The latest Fantastic Four (Mark Millar) has a Doctor Who reference which normally should be an automatic thumbs-up for me, but instead it's so typically Millar, a great idea at war with shaky characterization.
Reed Richards is having a conversation with his hyper- intelligent daughter Valeria, who has just created a dimensionally transcendental trailer for the Fantasticar, inspired by DW. Reed is of course impressed, but says to his daughter, Didn't we agree that Doctor Who is too scary for little girls? " and Valeria replies, "C'mon, I watch that to unwind from all the crazy stuff in our real lives."
On the one hand, I love a little girl building her own TARDIS - I certainly would if I could - and I'm amused that she finds a crazy sci-fi show a great way to relax. That part is perfectly in character. But for Reed to suggest that his children are not mature enough to handle a family show like DW makes him sound like a bit of an uptight douche.
Do I perhaps take things a little too seriously as a Whovian who plans to bring up my children the same way I was, watching DW from the first moment of their lives? Entirely possible. Still, on the whole this scene is in keeping with my previous experience with Mark Millar, that he will follow a really good idea and bend the characters as much as he needs to fit, rather than finding a way to express that idea that is truer to - at least my conception of - those characters.
As opposed to Bendis, whose every script craps rainbows. Hey, I never claimed to be objective.
- JC
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