REVIEW: Doctor Who A Fairytale Life #1

DOCTOR WHO

A Fairytale Life #1

IDW

WRITTEN BY matthew Sturges
PENCILS BY kelly yates
INKS BY steve bird, brian shearer, and rick ketcham
COLORS BY rachelle rosenberg
LETTERING BY neil uyetake
EDITED BY denton j. tipton
COVER BY mark buckingham; phil elliott

This is the first Matt Smith 11th Doctor comic story I've read since I no longer can afford to buy Doctor Who magazine and there has probably been tons in the magazines already. 

This looks to be a limited series released alongside the start of the ongoing series which has been really confusing to some of my friends who asked me about the start of the 11th Doctor at IDW. I hope IDW continues doing the one shots they were also doing towards the end of the 10th Doctor's time in the comics. I enjoyed a lot of those.

I've always had a problem with tie in books, comics, and the like from television series and movies that fall flat, end up bland, or seem rushed or lacking a huge amount of effect. I've talked about this many times and I'm not saying the art or writing in A Fairtale Life is bad but with a high profile property like Doctor Who it makes me wonder sometimes why they don't go after big name writing or art teams? Is it budget reasons? Do they just know they will sale so many copies just based on it being a Doctor Who product and thus don't really go out of their way to try and do the same that a publisher would do with something they own? 

No matter the thinking, most tie in projects lay down and do nothings as I have said before in a bland boring nature. Doctor Who has had a better track record than a lot of other properties as the Classic comics{now being reprinted by IDW also}the New Adventure novels, the original BBC novels, and the Big Finish audios are a lot of great stories that stretch the characters, push the writers abilities, reach for great talents, and they might not all be great but I wouldn't call any of them bland. But then again, the current state of Doctor Who novels and comics.....well, I need to get on with the review of this issue and hope cash for sales of a good amount of copies isn't "That's good enough" in the future.

A number of scifi stories have explored the idea of vacation planets. If I remember correctly Doctor Who has done it a few times itself but the key on this topic is not that the idea has been done before but how well this story does it and if it also adds something new to those ideas for those who have read these types of stories before.

A Fairytale Life has some nice little setup elements so I'm not going to rack it because it does everything it needs to do to set up a good story so we will have to see with Part 2 whether this story goes anywhere.

3 out of 5 stars

*for more on references to old school Doctor Who stuff I mentioned:
-none, I didn't geek all over this review.

REVIEW: Doctor Who A Fairytale Life #1