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 By Rob McCow |
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What’s the story called? Profits of Doom! The Collector Profits of Doom was
published in DWM #120 to #122, from January to March 1986. The World Shapers Script – Mike Collins Art – John Ridgway Letters – Annie Halfacree Editor – Sheila Cranna Fellow Travellers The TARDIS hasn’t landed anywhere for three weeks and Peri is bored. She’s explored all the gardens and tells the Doctor that botany isn’t her only interest. Presumably she also enjoys being captured by giant slugs. She’s still wearing her outfit from ‘The Mysterious Planet’. Frobisher is happier on board the TARDIS, although he thinks that the ship cheats at chess. His people, the Xenon are viewed as a ‘zoo all in one cage’ by the Profiteers. Frobisher is still quite witty in captivity, but has less faith in the Doctor than Peri does. He threatens to turn into a six-limbed, omnivorous Vragtasogrian Kepple Jaw when they are trying to escape. The Doctor’s main companion
for this story is Kara McAllista. She looks almost exactly like Bernice
Summerfield, who was the Doctor’s companion from the ‘New Adventures’
range of novels in the 90’s. Kara was born in the 24th Century
and is a maintenance technician on board the Mayflower. She’s quite brave
and resourceful, using a maintenance laser welder in place of a proper
weapon. She quotes the name of Varley Gabriel as a deity and uses
expletives such as ‘Janx’, ‘Skubag’ and ‘Seg-jak’. This probably means
she’s got the foulest mouth of anyone in Doctor Who ever. The Deal The Mayflower flies through space with its 20,000 occupants in cryo-sleep. Monitor, a floating service robot, awakens a girl named Kara McAllista to repair some meteorite damage. As she conducts her repairs, something watches her. Elsewhen, Peri is bored with the TARDIS. The Doctor promises to take her somewhere gentle and graceful. Kara is shocked on seeing a pair of man-sized, bipedal slugs in uniform. When she asks Monitor how they got in, the drone explains that they had the correct entry codes.
The TARDIS lands on board the Mayflower, despite the Doctor’s promise that they were heading to the beautiful world of Arcadia. The crew are apprehended by Kara. She assumes they are from the ‘Top Drawer’ and enlists their help in repelling the slugs. The Doctor explains that they landed on board the Mayflower by accident and Monitor confirms that the Doctor’s craft appears to have odd dimensions. The slug trail leads them to the Top Drawer, who have all vanished. The slugs burst in, armed with beam weapons. Kara, the Doctor and Monitor escape into the service ducts, but Peri and Frobisher are taken prisoner. The Doctor explains to Kara that the slugs are the Profiteers of Ephte. They are devoted to barbaric actions and meticulously audited accounts. Their motto is ‘Profit or Die’.
On board their ship, the Profiteers discuss who they can sell Peri and Frobisher to. Their leader, Captain Ystrad, contacts Seth, their contractual controller. Seth has been using video cameras to spy on the Mayflower. Kara explains about their mission. Varley Gabriel, a charismatic leader had taken 20,000 pioneers to find a new world and to escape Earth, which was desperately overcrowded. Seth tells Commander Ystrad that he can do what he likes with his prisoners, but he must capture the Time Lord still on board the Mayflower. Seth complains to himself about his bad luck in having the Doctor turn up. The Doctor thinks the Profiteers have been tipped off and is trying to figure out how. They head to the computer core where he discovers an anomaly in the records, but before he can investigate further, the Profiteers burst in (once again) and surround them.Kara gets Monitor to create a blinding flash and, in the confusion, they make their escape into the ducts. The Doctor tells Kara that he checked the destination of the ship and found that it wasn’t heading for any planet, it was heading into the middle of nowhere. The Doctor thinks that Gabriel has sold them out to the Profiteers. He deactivates the cameras and they head back to the computer core. At the core, the Doctor locates Peri and Frobisher and then sends Monitor to rescue them. Monitor retrieves Peri and Frobisher and brings them back to the computer core. The Doctor prepares to blow up the ship, but is interrupted when Gabriel Varley appears on a screen. He explains that he is thousands of years old. He has previously met the Doctor in 14th Century Rome, when he had the name of Seth. His new plan is to sell the people on board the Mayflower to the Profiteers. The Profiteers arrive, but
the Doctor threatens to blow up the Mayflower. Seth tells Commander Ystrad
that the Doctor is bluffing, but Ystrad says that Gallfireyans have a zero
tax rating and can’t be trusted. The Profiteers cut their loses and leave.
The Doctor retrieves the Top Drawer leaders and programs the Mayflower to
head for Arcadia, knowing that one day they’ll make it into a place worth
visiting. TV Action This was not the first time that the sixth Doctor had been menaced by giant slugs. His very first story saw him on the trail of the grotesque gastropod, Mestor. Also, the avaricious nature of the Profiteers is rather similar to that of Sil and the Mentors. The idea of thousands of humans in frozen storage was also used on TV in the stories ‘The Ark’ and ‘Ark In Space’. In order to ease Peri’s boredom, the Doctor considers a trip to Argolis. The fourth Doctor previously visited Argolis in the TV story The Leisure Hive. Peri’s memory is working well, she says she wants to go somewhere away from furry princesses (comic strip Nature of the Beast), alien chefs (The Two Doctors) Cybermen (Attack of the Cybermen) or the Master (Mark of the Rani). Profits of Doom appeared in
DWM over the three months after Trial of A Timelord was broadcast. By the
time of the final instalment, Colin Baker had been sacked from the role of
the Doctor. 4-Dimensional Vistas It’s business as usual for Ridgway. Great likenesses, good monsters, but nothing really outstanding. There’s the typically intelligent use of imagery as the Doctor fills in the back-story, with an imperial looking slug standing proud over an army of slaves. There’s a neat trick used in part two, which almost works. There’s a wide frame at the bottom of each page of a mysterious figure observing everything that’s going on. At the end of the episode it’s revealed to be Varley Gabriel. Unfortunately the frames don’t stand out well enough. If it had been in colour, it might have come across a lot better, but because it’s all black and white it’s quite hard to spot on a first reading. Also, Varley Gabriel is only shown in one picture as part of Kara’s back-story. So the big reveal at the end of the episode left me thinking ‘Who’s that?’ rather than making the connection. Kara looks exactly like Professor Bernice ‘Surprise’ Summerfield. Same pudding basin hair-do, same figure, same face. It’s quite startling. Commander Ystrad has a
little crest on his helmet, which on closer examination is clearly a
dollar sign. End of The Line Profiteering space slugs are a great sci-fi concept. Its satirical, its inventive and it looks great. Trouble is, the TV series had already had a few of them by this point. The Profiteers of Ephte may look better than the Gastropods or the Mentors, but they’re still more of the same. The TARDIS takes most of part one to arrive on the Mayflower and even then Peri and Frobisher spend most of the story locked up, until the Doctor sends the all-powerful Monitor drone to rescue them. Worst of all is the ending, where the Doctor threatens to blow up the ship causing the Profiteers to run away in fright. It’s quite an extreme cop out. I found it annoying that Varley Gabriel had met the Doctor before in an unseen adventure. It was probably designed so that everyone would think it was going to be the Master. Inevitably when he reveals himself as an inexplicably long-lived human it’s a disappointment. Then there’s a whole bunch of pointless dialogue while Gabriel reveals that he’s met the Doctor many times in other unseen adventures.
It’s not all bad, there are some funny bits and the ship full of sleepers is quite atmospheric to start with, but it’s not a top draw story.
The dialogue appears to be a loosely connected stream of literary sci-fi references in some places. I’m not going to pretend – I had to Wiki some of them. Placet - is a fictional planet that appeared in Placet is a Crazy Place by Fredric Brown, published in 1946. Trantor is the centre of Issac Asimov’s galactic empire and first appeared in Foundation, published in 1951. Arcadia is in Greece. Ystrad is a Welsh word meaning ‘wide valley’. The Tralfamadorians are from Kurt Vonnegut’s 1969 novel, Slaughterhouse-Five. The Profiteers established their empire ‘On the spur of Friedman’s Curve’. I’ll leave a pregnant pause while you deliver some search results on Friedman and his curve. The Doctor quotes The Leech-Gatherer by Wordsworth – ‘All things that love the sun are out of doors…’ etc. Yes, I did etcetera Wordsworth. Varley Gabriel was not heard of again. Mike Collins, on the other hand, returned to the Doctor Who comic strip in 1988 and again in 2003. He has been the main artist since 2005.
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