Doctor Who: Circuit Breaker #2 doesn’t reach the idea’s full potential, but is another chapter of strong emotional growth for the Fugitive
There’s a recurring problem for viewers and readers of pretty much everything. Among other things, it effects detective novels, big screen movie series, and, yes, Doctor Who. It’s where, amid all the anticipation as the plot unfolds, sometimes even just from a trailer, they begin to predict how it will all play out. Only to express disappointment when, at least to them, the reality isn’t as good as the version in their heads. Usually, that’s a failure to embrace a piece of art for what it is, rather than it’s not. However, in the case of Dawn of the Daleks from Titan Comics, in refusing to follow the obvious path laid out by Circuit Breaker so far, it risks not making sense at all.
To recap this year’s multimedia epic so far, various objects connected to the Doctor have been materialised in modern London. UNIT’s Osgood has realized that not only does their strange energy pose a threat to reality, but their removal from where their proper place has corrupted, perhaps even erased, the Doctors’ very existence. Only a Doctor from before the earliest timeline meddling can intervene to put things back where they belong. Enter Jo Martin’s Fugitive, on a reluctant mission to save both 21st century Earth and her own future selves.
The Daleks, Kaleds, and ancient Skaro of Dawn of the Daleks is scarcely recognizable as the versions from Genesis
Within those parameters, her latest mission, to return a Time Ring to its proper place on ancient Skaro, promises to be compelling. After all, this must surely be the one the Fourth Doctor depended upon to escape in Genesis of the Daleks. Where the small acts of its theft would have had a massive impact on the entire future history of the universe. Instead, writer Dan Watters goes in a completely different direction. That wouldn’t be a problem, though, if his alternative was more satisfying.
The Time Ring is treated as a simple McGuffin. How and why it wound up on Skaro isn’t important, nor are the consequences of it being there, or not. Moreover, this ancient Skaro is barely recognizable as the one we saw before. Our setting is within a generation of the genesis of the Daleks, since many of the characters still remember it, yet Daleks are everywhere rather than entombed for a thousand years. Those characters are Kaleds living in a high tech utopian bunker beyond Davros’ wildest dreams. They’re also remarkably lovely people, the script forgetting that even the pre-Dalek Kaleds were a deeply racist, fascist society.
The Fugitive’s reverse scavenger hunt is increasingly incidental to Circuit Breaker, as it continues the awakening of the Fugitive’s compassion
These changes are all in service of Dawn of the Daleks’ real focus. Even though the Doctor completes her actual mission early on, she finds she can’t simply leave the Kaleds to die. Instead, she does everything possible to save them, and begins to earn her own personal reasons for hating the Daleks. If Circuit Breaker generally hasn’t done as much with the reverse scavenger hunt aspect as it might have, it’s the Fugitive Doctor’s personal evolution that has been this series’ greatest success.
As brusque as the Fugitive can be, she always finds some excuse to help others. She simply makes increasingly unconvincing claims that it’s just part of her self-serving agenda. But here, particularly after her experience in The Deadliest Weapon, she’s beginning to set aside that pretence and admit that she just thinks it’s the right thing to do. It’s her first time even admitting that to herself, perhaps.
This more sensitive side is supported by Sami Kivelä’s art, which is the best he’s done for the Doctor Who titles so far. It’s as vibrant and energetic as ever, but swaggers with added confidence. He beautifully captures Jo Martin’s likeness too, complete with the subtle contradictions in this incarnation. A woman who, like in the early days of Peter Capaldi’s run, perhaps tries not to care because once she starts, she’ll care so much it will devastate her.
Relatively speaking, Dawn of the Daleks is the weakest entry in Circuit Breaker so far. It’s also the weakest book among recent Titan Comics. But so long as you’re prepared to not worry too much about missed opportunities, it’s still a worthwhile, imaginative step along the Fugitive’s difficult road to becoming the Doctor we know.
Doctor Who: Circuit Breaker #2
The Doctor Travels To The War-Ravaged World Of Skaro As She Battles The Daleks With The Fate Of Their Kaled Forebears At Stake!
You can find links for buying in the US, or from Forbidden Planet in the UK here.
Circuit Breaker continues with Don’t Blink, free to read on the UNIT website from the 17th of August
