Doctor Who: Doom’s Day ‘A Doctor In The House?’ and ‘Extraction Point’ Review – Intriguing Premises, Uneven Executions

Any longtime comic book reader is sure to be familiar with big, crossover stories. Those tales that span multiple titles, sometimes even multiple mediums. As part of its ongoing 60th-anniversary celebration, Doctor Who‘s in the middle of one such event – Doom’s Day. Centering around a mysterious assassin, Doom’s Day follows Doom as she races against time to save herself from certain, well, doom. But outrunning Death itself is harder than it looks, and she hopes the Doctor can figure out a way to save her. The only problem is that she keeps running into the wrong one.

Told through short stories, video games, comic books, novels, and audio dramas, each installment of Doom’s Day explores a different hour of Doom’s final day, the clock slowly ticking to her imminent death. As the premise of a multi-platform storytelling event, it’s a pretty solid one. But based on its first two major installments, Titan Comics’ A Doctor in the House? and BBC Books’ Extraction Point, Doom’s Day is off to a bit of a mixed start. The stories themselves are solid enough but lack the time to properly delve into their respective premises – or, more importantly, into Doom herself. They’re enjoyable stories with a complete lack of characterization.

A Doctor in the House?

In A Doctor in the House?, Doom’s quest brings her straight into the crosshairs of the Doctor’s greatest frenemy – Missy. Or, as she’s calling herself, Doctor Who. Doom immediately recognizes this isn’t the Doctor she’s looking for, but Missy refuses to let her new friend out of her sight. Gradually, the two uncover a plot that could destroy the universe – a plot that can only be stopped if they can put aside their differences and work together for the common good.

The story itself isn’t really anything to write home about. In many ways, each adventure is a very standard Doctor Who story. But what sets A Doctor in the House? apart are Missy and Doom’s interactions. Jody Houser is very smart to set this story during Missy’s Series 10 redemption arc, using her as a somehow less extreme version of Doom. And the way the two spar off each other is immediately electric, really drawing you into the story. What hinders A Doctor in the House? from ultimately succeeding, however, is its ludicrously short page count. Cramming four hours of Doom’s life into 60 pages of a comic is just far too little time to give any of these stories the room to breathe. As a result, Doom feels like a shell of a character. Little more than a few personality traits grafted onto the skeleton of a human.

Overall, A Doctor in the House? is a solid enough Doctor Who tale, with some enjoyable pulpy artwork from Roberta Ingranta. Houser and Ingranta continue their ongoing rend of really leaning into Doctor Who’s sci-fi elements, and it continues to pay dividends. A Doctor in the House? isn’t a homerun by any stretch of the imagination. But it’s an enjoyable, pulpy sci-fi story. 6.5/10.

Extraction Point

In Extraction Point, Doom’s search for the Doctor leads her to an icy planet besieged by a planet-ending catastrophe, a mysterious space station haunted by ghosts, and a living asteroid in need of a good old-fashioned execution. But are these seemingly random jobs connected by some overarching plot? And just why does the (wrong) Doctor keep turning up at exactly the right moment? Doom’s race against time brings her in the crosshairs of one of the Doctor’s oldest enemies, and straight into a criminal plot of planet-ending proportions.

Of the two major installments so far, Extraction Point is easily the best. Harris’s prose is nice and breezy, immediately sweeping you into Doom’s story. The novel’s separated into four parts – one for each hour. And the nice thing here is that despite each hour technically being a different mission, all four missions are very much tied together; all part of a grander scheme. It makes for a far more engaging read. It’s a universe-trotting, time-spanning mystery that leans heavily into Doctor Who‘s past – especially the Ninth Doctor’s era. To go into any real detail risks spoiling the fun, but eagle-eyed readers are sure to spot a metric ton of Easter eggs.

The problem is that Doom doesn’t have any real character arc. There’s a lot of exposition about how talented and dangerous she is and how she’s trying to outrun Death. And Harris gives a fair amount of insight into Doom’s thoughts throughout the story. But we’re given very little reason to care about her as a character yet. And that’s a shame because Extraction Point is otherwise quite engaging. It’s well-paced and the overarching mystery is quite fun to untangle. Extraction Point‘s just missing a central character arc to hang its delightfully pulpy plot off of. 7.5/10

Final Thoughts

On the whole, the Doom’s Day multi-platform event offers an intriguing premise, but so far its execution has been a bit uneven. As a character, there’s simply not much to Doom yet. She’s an amalgamation of all of Doctor Who‘s more morally ambiguous characters. On paper, she’s a hardened assassin. But in execution, she’s more of a light-hearted, quippy jokester. She’s dangerous, yet feels deceptively safe. And that’s a really interesting setup for a meaty character arc. But Doom’s Day, as a whole, has yet to really do anything with it. Instead, it’s just careening through Doom’s final day of life, racing through each hour as though the event’s time is as limited as its lead character’s.

Unfortunately, that leaves both of these installments feeling kind of hollow. A Doctor in the House? offers a fun romp between Doom and Missy, one that’s anchored by the way the characters play off of each other. But its actual story is woefully underdeveloped and hampered by its ludicrously short runtime. Extraction Point, on the other hand, tells a much more satisfying story but finds itself lacking any meaningful character development. Time will tell if the rest of the Doom’s Day event can give Doom some much-needed development – and bring her story to some kind of satisfying conclusion. But as its stands, it’s off to a decidedly mixed start.

Doctor Who: Doom’s Day: A Doctor in the House? is available now digitally and in comic book shops from Titan Comics. A collected edition is due out on November 28, 2023.

Doctor Who: Doom’s Day: Extraction Point is available now in hardcover and ebook formats from BBC Books.