Het is heel erg jammer en hoe zeer ik ook van Doctor Who houdt als televisieserie en ook in de audioverhalen van Big Finish, deze stripreeks voelt lang niet zo fijn aan. Ik heb het idee dat dit vooral komt door het tekenwerk. Het ziet er slordig uit alsof het even snel in elkaar geflanst is waardoor het geen recht doet aan het Doctor Who universum waar ik zo van houd.

Het verhaal draait om een afrekening van de Doctor van iets wat hij in het verleden gedaan zou hebben als de War Doctor, dat gedeelte van de Doctor waar hij niet veel meer van weet. Er komen allemaal bekende elementen in voor zoals de Sontarons, de Daleks, de Time War en de Master. En helemaal op het einde de grote cliffhanger met de ontmoeting met nog een grote bekende en de woorden To Be Continued! En daar houd ik al helemaal niet van. Nu moet ik het volgende deel wel lezen. ( )

This volume solidified my belief that The Eleventh Doctor is far and above the best of Titan's three ongoing Doctor Who comics. Alice continues on as a companion from "Year One," but two more are added: the Squire and Abslom Daak of Doctor Who Magazine fame.

The invocation of Daak is more than a surface-level continuity thing; I actually think it reveals something important about the creative team's intentions. Coincidentally, I started reading through the Panini collections of the DWM comic strip around the same time I started this, and The Then and the Now reminds me of the classic fourth Doctor run by Pat Mills, John Wagner, and Dave Gibbons (I haven't actually gotten to Daak yet; his material is reprinted in one of the seventh Doctor volumes) in that it doesn't read like an attempt to imitate what the tv show does in comics form, but instead it takes what the tv show does and filters it through a comics prism. Si Spurrier and Rob Williams and their artistic collaborators are doing their own thing that draws on stuff the tv show did... but is really nothing like it in terms of tone and affect.

The story focuses on the eleventh Doctor's guilt over what he did as the "War Doctor" during the Time War; he's being hunted by a bounty hunter (the Then and the Now of the title) for a crime he doesn't remember committing... but is perfectly willing to believe he committed. He and Alice are joined by the Squire, a companion of the War Doctor he doesn't remember, and Abslom Daak, who finds himself at loose ends as a "Dalek killer" with no Daleks to kill. Each story here sees the Doctor retracing his steps through the Time War as Alice has strange visions ("EXTERMINHATE") and we get glimpses of the War Doctor and a mysterious child. There's lots of great stuff here, both horrifying and gentle, and never for a moment do you feel like you're watching the tv show. I like this portrayal of a guilt-wracked Doctor; I like the new weird TARDIS team he has inadvertently assembled; I like the guesses and glimpses we get of the Time War (once again demonstrating that Big Finish Time War is the least interesting Time War). My only complaint would be that Alice herself feels a bit lost in the epic Doctor angst of it all, compared to how much her character was foregrounded in "Year One" (her visions feels more like a plot device than a character point), but I am hopeful that future volumes in "Year Two" will remedy this.

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