WARNING: There are probably spoilers here. Just saying…
Doctor Who continues to be a powerful pop icon. In Doctor Who: Prisoners of Time, IDW has been exploring a story from each Doctor in a build up to the celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who. Doctor Who: Prisoners of Time #9 is our first story with the 9th Doctor, portrayed by Christopher Eccleston, and the relaunch of the TV series in 2005 after the cancellation in 1989.
Each story has been focused on one adventure, not told in previous comics or television episodes. This time we follow the Doctor and Rose Tyler as they travel to a far off planet to see “the grand and glorious monument to Drake Ayelbourne of Altai VII.” It seems a shrine to the ego of a man who wanted to a way to be remembered long after his death.
As the Doctor and Rose begin to explore, Rose wanders off and she fall through a trapdoor into a secret part of the monument. Turns out that Drake was not dead after all, but living within the monument and creating worlds within worlds. He explains to Rose that people do not understand the meaning of this monument, which is no real surprise since no one has set foot on the planet since erected a force field to keep people out and the only they can view things is from a geo-synchronus satellite. The monument was dedicate to Drake’s dead wife as a way to take his mind off her death.
While he says it was not a monument to his own ego, his statements show just how selfish a being he is. And that is further illustrated when the Doctor shows up to rescue Rose and accidentally destroys the time bubble that Drake had created to allow himself to survive for the last 150 years without aging. As time begins to catch up with Drake, he releases the full force of the monument against the Doctor and Rose. the building comes crumbling around them, but they narrowly escape.
Of course, their escape is short lived as, true to the ongoing storyline, the Doctor’s secret nemesis appears. He reveals himself to be… ADAM! Wait, who? Oh yeah, that jerk from the vault back in Episode 6 of the 1 season of the revival of the Doctor Who TV series back in 2005. The episode was called “Dalek” and reintroduced the villainous robots from the Doctor’s past… or is it his future? Either way, Daleks climbed stairs for the first time and the Doctor and Rose met Adam Mitchell, a technician in the secret bunker of a rich collector of alien artifacts. Adam traveled with the duo for a whopping one episode before he chose to have some sort of satellite relay installed in his head that allowed him to download the entire future history of humankind into his brain.
The Doctor returned Adam home and he was forgotten… until now. He has been kidnapping all of the Doctor’s companions, but we still do not know why. Is this some sort of payback for leaving Adam alone all those years ago? We will surely find out.
I enjoy this series but continue to be disappointed with how easily Adam has been able to incapacitate the Doctor through most of the books. I hope they give some explanation to this in the concluding books. More build up to the big 5-0, 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who.
