End of the Line by: Steve Parkhouse with art by: Dave Gibbons

 

End of the Line is written by Steve Parkhouse with art by Dave Gibbons.  It was released in Doctor Who Monthly issues 54-55 (June-July 1981) and is reprinted in its original form in Doctor Who: Dragon’s Claw by Panini Books.

 

It is telling that Steve Parkhouse’s second Doctor Who Magazine comic story was the first of several two issue stories, only returning to a single issue once it was time to cross over from the Fourth to the Fifth Doctor.  End of the Line is a fairly simply structured adventure, but putting it across two issues allows Parkhouse to actually include more than one supporting character comfortably and build a world for the story to inhabit.  The world of End of the Line is a planet at some point in the future which has become overrun by zombie cannibals who travel on a complex subway system.  There are few surviving humans including a group of Guardian Angels lead by Sonny and the Engineer, a man who is trying to make sense of the system and get to the fabled end of the line.  The first issue is a fairly standard chase sequence where the Doctor has to try and survive the zombies who constantly come to devour his flesh while the second is the simple solution of the Doctor helping the Engineer and the surviving humans get to the end of the line without falling to the cannibals.  Like The Deal before it, End of the Line ends with a gut punch: the Doctor finds his way to the countryside and finds that it is no better than the rest of this world.  There is still radiation and pollution storming the city and he finds the Guardian Angels don’t actually make it, possibly being killed by the Cannibals on their way there.

 

Parkhouse seems to be developing a theme of Doctor Who comic stories without happy endings where the Doctor saves the day, and as this was published after the airing of Logopolis it makes the reader wonder if that Parkhouse was getting ready to make the switch over to the Fifth Doctor as there would be only three more Fourth Doctor stories after this release.  Yes, it is played as slightly bittersweet, but this does make a Doctor Who Magazine comic that really does have some emotional weight as the Doctor is found in a situation that he really cannot fix.  There are no qualms about leaving these people to their own devices and it leaves everything with a bittersweet note.  Dave Gibbons is also inspired in his artwork, filling the backgrounds with a real sense of dread as the city is subject to death and decay.  There is also a real sense of menace made with the Cannibal designs, looking gruesome and deformed, all costumed differently to imply that this has been going on and spreading out like a slow plague that the Guardian Angels have been fighting.  It makes the entire story have this sense of tiredness with great use of shadows topping off a rather dark story.

 

Overall, End of the Line may not be some revolutionary Doctor Who story: there are television stories which had aired by this point to be darker, but it does mark an important step for Doctor Who Magazine.  The comic stories prove here that there are stories to be told with weight behind their events and it proves that Parkhouse has a vision for the comics, something that he would spend a number of years fleshing out.  The first issue has an issue of not having much happen, but the second issue’s conclusion leaves the reader satisfied with what was happening.  9/10.