DOCTOR WHO: MISSY #3 – An Honest Review

In DOCTOR WHO: MISSY #3, available from Titan Comics on June 16th, 2021, Missy and the Master take a trip down memory lane by visiting assorted incarnations of the Master throughout the timeline to find a special key.

The Details

• Written By: Jody Houser
• Art By: Roberta Ingranata
• Colors By: Enrica Eren Angiolini
• Letters By: Richard Starkings
• Cover Art By: Abigail Larson (cover A)
• Cover Price: $3.99
• Release Date: June 16, 2021

Was It Good?

It was okay but a bit convoluted.

The big hook throughout the first three issues is Missy’s lie that she’s the Doctor and everything she does is for some greater good. If there was an odd slip here or there that would cause the Master to question Missy’s identity, but here, Missy’s un-Doctor-like behavior strains credibility beyond belief.

That said, it was fun (if you’re already a Doctor Who fan) to see Missy and the Master pop in and out of a large array of timelines to revisit key episodes from the television series. Their visits put them in the position of distant observers and occasional side-players that you wouldn’t have noticed in the episode.

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In short, this issue made one significant step forward in the story, asks you to ignore the silliness of Missy’s lie, and stuffs in a ton of fan service from the show.

The art is still very good. The renderings are close enough to the real-life actors to respect their appearance without becoming a photocopy. At the same time, their designs are translated well enough to the comics medium to make them fit into the setting and story organically.

Overall, this is a good-looking book. The plot progression is thin, the central hook is wearing thinner, but there’s a lot of fan service to compensate for the issue’s flaws.

You can take a peek at the internal pages in our DOCTOR WHO: MISSY #3 preview here.

What’s It About?

[SPOILERS AHEAD – Click here if you just want the score without spoilers]

Missy (pretending to be Doctor Who) and the Master agree the only way to find the key that unlocks the vault containing the Key to Time is to travel back (or forward?) through time to a point where the Doctor would have the key. If you’re not sure how Missy and the Master teamed up in the first place, read our DOCTOR WHO: MISSY #2 review to get your temporal sensors aligned.

Very quickly, the readers are asked to swallow the ease with which the Master goes along with Missy’s lie about being a future version of the Doctor. Missy is notably inept at flying the Tardis. The Master sees her ignorance about how to use the console and what buttons to push. The Master even offers to drive the Tardis for her.

It strains believability that anyone still blindly accepts that Missy is the Doctor simply because she says so. Either the Master is going along with it because he’s trying to find out what Missy is up to or the greatest criminal mind in the universe is actually an idiot.

Our unlikely duo jump through different time periods and locations (and episodes) looking for different incarnations of the Master. The plan is to find different Masters because a Doctor would be nearby and one of them must have the key.

The logic is convoluted and silly. If a Doctor has the key, it would make sense to visit each Doctor to look for it, not each Master.

Well, eventually the plan works. They find the key, that looks like an ordinary office stapler, in U.N.I.T. Headquarters from around the time period of the Third Doctor.

We conclude the issue with the Master up to his old tricks.

How Does It End?

We get a peek at one of the Third Doctor’s companions. Missy forgot her leash… again. The Master intends to pay a certain Brigadier a visit.

Final Thoughts

DOCTOR WHO: MISSY #3 is a fun trip down fan service memory lane with good art. Unfortunately, the main hook of Missy pretending to be the Doctor has veered into ‘nonsense’ territory, and very little progress was made on the main story.

Score: 6/10