Writer: Dan Watters
Artist: Kelsey Ramsay
Colorist: Valentina Bianconi
Letterer: Tyler Smith
Editor: Jonathan H Wilkins
Art Director: Oz Browne
Cover Artists: Abigail Harding; Photo; Robert Hack
Publisher: Titan Comics
Price: $3.99
Release Date: September 25, 2024
The Doctor tried to rescue Ruby, but instead of letting the TARDIS materialize in the basement, the Scream Sommelier brought it to limbo. So, the Doctor leaves Maria in the TARDIS to face Cybermen and the Scream Sommelier. The dark god refuses to release him from this pocket dimension until the Doctor screams. Can the Cybermen kill the Doctor in this otherworldly place? Will Rose be trapped forever in the last shopping center on Earth? Let's grab our sonic screwdrivers, leap into Doctor Who: The Fifteenth Doctor #3, and see!
Story
The Doctor and Ruby found a cyber-gauntlet on a crashed spaceship. Its temporal signature led them to Sanctum Shopping And Dining in the 29th Century. When the Cybermen appeared, the Doctor sensed they weren’t real. The Doctor banished his fear, and the Cybermen vanished. But when the Scream Sommelier summoned the Cybermen to the ground floor, the shoppers' fear empowered the Cyberman to kill. Now, with six of their number dead, the shoppers are looking for someone to blame. They were safe here for three years until the Doctor and Ruby arrived!
After the Cybermen chased her, Ruby found two Cancaranka. The human-sized insects fear other races, so they hide underground. In Doctor Who: The Fifteenth Doctor #3, Ruby assures the Cancaranka that the shoppers will enhance their lives. When the shoppers activate security, the robots view expelling the troublemakers as the logical option. After solar storms destroyed Earth's atmosphere, nothing remains outside but radiation and intense heat. Ruby might sing along to The Trammps’ “Disco Inferno,” but she doesn’t want to “Burn, Baby, Burn.”
Fear propels Dan Watters’ story. The shoppers remained in the mall because they feared leaving Earth. The Cancaranka hide in the basement because other species usually kill them. Ruby’s recurring dream involves losing her mother in a mall. The Cybermen frighten Maria, yet no adults claim her. Is she real or a manifestation of Ruby’s dream? As for the Doctor, he finds shopping malls creepy when they are closed. The automated systems in the last shopping mall on Earth cannot withstand solar storms indefinitely.
Art
The Scream Sommelier hovers above the TARDIS in Doctor Who: The Fifteenth Doctor #3. Surrounded by ghostly Cybermen and smoke, his smile reveals pointed teeth. Kelsey Ramsay’s Cancaranka evokes the Mutts that the Marshall and guards such as Cotton destroy in The Mutants. Shoppers gather as six of their number lie on the gleaming floor. Sanctum Security rolls past palm trees and beneath hovering plants. The frozen smiles on their faces seek to calm the shoppers. Yet the robots are as lethal as the Cybermen and provoke fear from Ruby and the Cancaranka.
Clad in his technicolor dream shirt, chocolate brown trench coat, and 4th Doctor scarf, a red mist obscures the 15th Doctor's shoes as the Scream Sommelier hovers amid neon yellow and green. White dominates the background as the Doctor squats before Maria. The girl clutches her tan teddy bear beneath a monitor dominated by yellow Cybermen and yellow-green smoke. The green Cancaranka’s red eyes shine amid Valentina Bianconi’s blue walls and green pipes beneath the concourse. When the Doctor pulls away a Cyberman’s faceplate, what he sees evokes Van Gogh’s Starry Night and Edvard Munch’s The Scream.
Tyler Smith conjures large black uppercase letters into white dialogue balloons, casts off-camera dialogue into white narrative boxes bordered by character-specific colors, and programs a computerized font into octagonal dialogue balloons. Words rarely embolden for emphasis and italicize for fright. While giant rounded Vrooops accompany the TARDIS’ activation, enlarged colorful dialogue threatens to burst a balloon before the welcoming sign for John & Smith. Thanks to Titan Comics for providing a copy for review.
Final Thoughts
Fear trapped Humans in a shopping mall when they could have explored the cosmos. As fear makes Cybermen real in a 29th-century shopping mall, the shoppers forsake their autonomy in exchange for protection. While the Doctor channels the power of What If to escape, the clock is ticking on Ruby’s life. Can he rescue his companion before fear turns the shoppers into murderers?
Rating 9.5/10
To preview interior art see my preview on The Dragon's Cache.
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