Doom’s Day Hours 2-5 Disappoint; A Look at Sooz Kempner

Posted in: BBC, Comics, Doctor Who, Review, TV | Tagged: Audio Drama, bbc, huge end, physician who, physician who journal, Doctor Who: Doom’s Day, russell t davies, Sooz Kempner

Doctor Who: Doom’s Day Hours 2-5 undergo from a less-than-impressive story & artwork; a glance again at a few of Sooz Kempner’s comedy highlights.

Doctor Who: Doom’s Day is a cross-media occasion that is purported to tide us over whereas we await the Sixtieth-anniversary specials to hit tv in November. The story follows a brand-new character named Doom, a time-traveling assassin-for-hire who has twenty-four hours to seek out The Doctor serving to, who’ll be capable to assist her keep away from dying at the tip of that day. To do this, she has to take new jobs that give her an excuse to hop throughout Space and Time to places the place the Doctor could be.

The second chapter of Doctor Who: Doom’s Day covers Hours Two to Five of Doom’s hunt for the Doctor within the type of a sixteen-page supplemental shaggy dog story within the newest problem of Doctor Who Magazine. In Hour Two, Doom visits a jail facility to speak to somebody who is aware of The Doctor. In Hour Three, Doom finds The Sixth Doctor in a near-future Earth, the place they battle off the Autons in a Nesteen plot to switch people once more. In Hour Four, Doom goes to the set of a Western film in Nineteen Thirties Hollywood, the place she finds the solid and crew have been transformed into Cybermen and has to battle by them to outlive. In Hour Five, Doom travels to a medieval-style world the place she has to discover a inventive technique to fulfill her task – to kill a unicorn – whereas teaming up with the Third Doctor’s companion Jo Grant however finds like within the earlier hours, it isn’t the fitting Doctor who may also help her.

When Bad Comics Happen to “Doctor Who”

The downside with Doctor Who comics, particularly in Doctor Who Magazine, is that they tend to be perfunctory in writing and artwork. This second installment of Doom’s Day is, sadly, the latter. There is just about no characterization at all within the characters, which is an enormous downside with Doom as a result of we do not know something about her aside from her plot: she’s making an attempt to outrun Death. In the opening prose chapter, we noticed extra characterization for Doom’s resentful, passive-aggressive booker who makes use of officiousness to torment the assassins within the group. So far, the writing fails to inform us why we must always care whether or not Doom lives or dies. She kills individuals for a dwelling, which suggests she’s not a superb individual irrespective of how a lot the writers attempt to persuade us she’s extra amoral and Chaotic Neutral (in “Dungeons & Dragons” phrases) than evil.

Then there’s the artwork. It’s horrible and tough on the eyes. It adequately lays out the story however is shockingly unattractive. It took us about 5 minutes of re-reading to understand that in Hour Two, that is truly River Song that Doom is speaking to as a result of the artwork was shockingly unhealthy and that seemed nothing like Alex Kingston. We know comics artists should work exhausting to show of their pages, however why did Russ Leach have to attract the ugly model of Sooz Kempner‘s face as Doom, a flat model of Colin Baker’s face because the Sixth Doctor, a barely recognizable Jo Grant and that horrible-looking and unrecognizable River Song?! There’s no grasp of physique language within the artwork which may convey any of the characters’ personalities. It’s solely reliant on expositionary dialogue as they clarify to us what they’re doing and what they’re pondering.

Doom’s Actor is More than Just a Face

Sooz Kempner is a continuously hilarious comedienne and performer with an insanely versatile singing voice and an impeccable geek pedigree who can do a comedy routine about video video games on the one hand after which a gleefully ruthless spoof of the worst politicians who’ve just lately ruined the United Kingdom. She’s like a British one-woman SNL… if SNL was truly humorous.

If you are accustomed to her work, you possibly can see why Russell T. Davies permitted her casting as Doom. However, she would not write her personal materials right here, alas. Doom as a personality solely works for now in the event you think about her with Kempner’s snarky, rapid-fire wise-cracking voice and comedy persona. If you do not know Kempner’s work, you could be left questioning why you must care about this character or why The Doctor ought to hassle to assist her at all. We’ll in all probability get a higher sense of Doom’s persona once we hear Kempner play her within the upcoming audio drama chapters of Doctor Who: Doom’s Day.

We Need to Care about Doom – and So Far, We Don’t

This brings us again to the doubtful prospect of following Doctor Who: Doom’s Day throughout totally different media. This comedian installment doesn’t encourage anybody to maintain up with the story. Hopefully, the Titan comics could be higher written and drawn. The prose novel after which may even be higher. But the 2 phone-based video video games? There has by no means been a superb Doctor Who online game on any platform, and these do not seem like they’ll break that document.

At the tip of the day, Doom actually wanted to be written as a extra compelling character we care about for her story to really feel it value following. Till then, you may have extra enjoyable with a sampling of Sooz Kempner’s comedy movies.

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