DOCTOR WHO: ONCE UPON A TIME LORD / Script by DAN SLOTT / Art by CHRISTOPHER JONES, MATTHEW DOWN SMITH & MIKE COLLINS / Colors by CHARLIE KIRCHOFF & MARIANE GUSMAO / Letters by RICHARD STARKINGS OF COMICRAFT / Published by TITAN COMICS

There is a certain school of thought that only British writers should write Doctor Who. It is not one I’ve ever agreed with, though I can understand the idea that some things are so unique to a particular culture that only one born of that culture can truly portray it well. Unfortunately, Once Upon a Time Lord will more than likely be held up by Anglophiles as proof of the point.

The chief selling point of Once Upon a Time Lord is that it marks the first occasion of Dan Slott writing Doctor Who. While I’ve generally enjoyed most of Slott’s work with Spider-Man (particularly the retro team-up series with Human Torch, “I’m With Stupid”), I can’t say that I enjoyed most of this book. Ironically, this is because Slott perfectly captured one of my least favorite eras of the show.

The action of the main story, Firelight, centers around the Tenth Doctor companion Martha Jones. Martha is abducted by the alien Pyromeths, who feed on fiction and the stories of other cultures. Unfortunately, the psychic parasites literally kill the messenger once they run out of tales to tell. This leaves Martha making like Scheherazade, telling stories of the Tenth Doctor, until he saves her.

My chief issue with Martha as a character is that she is built around a false premise. When the medical student was introduced, she was meant to be more of an equal to the Doctor, and more mature than his previous companion, shopgirl Rose Tyler. While this might have been true in her first story, most of the Series Three writers portrayed Martha as being more boy-crazy than Rose in regards to the Doctor, and less capable of acting on her own. Even Martha’s greatest feat as a companion, going on the run for a year and getting humanity to believe in the Doctor, only came about because of her executing the plan the Doctor laid out for her.

This is the same problem with Firelight. Martha is presented as being a heroic figure, though the sum total of her heroic action is doing what she was told to do if she was abducted. I give Slott credit for trying to foreshadow Martha’s eventual role as the storyteller who saves a planet. Unfortunately, this story within a story format has been done before in Doctor Who, and done better.

The artwork has similar issues. The chief problem is there are two artists with drastically different styles, and one of them is the excellent Christopher Jones. Jones is rightly regarded as one of the best Doctor Who artists in the business, with a streamlined style that perfectly captures the likenesses of all the actors from the show.

Unfortunately, Jones is only drawing the introduction to Firelight. Most of the story is drawn by Matthew Dow Smith – an artist whose previous work on the IDW Doctor Who comics was a creative low point for the series. Dow Smith is not a bad artist, but his rough style does not suit Doctor Who, in my opinion, and does not compare well to Jones’ polished pages.

I found the backup story, Rhyme Or Reason, more enjoyable. Again, Slott tells a story within a story, with the Tenth Doctor telling Martha about an adventure he had with Rose as the Ninth Doctor. Language also plays a role in the story, as the Doctor and Rose have to speak in code to throw off an alien translator. I think this story worked well, ironically, because Slott told a more traditional, action-based story. It also didn’t have a predictable ending, and the artwork by Mike Collins is far cleaner. I also liked his design for the alien Terileptil.

Would I recommend Once Upon a Time Lord? Only to the most die-hard of Doctor Who fans. It isn’t bad, but there’s far better Doctor Who stories out there that cover the same ground, and Slott has written better.