From Doctor Who Magazine #120-122
A Review by Finn Clark 30/11/04
It's the DWM equivalent of Timelash! Admittedly it's nowhere near that bad (although it doesn't have Timelash's kitsch factor or unintentional comedy), but it shares many of its structural problems... too many TARDIS scenes, references to an unseen prequel adventure and a jerky plot that progresses mostly through exposition towards a daft ending.
The opening TARDIS scene must be the most pointless ever in comics. The Doctor and Peri argue about whether to stay in the vortex or materialise somewhere, which seems to drag on infinitely longer than its actual two-page length. There's some comics continuity when Peri points out that they've been stuck in the TARDIS for three weeks - and indeed the two previous comic strip stories were indeed TARDIS-bound. The Doctor last left the TARDIS during Time Bomb in DWM 116! He should have left the TARDIS earlier in this story too.
Frobisher's learned more about chess since War-Game (DWM 100-101). Now he's playing against a mechanical claw that pops up from the TARDIS console. Also the Doctor mentions Trantor ("far too cosmopolitan") when considering possible holiday spots... which sounds like a reference to Asimov's Foundation/Robot books.
The TARDIS lands on a spaceship and everyone runs around a lot of corridors, fleeing sluggy aliens. These are the Profiteers of Ephte and continue the Colin Baker era's trend of giving us explicitly capitalist villains. (Others include Sil, the Mentors and the amazing reinvented Davros, never seen before or since.) The Profiteers are actually quite fun. They also speak a numbers-based language that Frobisher and Peri can't understand, which is something that the comics did very occasionally but the TV series avoided. Oh, and their boss wears a helmet with a dollar sign-shaped crest!
The Profiteers provide most of the story's humour, though their defeat is laughable. "Go away or I'll blow up the ship!" "Oh, all right then."
The dating is specific, but inconsistently so. It's January 7th 2321 and the ship has been in transit for eighty years, its passengers in suspended animation. However despite this, everyone seems to talk as if it was already the 24th century when the ship set off. (Varley Gabriel, aka. Seth, is described by Kara McAllista as a "political figure of the 24th century".) Hmmm.
The unseen prequel story involves Seth, a thousand-year-old schemer from 14th century Rome. The Doctor has apparently defeated him before, though he doesn't recognise his picture. I guess if I reached a thousand years old, I might need a plastic surgeon too. However the weird thing is how it's repeatedly stated that this whole story is just part of a much greater plan of Seth's... and we never learn what it is! In this way it's even worse than Timelash, which was merely a sequel to an unscreened adventure. This feels like a deleted subplot from one.
I wouldn't pretend that Profits of Doom! is a good story, but for this reason I've always wanted to see a sequel or a return visit for Seth. At the very least, I'd like to ask Mike Collins where he was taking this. Sadly I suspect the answer these days would be, "Published in 1987, wasn't it? Bloody hell, you expect me to remember that far back?"
It looks great, as always. John Ridgway does his usual bang-up job, despite the fact that the poor chap's only drawing corridors, ducts and computers. I can't pretend that it's a particularly inspired script, but John Ridgway turns it into a surprisingly enjoyable comic strip. Not even he can do much with that opening TARDIS scene, but his pages are always well-crafted and lovely to look at. He's even starting to get a decent likeness of Peri, who had previously tended to become Generic Ridgway Woman. I'm sure I've said this before, but I love this TARDIS crew... the 6th Doctor and Peri work so much better with Frobisher alongside them. (Big Finish's Erimem probably has a similar effect, but Peri's relationship with the 5th Doctor isn't what it would be with his successor.)
Overall, this is an enjoyable but clumsily structured story. Mike Collins has worked on Doctor Who as both a writer and artist, and I bet he first broke into the comics industry in the latter capacity. However despite its flaws this story is a passable runaround that's not without wit. A light touch can redeem a great many faults. Not great, but not a disaster either.