The First

4 parts (DWM 386 - 389) 19th Sept to 12th Dec 2007
Writer: Dan McDaid, Art: Martin Geraghty (pencils), David A. Roach (inks), James Offredi (colour), Editors: Clayton Hickman & Scott Gray

 
The TARDIS lands in the Arctic in 1915, where a nearby expedition led by Ernest Shackleton is attacked by monstrous icy tentacles which infect one of their party called Clark.

The Doctor and Martha marvel at the Northern Lights...

 
...but the Doctor notices a mysterious hole...

When they're captured by the expedition...

 
...Martha notices Clark's hand is transforming into ice, and she and the Doctor go with the others to Shackleton's ship, the Endurance.

One of the party is photographer James Francis Hurley...

...who proves more of an ally than Shackleton. 

The explorer interrogates them and orders them to locked in the hold.

Clark's transformation continues apace...

...and he turns on the rest of the expedition, climbing the ship's mast...

...as the huge tentacled ice-monster crashes through the ice to attack!

Bullets bounce of the creature's crystalline hide...

...but they're able to harpoon its' organic eye. 

Rather than kill it, though, Shackleton stares it down, ordering it to leave, and it retreats.

The expedition head out to locate the source of the DNA-rewriting phenomenon, and the Doctor gets a glimpse of its' alien source through a psychic connection via a fragment of tentacle. 

 
 
Clark breaks free and leads the others into a cave, but it's an ambush, and waiting inside are the alien Skith...

 

Overcome by the Skith, the group are taken beneath the ice to the aliens' lair.

 
Their buried spacecraft is powered by an artificial intelligence called the Mindcore which is the store of all their knowledge.

The Skith are scientists and explorers themselves, and have been experimenting with the lifeforms they've encountered.

Whilst most of the group are taken away and imprisoned, the Skith take the Doctor to their leader, who doesn't believe the Doctor's claims to be from Cheltenham...

When the Skith decide to experiment on Martha, Shackleton is able to appeal to the human side of Clark to set her free.

With the TARDIS brought to the Skith leader, he realizes that the Skith are not the first aliens on Earth - something that is considered a "failure", and "the Skith do not like to fail"!

 

The Mindcore launches the Skith ship as Martha and Shackleton's group rescue the frozen Doctor.

Martha gets the expedition back to the Endurance while the Doctor allows himself to be taken over in order to battle the Mindcore.

Clark's transformation is almost complete, but is halted when the Skith Leader is destroyed by Shackleton hurling him into the Mindcore.

 
With no alternative left, the Doctor sends the Skith ship into the sun. 

 

Martha is able to pilot the TARDIS back to rescue the Doctor and Shackleton from the exploding ship, but the Mindcore swears revenge...

 
 

The First is a superior tale that aims high and achieves greatness, here we have a story that's head and shoulders above any ninth Doctor strip, and any tenth Doctor strip preceding it. It's a strip that evokes both on-screen Who and the then relatively recent golden age of DWM's eighth Doctor strips. 

A very well written story, that boasts not only strong characterisation and themes but also an original and striking new race of aliens from the pen of Dan McDaid (more likely to be familiar to strip devotees from his energetic artwork on other Who strips, and more recently Boom!'s Dawn of the Planet of the Apes). 

McDaid's partner in crime here is the always exemplary Martin Geraghty, whose work on Doctor Who I've often felt is the spiritual successor of Dave Gibbons'. It should therefore go without saying that the story plays in the big league in terms of the likenesses of the leads, the rich characterisation of the expedition members, the scope and scale of the environment and setting, and especially in the design of the Skith. These new monsters have an unconscious resonance with the sylphlike future Cybermen of The Flood, and are not a million miles away from being Groots of ice, but they feel original amongst the pantheon of Doctor Who monsters, on screen or in print.

An intelligent take on the "celebrity historical" that has much in common with the likes of Scott Gray's Bad Blood, and centre stages a note perfect Doctor and a striking new monster, who - best of all - will be back, bigger and better. Highly recommended.

8.5/10

  

TTFN! K.
Coming Soon... The Caves of Androzani