decay, and a great example of the standalone stories that can work in this framework. There are the hints about the Ultimate but… Kottur-who?

Comic Creator

Who’d begrudge the Tenth Doctor’s threads making it to the rolling Comic Creator on mobile?

The Knight, the Fool and the Dead (BBC Books)

The climax of TLV’s first act as we see it, this novel positions the leading players, and makes for a bit of a respite from Daleks and vampires. TKTFATD is light, a novella, but it’s the heaviest dose of TLV so far. I saw a review that compared it to Marvel’s Secret Wars, and that’s a fine comparison.

Steven Cole has more than trusted hands when it comes to Who prose. As ever, he brings brilliant a turn of phrase (‘TARDIS groaning like a pregnant whale’ is one, another a neat reference to Mondasians not “wearing out”). This helps elevate a somewhat tricky premise. In this brief narrative, Cole has to introduce characters, tackles monumental themes in an unknown universe, and propel the arc to a key plot point.

There’s freedom in it not tallying with earlier parts of the arc (even at this side of the timey-wiminess, it conflicts with Defender). Its cliff-hanger hinges on the concept rather than its place in the timeline. Much of the satisfaction, the test of TLV, will be in seeing these points resolve.

TKTFATD kicks off with the Tenth Doctor already lodged in the Dark Times, and well into his off-kilter late incarnation personality. At the heart of the story is a simple scrap, one that hardly needed any explanation beyond Lee Binding’s evocative launch image: We’re all here to see the Tenth Doctor fold further into the Time Lord of the title, as his predecessors, only one of which we’ve seen so far, oppose him.

If it all sounds a little obvious, the trick’s in the route this tale takes rather than the destination. The unfairness of death hitting the Doctor’s buttons and forcing a change of direction is hardly new. But the Kotturuh, who we finally meet here, are well realised and fresh addition to the legend. We’d already read their bio, and in the next part of the arc we expect to hear them. For now, we need to see how they clash with the Doctor and what comes of it. Cole takes his time to spell this out.

They’re unexpected. It’s not just new ‘companion’ Brian the Ood who’s a throwback to The Satan Pit of this Doctor’s first series. TLV reaches back to the duration of the Tenth incarnation’s short career. They may be robed and masked, but the Kotturuh aren’t one-dimensional villains. We see their power at full, horrific pelt twice in the first half of the book. But Cole makes it clear that their ‘gifting’ of death, or not, is ambiguous.

Handling the death when it arrives on a galactic level was always going to be difficult, and Cole does it well, not skimping on the horror. A Design dictates this monster. The Kotturuh is elemental, almost religious. With death comes zombies, often made of tributes or toppled figures of power, and these stumble around whispering the Design. At one point, it touches the Doctor’s mind — this is where The Satan Pit seems familiar. There is something suspiciously Ood-like about the Kotturuh as they hiss, ‘Your flight has ended now”. Could Brian be more critical than he appears?

Yes, we finally meet Bran the Ood. Soon we’ll catch up with how the assassin ended up back in the Dark Times (with the Eighth Doctor), as well as the details around 10’s arrival, but it’s nice to have him already. Brian is another one of those essential supporting characters — along for some deadpan quips (“I fear Mr Ball is too hot-headed for an admiral’s commission in peacetime”). At the peak of the story’s action, an extended metaphor of Brian as sommelier works wonders.

Perhaps the biggest challenge is the plunge back to the Dark Times which can’t ever match our perceptions or mark itself out dramatically from the later, more enlightened times. Cole has more space than Scott Gray, but the Dark Times are captured in glimpses, including an early jibe about them being bright. That’s the problem with such an evocative name. While some concepts, crucially the incomprehensibility of death, are settling down, we’re just dealing with civilisations going about their business as they would millennia later. There are nods to unique technology, but nothing that sticks out or distracts.

At the heart of the plot is a tried and tested sci-fi point of order — these are days where science and magic merge. This brings us back to the central crux of the Tenth Doctor’s Victorious persona but also reaches back to Genesis of the Daleks, if not earlier. Much of the story is about having the right. It’s increasingly implausible that this Doctor, if allowed to reach his full fruition, wouldn’t be stopped by himself.

Cole’s main job is to channel into a lean narrative, to dig out the Time Lord Victorious whose “eyes are still full of compassion” and concern for someone else while ratcheting up the threat. The Dark Times represent either the most or least fixed points. That’sn opportunity for supreme menace and massively raised stakes.

While TKTFATD is mostly a large-scale siege story, the assailants being literal death, it only just manages to stay epic. There’s a lot of flipping about in space and cockpit chats. In parts, it reminded us of one of Terrance Dicks’ legendary Past Doctor Adventure novels. The Who legend’s fingerprints are all over the Dark Times, but in Warmonger, which we considered as part of our Morbius journey, might be one of his greatest jokes. Quite probably, he intended it as a satire on the heightened violence and mercenary nature of the era that followed his run on the show. That would explain why he took the placid Fifth Doctor and puts him at the head of a war fleet alliance that even roped in Cybermen. It’s also quite probably one of the worst Doctor Who novels ever written, hilariously so. In some ways, that’s a trick TLV is playing: letting the Tenth Doctor live long enough to become the villain. There’s no doubt what he’s become come the cliff-hanger, it’s clear this isn’t satire. Cole rams home the reality and scope by adding interludes that featuring past Doctors, reaching back to An Unearthly Child. The message is that death’s been there since the beginning. Who knows when it will be resolved…

Next Time: From the Master Thief to the Dalek Drone, it’s Act II.

Road to the Dark Times (trailer)

Review previously published on Medium (November 8, 2020)