Review by Frank Plowright

Origins is set apart from any individual version of the Doctor, yet connected to them all as it investigates the back story of the Fugitive Doctor. They were first revealed in a TV episode starring the thirteenth Doctor (Jodie Whitaker), which also disclosed that somewhere along the way the Doctor has suffered from memory loss.

As portrayed by Ruth Clayton on the TV show, the Fugitive Doctor was an interesting character removed from the later friendly and whimsical incarnations. She’s surly, grumpy, rude and more prone to violence, although heroically inclined, and these are all characteristics Jody Houser feeds into Origins.

She opens with what seems to be the Doctor’s first visit to Earth, preceding the William Hartnell TV incarnation in 1963. It’s a neatly plotted sequence establishing methods and personality in front of some puzzled thirteen year olds, funny, yet viably dealing with a planetary threat. From there Houser jumps to the Doctor having a covert meeting, being saddled with a sidekick and given orders to in effect carpet bomb a colony that poses an existential threat to Gallifrey. While new assistant Taslo is the unquestioning type who follows orders, the Doctor is suspicious.

Houser takes the Doctor to interesting places to meet interesting people, while throwing in some complications and an over-arching threat, and as such it’s surely what we all want from a Doctor Who adventure. Better still, it’s all very nicely drawn. There’s a slight stiffness to the art of Roberta Ingranata, but when it comes to portraits, locations, scenery and the Doctor’s enemies she’s great.

While staying well clear of the level of preaching that blighted the thirteenth Doctor’s TV show, Houser also makes a point about how some people can only see other cultures as a threat. She leads events naturally enough to the point where the Doctor steals a Tardis and leaves Gallifrey, so it certainly supplies an origin story in that respect, but there are still plenty of gaps to fill between the end of Origins and the first TV appearance in 1963, here given a cameo. It’s all very satisfying.