4-Dimensional Vistas
is written by Steve Parkhouse with art by Mick Austin and letters by Jerry
Paris and Steve Craddock. It was
released in Doctor Who Monthly issues 78-83 (June – November 1983) and
is reprinted in its original form in Doctor
Who: The Tides of Time by Panini Books.
This one was honestly a
surprise. After Lunar Lagoon left
me quite cold on where the Fifth Doctor’s comic adventures was going, 4-Dimensional
Vistas is the final six issue epic from Parkhouse for the Fifth Doctor that
wraps a lot of the threads up from the strip and building towards the point
where the Doctor is going to regenerate.
The story ends with a character predicting the death, and at the time of
this release Colin Baker had already been announced as the Doctor and Peter
Davison would have been filming The Caves of Androzani while this story
was wrapping up. It gives the Fifth
Doctor one last epic to essentially go out on with the implication being the
final story of the strip, The Moderator, being focused on setting up the
Sixth Doctor’s run which would begin as soon as The Twin Dilemma finished
airing in March 1984. The story is one
that deals with the building towards the end of the universe in a nice parallel
with The Tides of Time, where the Doctor discovers that all of the
troubles he has been facing since Stockbridge have been the work of the
Meddling Monk who is attempting to use Earth and its history to build this
crystal with the Ice Warriors to take over the universe. The twist appearance of the Monk and the Ice Warriors
comes right out of left field, as the last time a returning villain appeared in
the strip was Junk-Yard Demon and before that was Dragon’s Claw. The strip makes the wise decision to pass
between the Doctor and the Monk, the Monk just doing it for the psychotic joy
of being able to change history.
The first issue is a
really nice epilogue to Lunar Lagoon which gives us the Doctor on the beach
being attacked by Gus, an American soldier who was in the background in the
last story, but is upgraded to companion here.
He is not trusting of the Doctor throughout the first issue and we get
this great reveal that World War II was not in the 1940s, but in the 1960s in
this particular universe, giving the Doctor the first real moment of what has
been going on. There is this utterly
charming moment where the Fifth Doctor feels like the Fifth Doctor where he
gets lost in thought and wanders off into the sea, nearly drowning. This partially feels like a little bit of
action to keep the first issue moving and get Gus to save the Doctor so he can
get a companion for this and the next story.
Gus as a character is a bit one note, he is essentially there to have
the companion role and being American is interesting as it gives the Doctor
someone to explain things to, but he is not given much character on his
own. That’s where a lot of 4-Dimensional
Vistas falls apart in the back half, when a bunch of faceless soldiers are
added in to build towards the conclusion as it just becomes some all out
action. The action isn’t bad, it’s still
drawn quite nicely despite not having some of the best backgrounds with Austin’s
art, yet it still flows nicely from one scene to the next.
Overall, 4-Dimensional
Vistas, despite continuing the trend of having very odd titles (I think it’s
supposed to be a reference to the parallel dimensions featured), brings the
Fifth Doctor’s Doctor Who Monthly strip back to what it had been. The long running threads of time being messed
with are tied together mostly nicely with a return from a character who people
wouldn’t be expecting at all. 8/10.
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