Doctor Who Magazine will be printing a special three-part comic strip, as part of the mysterious event, Time Lord Victorious, called Monstrous Beauty, which will see the return of the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler to the DWM comic strip for the first time properly since the end of 2005.
This news follows the announcement of two BBC Books releases which set the whole thing up; Titan Comics’ segment of the story, which features the Tenth Doctor and the Daleks; and a number of releases from Big Finish which will look at the Eighth Doctor’s part in events as well as both Roger Delgado and Anthony Ainley’s Masters’ involvement.
Given how reluctant Christopher Ecceleston has been to return to the role, though I think he would be surprised by the amount of love from fans he would get if he did, I was interested to see how the Ninth Doctor would fit into Time Lord Victorious. I had guessed that it would be comic-book related but I had assumed Titan Comics. The Ninth Doctor was already announced to be returning for the saga in the second of the BBC Books, All Flesh is Grass, so it’s nice that that won’t be his only input into the new storyline.
Monstrous Beauty is set to begin with issue #556 of Doctor Who Magazine, due for release in September and will feature another old Time Lord foe, vampires. The strip will be written by Scott Gray and illustrated by John Ross, with James Offredi and Roger Langridge working on colouring and lettering. Monstrous Beauty will begin with a double sized strip, released as a supplement to #556; the issue will also come with a complete list of what we can expect from Time Lord Victorious, including a schedule. Each Victorious instalment will be designed to be stand-alone too for those who don’t want to follow everything but for those fans who do, this list will be a life-saver for keeping track of all the releases!
Talking to Doctor Who Magazine, Scott Gray says that the Doctor and Rose will find themselves in a place where no one is supposed to be: The Dark Times, when the Time Lords were at war with one of their greatest enemies, the Great Vampires.
The ancient feud between the Time Lords and Vampires have been an important part of the show’s mythology, and set up extensively in the Tom Baker story, State of Decay with further exploration in various books and Big Finish releases. I’m looking forward to seeing more exploration of the war. And given how the main villain for the entire series is a creature who hands out death, it’ll be interesting to see how they deal with creatures like Vampires who are essentially immortal.
I’m looking forward to seeing how this connects to the wider Victorious saga! And to seeing more stories, albeit in comic book form, for the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler. Rose isn’t my favourite companion but I really like her with the Ninth Doctor and think the dynamic between Ecceleston and Billie Piper was much more enjoyable. So I am definitely looking forward to seeing them again.
With the Titan Comics, Big Finish, BBC Books, and now Doctor Who Magazine instalments announcements, it’ll be interesting to see what more exciting news is yet to come with the future for the Time Lord Victorious releases.
