Doctor Who: Doctor Who Magazine: Operation Proteus

Operation Proteus timeline code #0B.5

*spoilers*

The story starts with Susan at a local Beat nick club the Soho Milk, she sees a man looking unwell and asks if he needs help. he turns and starts to transform into an alien, everyone's panicked and screaming. Susan however comforts the creature its dying words being stop the project the cross the deep, then he died. Amazing start to a story an instant hook. Susan meets up with the Doctor after the incident explaining what happened, debating to them selves if they should get involved. I love how we still have moments of the doctor being hesitant to get involved. 

The illustrations for this magazine comic are amazing honestly, one of the best parts of this you can really tell who everyone is and the alien designs are very cool.

Elsewhere we see some people worried about the man who changed into an alien, Clive trying to speak to the Minister. We see that the minister is indisposed at the moment, we cut back to the Doctor and Susan entering Kings Cross talking about the underground tunnels of London. The Doctor and Susan start following a man in the shadows to a secret tunnel leading to some sort of grand underground house, but unknown to the Doctor hes being watched. The Doctor ends up finding the aliens plans and comes face to face with the villain of the story themselves. An amazing way to leave part 1 of this comic a very engaging story so far.

Part 2 begins with a phone call to the minister as the Doctor and alien listen on, Outside Susan is approached by a man unseen to us, This is a weird piece to put here as its quite out of order to whats happening with the Doctor, as later the butler is sent to put Susan in the hideout with Clive. We learn in the aliens lair that there name is Raldonn and they knew the Doctor has been here for 4 months. Raldonn has experimented on the original minister because he doesn't see why he should respect humans if they cant respect each other. Having some respect for the Doctor he calls him more then just a primitive and promises not to harm Susan sending his butler to put her with Clive and the others we saw in part 1. Its revealed the people down there have agreed to be test subjects in a new drug, Susan interrupts noticing a man in a picture, the man from the start of the story. The way the Doctor and Susan have been split up is quite fun it adds not only to the sense of danger but to how they react in there types of situations.

Meanwhile Raldonn reveals his back story, how he used to travel space but crashed on earth and due to humans being nice to him he agreed to help there research. Slowly resenting human kind trying to mutate a human into one of his own kind to help get out of there. We learn more bout the subjects injecting them with the mutative genes. I usually love a villain monologue but this one was kind of a slog to read, ending with him planning to release the chemicals into the atmosphere. Down where Susan and Clive are the mutations have started, the Doctor pleading not to let this happen but its too late. The first carrier of the gene went up 6 hours ago. Amazing cliffhanger and a good story too only suffering a little from the villain monologue, part 3 could make or break the story though.

In part 3, we start to see people changing forms on the surface, within minuets the city falls victim too the mutations. Below Susan and Clive are the only people not mutated in the bunker area the Doctor watches on but Raldonn saying he must leave at all costs. I love how the villain has that sympathy but is still an extremely horrible person. soon Raldonns butler mutates and attacks Raldonn killing him a very underwhelming wrap up to the villain. Anyway the Doctor makes the cure to the mutation, Clive is sent up left wondering if the human race was worth saving and the Doctor says Susan is late for school.

Overall this story started out really fun, but I feel as it went on it kind of had a little slog of the middle and wrapped up way too quickly for my liking. The Doctor and Susan there characters are on point, I feel like I'm starting to get to that point of the doctor in the TV show now too.

My Ranking: 6/10

Next Time: Losing The Audience