Though Matt Smith recently wrapped up his duties in the TARDIS on ‘Doctor Who’, the adventures aren’t over for his Doctor as the raggedy man returns in Titan Comics’ ‘Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor’. Previously announced alongside ‘Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor’, these new books allow Whovians to spend a bit more time with their favorite Time Lord before his new regeneration fully takes over on the seminal sci-fi series next month.

In the first issue of this brand new series that appears to take place right after Rory and Amy get married between ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘The Impossible Astronaut’, we meet Alice Obiefune, a British woman whose life is falling apart. But one day when things to be at their worst, a goofy fellow wearing a bowtie ran into her life while he was chasing an alien dog and brought some color back into her black and white world.

As I mentioned in my other review, my first foray into ‘Doctor Who’ comics came in 2012 when IDW was putting out the books. One of my biggest problems in that series was that it didn’t seem to capture the essence of the characters as well as they could have. In this new Titan series, that problem looks to be resolved. Writers Al Ewing and Rob Williams do a great job at embodying Matt Smith’s character, even down to the tone of the dialogue, such as when the Doctor says that something is cool. When I read those lines, I couldn’t help but hear Smith’s voice in my head reciting the line as if he were saying, “Fezzes are cool.”

The creative duo even nails down the more whimsical nature of this Doctor’s adventures. After being introduced to this issue’s caper, I was immediately taken back to things like ‘Dinosaurs on a Spaceship’ or ‘Let’s Kill Hitler’. Now that we know that the writing team can handle the lighter, more comical aspects of the Eleventh Doctor, I wonder how they’ll tackle the darker side of the character. I assume that the Time Lords and Gallifrey will play into this since something along those lines was hinted in this issue.

An interesting thing about this book that I noticed was that I could totally tell who was writing it. Since I’m familiar with his other work, I picked out Ewing’s signature narration blocks, similar to ‘Mighty Avengers’ and ‘Loki: Agent of Asgard’. It’s not that I don’t enjoy them, but whenever I see narration like that, the screenwriting student in me is repeating the mantra of my studies: “Show me. Don’t tell me.” Luckily, whenever Ewing shows you something, it’s something awesome that justifies the narration.

Overall, ‘Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor’ #1 was a solid book. I preferred ‘Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor’ #1 over this one, but this was still very good. I’m more likely to favor David Tennant’s Doctor any day of the week, but I still appreciated the one-off tale that did a good job of focusing on the new companion. I’ll probably keep reading because I’m curious to find out more about the Time Lord lurking in the shadows, but I could see fans of Matt Smith’s Doctor enjoying this more than I did.

Final Score:

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DOCTOR WHO: THE ELEVENTH DOCTOR #1
Written by Al Ewing & Rob Williams
Art by Simon Fraser & Gary Caldwell
Cover by Alice X. Zhang