Elena Casagrande

The Tenth Doctor comics explores adventures that take place after he tragically mindwipes Donna (I'm still not over that), and reluctantly begins traveling with a new companion, Gabby Gonzalez. And what a wonderful companion she is! Gabby is a young Mexican-American woman living in Brooklyn and working in her family's restaurant and laundromat, but dreaming of becoming an artist and going on adventures. She's utterly charming and clever, and well characterized for a character original to the show more comics.

This volume contains two adventures. The Doctor and Gabby meet when the Pranavores, a psychic lifeform that exists in a symbiotic relationship with intelligent lifeforms and feeds off their positive energy, come under attack. Their assailants are the Cerabavores, scientifically modified Pranavores who hunt the Pranavores by causing the humans they're associated with to have horrific visions. Gabby's quick wits and cheerful spirit help the Doctor defeat the Cerabavores and he invites her on a one-time trip on the TARDIS.

Because Gabby is an artist, he takes her to see an art gallery on a magnificently strange planet and meet an artist named Zhe who uses her mind to create block transfer sculptures. Of course, Zhe is in trouble, trapped in stasis while two malevolent apprentices she created attack the Doctor and Gabby. The story is illustrated with fun house visuals accompanied by Gabby's sketchbook where she tells the story through sketches and notes to her friend. It's a wonderful visual story best suited to the comic book art form.

This is a great start to the Tenth Doctor comics series and of course, Gabby is invited back for further travels so there's more to look forward to in upcoming comics. show less

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The Doctor visits Brooklyn, and ends up with a new companion, Gabby Gonzalez, fresh from working at her father’s laundromat – where it is the washing machines that provide the terror of the title. I must say I’ve always thought of them as potentially a gateway to another dimension; there’s something primordial and strange about the rotational sloshing of the water. The opening three-part story is very show more good, the other two parts are a new story, “The Arts in Space” which is a bit sillier but still gives Gabby some more characterisation as well as just being fun. This series clearly had a lot of vim. show less

This volume wraps up "Year One" of Titan's ongoing tenth Doctor comic; if the opening volume was a highly effective pastiche of a Russell T Davies new-companion episode, this is a very dismal one of a Russell T Davies season finale. The Doctor and Gabby return to Gabby's home of New York City, and even though Gabby's friend Cindy gets swept up in events, none of it matters. There's no sense of personal investment here-- this story isn't about the Doctor or Gabby or Cindy in the way that "The show more Parting of the Ways" was about the Doctor and Rose and Jack and Mickey and Jackie, or that "Doomsday" was about the Doctor and Rose and Mickey and Jackie and Pete, or that "The Last of the Time Lords" was about the Doctor and Martha and Jack, and so on. Nothing is at stake here for our main characters, they're just participants. This could at least be a story about Gabby and Cindy's friendship, but mostly Cindy is just an extra person to stand around in scenes where lots of people stand there while the Doctor talks. (Nick Abadzis anticipated the storytelling tics of the Chibnall era, I guess.)

It just feels like a random standalone adventure except for the attempt at scale. The universe is threatened-- but so what? The Osirans from Pyramids of Mars return-- but so what? Your boring bad guy from a boring story being related to an interesting bad guy from an interesting story doesn't make him interesting. I found it very hard to get invested in whether this guy should go through some portal, and without the period trappings, the Osirans are pretty generic super-beings.

Despite all this, and despite involving four different people, the art is pretty consistent and mostly very good. I'm not sure about the occasional manga-esque effect (they're so occasional it jars), but at least Gabby looks like a Hispanic woman again. These artists could be supporting a stronger story is all

I was disappointed because I thought the first volume of The Tenth Doctor had real potential. The second was meh-- but it had a different writer, so I could accept that, and figured that when the original came back, things would be better again. Hopefully "Year Two" gets things back on track.

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In this volume, the Doctor and Gabriella encounter aliens with a distinctly Egyptian-mythology vibe. Because of this, I really liked the story—I am a sucker for a good Egyptian-mythology story, especially one that riffs on Pyramids of Mars too, which is perhaps one of my favourite Fourth Doctor stories. The laundromat story at the beginning was cute too; I like stories that explore hitherto unrevealed rooms in the TARDIS. So overall, I liked this a little bit more than Volume 1, show more Revolutions of Terror, but not quite as much as Volume 2, The Weeping Angels of Mons. All three volumes are action-packed and fun, and worth reading if you like David Tennant’s Doctor. show less