CROSSING PATHS

The Road To The Thirteenth Doctor

James Peaty lays the groundwork for Doctor

Who comics’ future in

With Jodie Whittaker set to make her full debut as the Time Lord later this year, Titan Comics is paving the way for her arrival with new miniseries, The Road To The Thirteenth Doctor. Written by James Peaty and illustrated by Iolanda Zanfardino, Pasquale Qualano and Brian Williamson respectively, there’s no hint of regeneration about the threeparter, which will instead present the Doctor’s three previous incarnations in their prime.

“It’s not a finale to the Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Doctor series, and there’s certainly no intention to make any kind of final statement about any of the characters,” Peaty tells Red Alert. “These are full-blooded one-off Doctor Who stories, although the Twelfth Doctor story is probably a little more elegiac than the others.”

While the Tenth Doctor is caught up in “a classic outer space base/ spaceship under siege story” and the Eleventh Doctor travels back to 19th century San Francisco, The Twelfth Doctor fetches up in contemporary times as he joins forces with UNIT against an impending threat. “Ultimately in the three one-offs, we’re trying to give readers the basic format of Doctor Who, so there’s one story in the past, one in the present, and one in the future,” explains Peaty. “We also wanted to make sure that each issue has a very distinctive flavour, and each setting shows the different iterations of the character at their most iconic.”

While Peaty promises that there will be “a few little Easter eggs towards the future along the way,” each issue also includes a back-up by the incoming Thirteenth Doctor comic creative team of Jody Houser and Rachael Stott. “It introduces a brand new antagonist that will plague the Thirteenth Doctor through her ongoing series,” teases editor Andrew James. “Someone you’ve never seen before, that nevertheless has deep ties to the Doctor in many of their previous lives.” SJ