This summer, Titan Comics will be publishing a crossover between the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth Doctors, written by Paul Cornell. (Source) "According to Titan, the companions in the crossover event will be drawn from the current comic book series for each Doctor, meaning comic book originals Gabriella Gonzalez and Alice Obiefune in addition to the Twelfth Doctor's current traveling partner Clara Oswald." This is probably what Titan's Free Comic Book Day special will be teasing.
I only have one question: Where's the Ninth!? Seriously, its the frickin' comics. I can understand not having the Warrior there, but why not all the NuWho Doctors? Am I nitpicking, you're saying? Yes, I am.
To be fair, we don't know yet that the ninth won't be in it. Since it's Cornell writing it, I hope he makes reference to "The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who" by having the eleventh Doctor, upon seeing the twelfth, exclaim something like, "I really did turn into Peter Capaldi!" (In "The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who, the eleventh Doctor suggests to Matt Smith that Peter Capaldi would be the right actor to replace him on Doctor Who.)
Meh. I'm kind of apathetic to the idea of another Doctor team-up this soon after Day of the Doctor. Particularly this one, which at the moment just sounds like Day of the Doctor just with the War Doctor swapped out with the Capaldi Doctor. Yes, I understand the rationale of teaming up the Doctors with ongoing comic series, but the whole idea just doesn't fire me up that much.
I'm excited for a team up, but not with them using the lame Comic only companions. Is there some licensing/likeness thing that doesn't let them use Rose, Donna, Amy/Rory, Jack, etc? Regardless, it sounds interesting, and I really enjoyed Cornell's work with Marvel comics, and his run on DC's Demon Knights comic, so I'm sure it will be well written.
I think it has more to do with them wanting to tie it in with the comics they have ongoing, create a shared universe sort of thing. At the very least, Titan is definitely allowed to use Rose and Captain Jack, they're going to be in the upcoming Ninth Doctor mini-series. Or if you're wondering why they created new companions for the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors instead of using the TV companions, just a combination of wanting to create new characters and perhaps even wanting to distinguish the work from IDW's. I doubt there's any legal issues surrounding anyone.
My theory is that creating new companions for Tennant & Smith like that makes it feel more like new adventures and less like forgotten reruns of "the old Doctors." When I've gone to the comic store, I've been surprised to see so many new Tennant & Smith comics. In fact, it seems like the new Tennant & Smith comics outnumber the Capaldi comics by a substantial margin. I find this both frustrating as a Capaldi fan and somewhat troubling for the series as a whole. After all, I don't recall a whole lot of Tennant comics being published during the Smith years or Eccleston comics during the Tennant years.
Isn't it kind of a tradition for Doctor Who comics to feature original companions, going back to his "grandchildren" John and Gillian in the earliest '60s comic strips? Looking over a list, I see that every Doctor to date except War, Nine, and Twelve has had original-to-comics companions (and most have ones original to prose and/or audio too).
I don't mind, but honestly, I think its high time we saw a mix-up of Doctors between Old and NuWho. Like... The Fifth and Tenth pair off for an adventure, the Sixth and Eleven, the Seventh and Ninth... the Twelve and First or even the Fourth... you see?
Titan launched the Capaldi series several months after the Tennant and Smith series. That's why Smith and Tennant have more comics on the stands. And IDW published Tennant comics during Smith's first year; they didn't realize that BBC America was going to do simultaneous broadcasts and assumed that there would be a transmission gap of several months.
IDW's "Forgotten" and "Prisoners Of Time" used multiple Doctors, although it was more of an anthology, featuring short stories or issues featuring the Doctors individually and a sort-of team up at the end.
Anything Paul Cornell writes is an automatic buy for me, so I'm in. (It does seem a little weird to team Tennant and Smith just two years after they were together on screen-- why not do something that could not be done on screen?)
To rewrite Rumsfeld, "You do a crossover with the characters you have, not the characters you want." The idea, as best I can tell from reading the upcoming solicitations for the ongoing series and the Hollywood Reporter article about the crossover, is that the three ongoing series are each building to this. However, I admit that I like Emperor Tiberius' idea: "The Fifth and Tenth pair off for an adventure, the Sixth and Eleven, the Seventh and Ninth... the Twelve and First or even the Fourth... you see?" I'd handle that like Len Strazewski's Justice Society of America mini-series from 1991 -- four solo issues, two two Doctor team-up issues, and two issues with all four Doctors teaming up. No idea which four Doctors I'd use for this story framework. But that's what I'd do.
Regarding the companions-there are 'gaps' in the TV series,where the Doctor's been travelling alone, or with an alien (Mainly Romana, Nyssa and possibly Adric) or robot (K-9 mainly) companion whose lifespan might be longer, where there could've been companions within those gaps. This mainly applies to the Fourth , Sixth (After "Trial"-although he is leaving with Mel, they haven't really 'met' yet so he probably dropped her off further in his timeline or something as the audios and novels also suggest), the Seventh between Survival and the TV movie, the Eighth (Between his two TV appearences), War, Ninth (After he leaves temporarily towards the end of "Rose") Tenth and Eleventh. The first Doctor mainly travelled with Susan before I think, and I don't think there's too many things where you can fit an extra adventure without one of the others. Second's a bit up for debate due to the discontinuity in the later Doctor teams-up which of course created the whole season 6b theory; and of course the Third was mostly stuck on Earth, and even when he got his freedom back he mainly travelled with Jo and later Sarah Jane.
I love multi-Doctor stories All in all, though, this sounds like great fun! My presumption is that the three series will lead into this special event? American comics do that, go separate; join together than separate. I have Prisoners of Time, the Classics and all the Tenth Doctor IDW Graphic novels (the one shots, Agent Provacteur, The Forgotten and of course the ongoing which felt like another season) (so fanw*ky I love it - a story with a Draconian, Ogron, Sontaran etc) but I haven't dipped into Titan yet, though revisiting the Ninth Doctor era sounds appealing. But yeah this multiDoc sounds good too, cannot wait to hear more, being Cornell it seems to have promise! Multi-Doctor comics, let's face it, have an odd history; we started with Timeslip; then two 8page one-shots for the anniversaries (Time & Time Again [by Cornell] and Happy Deathday [more of a DIT-esque comedy skit]); then The Forgotten and Prisoners of Time - there's a couple of other little bits but never a 'traditional' Three/Five/Two Doctors etc affair. Dare I bring up the whole 'could this turn out better than Day of the Doctor' thing?!
Comic Book Resources has an article with the covers to the five issues. The subtitle for the series is "Four Doctors." And there's a silhouetted Doctor on the cover to issue #1. Completely unrelated, Tony Lee's proposal for a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine/Doctor Who crossover is up at Bleeding Cool.