After defeating the horrifying Fractures, the Doctor and Clara are off to 1960s Las Vegas for some well-earned rest and relaxation! But unearthly danger lurks beneath the desert city’s neon lights… and soon the time travellers are forced to ally themselves with gangsters on the Vegas strip in order to combat an even more terrifying foe! Will the Doctor’s morals prove as alien as the octopoid invaders – or can he triumph without compromise…?

This issue kicks off a brand-new storyline, entitled Gangland, which takes the Doctor and Clara to Las Vegas in 1963. It’s a good setting for them. The Twelfth Doctor remains blasé about games of chance and murderous gangsters alike, showing a talent for one and refusing to be intimidated by the other. “Oh, I understand,” he quips to a group of heavies, “It’s an offer I can’t refuse. Actually, that film’s not been made yet, so you won’t get the joke…” Meanwhile, Clara rocks a groovy 1960s look, as we always knew she could.

The artwork remains variable, though generally superior to when Dave Taylor was the main artist. Some pages are better than others – take, for example, the impressive scene-setting opening flashback to the days of Time Lord President Rassilon. The variation is probably down to Brian Williamson and Mariano Laclaustra tackling different pages, and I suspect that the better ones are the work of Williamson.

What is unmistakable, though, is that the ‘Wolf Pack’ encountered by a starstruck Clara, comprising the entertainers Frankie Seneca, Dino Martinelli and Solly Dancer, is the Rat Pack in all but name. They even look like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr, which makes me wonder why the names were changed. Rights issues? Satirical purposes? Some plot twist coming up in a future issue?

As the Doctor says, some events are harder to predict than others. To be continued…

8

Richard McGinlay