Alright, so we’re a bit late with this one. But given that licensing restrictions have meant that UK comic shops aren’t actually supposed to stock this series, depriving us of yet another comic that we’d surely appreciate far more than our American cousins (just file alongside The Black Dossier), I’ve had to resort to slightly more underhand methods of getting hold of it.

Although, to be honest, I sort of wish I hadn’t bothered. I, like many Who fans, have been waiting patiently for a proper, grown-up, direct market comic ever since – or even long before – the Russell Davies era began. I even wrote about my dream series a while back – published by Marvel, written by Paul Cornell, drawn by Bryan Hitch. It’d be great, I tells ya. Anyway, to those who have been waiting for a great Who comic – this, sadly, isn’t it.

The thing with IDW is that, for all their skill at snagging film and TV licences, they’re not exactly the best at turning out decent comics to go with them. And they simply can’t attract the sort of established talent that would be needed to do something like Doctor Who justice. Writer Gary Russell has plenty of Who pedigree, of course – former Doctor Who Magazine editor, author of many books, former producer of the Big Finish audio adventures and currently “in” with the Cardiff team – but here he turns in a story that’s merely a passable, by-the-numbers romp, rather than anything particularly engaging. It’s nice to see the Sycorax show up again, but there’s a disappointing lack of reference to The Christmas Invasion; and Russell doesn’t yet seem to have learned to tailor his writing style to comics, with a quite cringe-inducing third-person narration in the opening couple of pages (one which also suffers from grammatical errors, reflecting badly on the editor).

But it’s Nick Roche’s art that really cheapens this. Apart from a nice replication of the Gallifreyan Citadel (as seen in The Sound of Drums), it looks absolutely rotten. The character design is all over the place – Martha’s head changes shape from panel to panel, never actually alighting on anything remotely resembling human, never mind Freema Agyeman’s loveliness; while the Doctor contorts left, right and centre in an almost Liefeldian disregard for the laws of anatomy. I don’t particularly relish being so critical of up-and-coming British or Irish talent, but this just isn’t good enough.

If you want simplistic adventure fodder, and don’t mind it being clumsily drawn, then this is fine. But if you do want that, then you can already get it quite easily – the comic strips in DWM have been like this ever since the relaunch, and there’s even more kid-orientated fare in the weekly Doctor Who Adventures. But there’s absolutely nothing for the older, discerning, comics-reading fan – and as such, IDW’s series feels like a massive wasted opportunity.

And okay, so they can’t attract A-list talent, but why not a quick phone call to Alan Barnes and Martin Geraghty? They did some excellent Paul McGann strips for DWM in the ‘90s, and have already shown their adeptness with Tennant’s Doctor courtesy of a recent story that was head-and-shoulders above the rest of the new series comics. They’d almost certainly have come up with something more compelling – and better-looking – than this lightweight, inconsequential fluff. In fact, you half wonder if the reason why it hasn’t made it across the pond is simply that the BBC caught a glimpse of some preview pages…