Abadzis, Nick

About the Author:

Nick Abadzis was born in Sweden and brought up in Britain and Switzerland.  He lives in Brooklyn, New York, USA with his wife and daughter.

AVERAGE REVIEW SCORE:

2 out of 5

(1 book)

Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor Vol. 1 - Revolutions Of Terror

(Art by Elena Casagrande)

Set between Series 4 and the Specials, this book sees the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) arriving in New York, where laundromat worker Gabriella Gonzales is besieged by psychic aliens.  He and Gabby have to puzzle out the origins of the creatures and prevent them from establishing an invasion bridgehead on Earth.

This book does two things that I really liked.  The first is that it gets the depiction of Tennant's Doctor spot-on, catching him at that point in his life where he's still desperate for adventures, and desperate for someone to share them with, but has been emotionally burned by the fate of Donna Noble.  I particularly liked the scene where he declines Gabby's request to take her with him in the TARDIS but is forced to think twice when she says something which eerily echoes the prophetic words of Ood Sigma in 'Waters of Mars'.

The other thing that this book does well is taking the time to establish Gabby as a character.  In some other Who comics I've read, the introduction of a new Companion is often little more than 'you're here, you're a pretty girl, that'll do, off we go'.  Instead this book gives us some time with Gabby before the Doctor even arrives and we get a sense of not only who she is as a character, and therefore why the Doctor likes her, but also why she would choose to run off into space and time with a total stranger.

Unfortunately, everything else this book does is either bad, awkward or just bland.  The antagonists are unremarkably generic and the plots paper-thin.  I also really disliked the back half of the book where the story is narrated from Gabby's journal but with the text in handwriting that's genuinely hard to read at times.  What is the point of exposition text that you can't easily read?  Overall, this book left me feeling pretty disappointed considering the Tenth Doctor is so iconic.

2 out of 5

Collaborations & Anthologies:

Doctor Who: The Lost Dimension - Book One (here)

Read more...

Doctor Who (here)