‘ORIGINS’

Please feel free to comment on my review.

A Division Mission for the Fugitive Doctor with Taslo

If ‘The Tourist’ short story was a disappointment, the comic story ‘Origins’ certainly made up for it. 🙂

At this point in time, I’ve yet to hear ‘The Fugitive Doctor’ audio stories by Big Finish, starring Jo Martin. Hopefully by the time they’re released by Big Finish, I’ll get the chance to check them out. It’ll certainly be interesting to hear Big Finish’s take on the Fugitive Doctor compared to the TV show.

For now, and to celebrate ‘Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary, I’ve decided to commemorate the Fugitive Doctor by checking out the Titan Comics story called ‘Origins’. This was a four-issue mini-series (technically five) that was released in 2022. I checked out the entire story in my Kindle library.

This isn’t the first time I’ve come across the ‘Doctor Who’ Titan Comics stories. I’ve read the comic story ‘The Many Lives of Doctor Who’ in 2018 to celebrate the TV show’s 55th anniversary. 🙂 I’ve also enjoyed ‘Defender of the Daleks’, which is a comic story in the ‘Time Lord Victorious’ multi-platform series.

I know I don’t regularly check out the ‘Doctor Who’ comic stories as much as I check out the Big Finish audios, but I do enjoy checking them out from time to time. This ‘Doctor Who’ comic story with the Fugitive Doctor is very worthwhile. It was so intriguing to read Titan’s take on the character.

When I read ‘The Tourist’ in the ‘Adventures In Lockdown’ anthology back in 2021, I was hoping for it to provide more insight into the Fugitive Doctor and her history before she became the First Doctor. Sadly, it didn’t turn out that way, since there wasn’t enough of the Fugitive Doctor featured.

Thankfully, when checking out ‘Origins’, the Fugitive Doctor is a prominent character throughout. This story also provides a tie-in to how the Fugitive Doctor sort of ends up being the ‘fugitive’ in ‘Fugitive of the Judoon’. I hope to elaborate more about this aspect as we go further into the review.

The story itself is by Jody Houser, who also penned ‘Defender of the Daleks’. She happens to be an ongoing writer for ‘The Thirteenth Doctor’ comic series by Titan Comics. The story’s artwork is by Roberta Ingranata, an Italian comic artist who has also contributed the artwork to ‘Defender of the Daleks’. 🙂

Before we get into ‘Origins’ as a Fugitive Doctor story itself, a few things to be clear on. Although this was officially released as a four-issue mini-series, it’s actually five, since there’s a prologue story before this that ties into ‘Origins’. The prologue story was released on Free Comic Book Day in May 2022.

For those who don’t know, Free Comic Book Day is an annual promotional effort by the North American comic book industry to attract new readers to independent comic book stories. Usually, Free Comic Book Day takes place on the first Saturday of May – Not that I’m expecting you to know that.

I didn’t know about Free Comic Book Day since it’s not something that’s celebrated in the UK as opposed to the USA. Mind you, I believe Titan Comics is based in London in the UK. I imagine UK ‘Doctor Who’ fans are lucky to have access to the Titan Comic stories, especially the Free Comic Book Day ones.

Another thing before we get into ‘Origins’ as a comic story is the title itself. I don’t think ‘Origins’ is a very inspiring title for a Fugitive Doctor story. I mean, it’s not specific on what the ‘origins’ are about. It could be the ‘origins’ for anybody or anything. Why does the story title have to be so vague about it?

I suppose the title is meant to refer to the ‘origins’ of the Fugitive Doctor, but we don’t see her become Ruth Clayton at the end. Nor do we see how she ended up losing her memory by the time we get to the First Doctor. We see her escaping as a fugitive from the Division, but it’s not enough. 😐

Anyway, the Free Comic Book Day prologue story has the Fugitive Doctor sorting out an alien called Monstario the Devourer when she meets four kids in a treehouse in 1962. It was interesting how the Fugitive Doctor interacted with the kids and that their toys revealed to be Monstario and his gang. 🙂

This is of course to showcase the Fugitive Doctor doing a mission for the Division, especially as she, on behalf of Division, thanks the four kids for helping her out. Incidentally, we don’t get to see these four kids again in the main ‘Origins’ story. Visiting Earth does give the Doctor the inspiration to visit the planet again.

This is clearly established by the end of the prologue story, as we cut to a year later in 1963 where the First Doctor and Susan presumably arrive in London in the junkyard before ‘An Unearthly Child’ happens. It was nice to see the First Doctor and Susan briefly make an appearance in the prologue. 🙂

Onto the main ‘Origins’ comic story, we start off with the Fugitive Doctor doing another mission for the Division, with the help of her companion who happens to be a Weeping Angel. As established in ‘Flux’, Weeping Angels can be selected to be Division agents, so it was interesting to see that here. 🙂

It was unnerving to see scenes of the Fugitive Doctor in her TARDIS with the Weeping Angel and it’s unusual that the Angel isn’t a villain in this story. The Angel tries to get at the TARDIS to suck some time energy for itself, but the Doctor is having none of that after their mission for Division is complete.

Apparently, the Fugitive Doctor was rescuing some spider babies and there was a giant spider involved. Not sure if it’s a Metebellis III spider, one of the spiders from ‘Arachnids in the UK’ or Shelob from ‘The Lord of the Rings’. 🙂 It could be a spider-like creature connected to the Racnoss. 😀

An Empress of ‘Weavers’ is mentioned. 😀 After that particular Division mission, the Fugitive Doctor is assigned another mission by a High Council assistant. She’s paired with a Time Lord character called Taslo, who also happens to be a Division member, resembling a young woman with dirty blonde hair.

Taslo was interesting to read as a one-off companion character for the Fugitive Doctor. At first, I wasn’t sure what to make of her, as she seemed very eager but not good on subtlety. She also seemed to be someone who went by the rule book, especially when being taught in the Time Lord Academy. 😐

There were points where I thought she was a bad person before I went into thinking she was a good person and eventually thinking she was a bad person after all. But then, in a surprising twist towards the story’s conclusion, she became a good person in the end and the Doctor approves her good deeds.

The mission that the Fugitive Doctor and Taslo embark on involves the elimination of several planets that the High Council of Gallifrey claims to be a cult of some kind. As the duo investigate, they learn that the planets actually have Time Lords on it who have formed peaceful lives when exploring the universe. 😐

It was interesting to see these Time Lords on these various alien planets as they don’t appear to be human-like as we know Time Lords tend to appear. Many of these Time Lords have reptilian features to them. Some even look like lions, bears and birds. I found this very unusual when checking out the story.

What it comes down to is that someone in the Time Lord High Council – a unnamed Gallifreyan Councillor – is embarrassed by what these Time Lords on alien planets have become. He’s determined to cancel them out of existence, which is something the Doctor is greatly abhorred by. 😐

This is all part of the Time Lords’ stagnation on Gallifrey in refusing to leave their home and explore the universe. It forms part of the reasons why the Doctor decided to leave Gallifrey and become a space-and-time traveller, as established in the TV series from William Hartnell up to the present day.

Thankfully, the Fugitive Doctor is able to expose the Gallifreyan Councillor for his crime of genocide and he’s arrested. He also receives help from Taslo, who gets arrested too, in saving the Time Lord ‘rejects’ by evacuating them off their home worlds before being blown up to satisfy the High Council.

After visiting Taslo in her prison cell and hoping to put a good word for her, the Fugitive Doctor is about to be assigned on another mission for the Division. But she decides to go ‘rogue’ and the Time Lord character called Gat, who appeared in ‘Fugitive of the Judoon’, gets sent to capture the Doctor.

The story ends with a ‘TO BE CONTINUED…?’ caption. I’m not sure if this is means that there’ll be another Fugitive Doctor comic story by Titan Comics on the way or it’s meant to lead into ‘Fugitive of the Judoon’ itself. Either way, the story of the Fugitive Doctor doesn’t really end there, as we all know it. 😀

Just to briefly mention, in ‘Origins’, the Fugitive Doctor was given a Time Lords weapon cache. It eerily resembled the Genesis Ark, which appeared in ‘Army of Ghosts’/’Doomsday’. The TARDIS disposed the weapon cache into space. I wonder if the Cult of Skaro picked it up when they were in the Void. 😐

The extras for the complete collection of ‘Origins’ are as follows. There’s a covers gallery, a ‘Cover Process’ page, and ‘The Art Process’, which contains layouts of certain comic panels and artwork of the story. There are advertisements for ‘The Master Plan’ and ‘Empire of the Wolf’, a reader’s guide to the Titan Comics of ‘Doctor Who’, and biographies of writer Jody Houser, artist Roberta Ingranata and Warnia K. Sahadewa.

‘Origins’ has been an enjoyable ‘Doctor Who’ comic story featuring the Fugitive Doctor. It doesn’t provide the whole picture on how the Fugitive Doctor ended up in Gloucester to become the human called Ruth Clayton in ‘Fugitive of the Judoon’, but it has the beginnings to lead us in that direction.

I’m glad I’ve been able to check out this comic story and uncover more about the Fugitive Doctor as a character compared to what I’ve seen of her in the TV series. If the Big Finish audios starring Jo Martin as the Fugitive Doctor are like this comic story, I’m positive I’ll enjoy them very much indeed.

‘Origins’ rating – 8/10

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The previous story For the Fugitive Doctor was ‘Flux’ (TV) For the First Doctor was ‘Losing the Audience’ (ST) For Susan was ‘Losing the Audience’ (ST)	The next story For the Fugitive Doctor is ‘Fugitive of the Judoon’ (TV) For the First Doctor is ‘Hunters of Earth’ (DOTD) (Audio) For Susan is ‘Hunters of Earth’ (DOTD) (Audio)
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