DOCTOR WHO: THE PRISON PARADOX #1 / Script by DAN WATTERS / Art by SAMI KIVELÄ / Colors by VALENTINA BIANCONI / Letters by RICHARD STARKINGS & COMICRAFT’S TYLER SMITH / Cover Art by JAY ANACLETO, SAMI KIVELA, NIPUNI & FLOPS / Published by TITAN COMICS

Let us go back. Back to when The Doctor was still on their 15th numbered incarnation. Back to when they were still travelling with nurse Belinda Chandra and trying to get her home. Back to when there was still some mystery as to why traveling to Earth on May 24, 2025 was impossible. And back once more to Panoptpolis.

The not-so-secret prison of the Shadow Proclamation, Panoptpolis is generally agreed to be the worst place in the universe. Only the most dangerous convicts are kept there, trapped on the edge of a black hole, with no hope of escape. Only a lunatic would conceive of traveling there intentionally and trying to stage a jailbreak.

Guess what The Doctor is about to do, children?

The second season of Doctor Who after the Disney partnership was a real mixed bag to my mind. While the performances were generally solid, the scripting was all over the place. For every instant classic like Lux, there was a clunker like The Interstellar Song Contest. My biggest problem, however, was how inconsistent the character of the Fifteenth Doctor was. He was meant to be a more cheerful, life-affirming character than his past incarnations – the sort of bloke you could see gleefully dancing in a club. Yet he was also, depending on the episode, the Doctor most likely to turn to violence to get out of a jam or torture an enemy.

I mention this because while reading The Prison Paradox, I caught Dan Watters trying to write Fifteen both ways. He tries to talk reason to people and jokes around. Yet he also is quick to use his sonic screwdriver on a species of living rock man to whom strong vibrations are said to be lethal. I find this rather objectionable to the core concept of who The Doctor is meant to be, yet I can’t fault Watters for trying to match the show.

By that token, artist Sami Kivelä does a good job of capturing the actors’ likenesses and the appearance of the monsters from the show. Chief among these is an Adipose and a Slitheen pirate, who are among the inmates who offer their assistance to The Doctor. The color art by Valenina Bianconi and lettering of Richard Starkings and Tyler Smith are also well done.

The Prison Paradox captures the spirit of the Fifteenth Doctor era for good and for ill. Your mileage may vary as to whether or not that is a good thing. For me, I admire the craft of it, while wishing Belinda had more of a personality beyond a general aura of annoyance and this Doctor were less trigger happy. It would not be fair, however, to punish the comic creators for doing a good job of replicating that in this comic tie-in. Let us say then that this is a good comic, based on a mediocre run of a great television series.

Doctor Who: The Prison Paradox #1 arrives in comic shops on November 5, 2025.