Profits of Doom! by: Mike Collins with pencils by: John Ridgway, inks by: Tim Perkins, and letters by: Annie Halfacree

 

Profits of Doom! is written by Mike Collins with pencils by John Ridgway, inks by Tim Perkins, and lettering by Annie Halfacree.  It was released in Doctor Who Magazine issues 120-122 (December 1986-February 1987) and is reprinted in its original form in Doctor Who: The World Shapers by Panini Books.

 

The last Doctor Who Magazine review I wrote, eightish months ago, introduced legendary comic writer Grant Morrison to the strip for the first of their three stories.  Profits of Doom! is the first contribution of Mike Collins to the strip, this time in capacity of writer.  Collins has most recently contributed to the strip as artist in 2019 and has several runs as primary artist.  Profits of Doom! feels like an important milestone for the strip, mainly because after this point there are only two more Sixth Doctor stories which would take the strip through the autumn of 1987 when Sylvester McCoy would premiere in the role of the Doctor and become the primary Doctor of the strip well into the 1990s.  Profits of Doom! feels far more in line with where Andrew Cartmel would begin taking the show and the Virgin New Adventures line of novels would continue, setting three issues of the strip in the cold, harsh, emptiness of space in a society where capitalism has run rampant.  Now it is especially weird seeing the Sixth Doctor, Peri, and Frobisher really interacting with this particular setting since the televised show has just gone through an era far less concerned with this overt type of storytelling.

 

Profits of Doom! is a story where the villains are capitalist slugs who prioritize profits over all else, invading a spaceship where a woman is awoken from suspended animation only for maintenance.  Collins keeps the number of characters down, Kara being our primary guest character for the story and a single woman being sent to Arcadia for unknown purposes.  Collins directly links the capitalism of the Profiteers of Ephete (the slugs are from a planet that’s a tax haven) equally with colonialism of expansion.  Kara’s ship is the Mayflower which is a clear symbol of colonialism, the big twist being that there is an immortal villain who wishes to convert the planet Arcadia into a capitalist hellscape complete with slaves.  That immortal villain is called Seth and is sadly where the story drops the ball, he’s an uninteresting immortal and built up as if this is a foe the Doctor has faced before under many aliases.  The problem comes in the fact that he’s essentially just a man on a screen who really only serves to be a big bad because the comic strip kind of needed some central villain to defeat.  It’s a shame because the interactions between the Doctor, Peri, and Frobisher, especially in the first part of the story are excellent, perhaps the best the characters have been characterized and John Ridgway’s pencils work really well with Tim Perkins on inks.

 

Overall, Profits of Doom! was honestly a big surprise since many of the issues with the Doctor Who Magazine strip are overcome here as the characters are well characterized and the plot is simple enough to fill the short page count while providing some fairly biting commentary on the state of the world in late 1986.  It’s just a shame about that weak villain.  8/10.