By Rob McCow

Hunger From the Ends of Time!

The Collector

Doctor Who Magazine readers experienced Hunger From the Ends of Time! in issues #157-158 from February to March 1990. It was initially published in The Incredible Hulk Presents, issues #2-3 published in October 1989, but was reprinted in Doctor Who Magazine after that title folded.

The World Shapers

Script – Dan Abnett

Art – John Ridgway

Editor – Andy Seddon

Overseer – John Freeman

Fellow Travellers

It's the return of the FHD – Foreign Hazard Duty, the futuristic intergalactic bug-hunt specialists. They're butch, rugged, experienced and they carry absolutely enormous guns. Leading the team is Commander Lumsden, backed up by Tyler, Keillor and Minelli. With the FHD it’s all about brute force, violent solutions and checking your personality in at the front door when you get to work. However one of them says ‘Sainted geeks preserve us!’ when faced with a high-stress situation.

The FHD now sport headsets with microphones and Tyler wears a Robocop-style helmet.

The Deal

On the planet Catalog, a library world containing the collated knowledge of the Universe, the FHD are flushing out bookworms. Instead of catching a bug in their translation trap however, they draw in the TARDIS. The Doctor greets the FHD team and Commander Lumsden explains about the new set up of the library. The data is stored as information-energy across time rather than space. A-L are in the past, M is in the present and N-Z are in the future. Unfortunately, sub-atomic bookworms have infected the system. The FHD flush them out with power surges, translate them into the real world and then zap them.

Commander Lumsden is called to the translation trap where the FHD squadies are having trouble with a bookworm they have trapped. The insect is enormous by the time they reach it and is still growing. The Doctor realises it is absorbing energy from the trap and kills it by reversing the flow of energy.

R is for Rrargh, T is for Thoom, Z is for Zark

The Doctor takes the FHD on board the TARDIS to examine the workings of the library in the space-time vortex. They find thousands of bugs are running rampant through the system. The Doctor consults the TARDIS databanks and finds that the bugs are forces of chaos that should be found feeding on the remains of the Universe after its collapse. The library has allowed the creatures to spread through time to the present.

597.03 - Bugs from the protocataclysmic creation of matter itself

The problem is solved by translating all the data into present-day books. The Doctor leaves the FHD with the enormous task of shelving them all.

TV Action

The Tenth Doctor recently encountered a space library in the two-parter, Silence In The Library/Forest of The Dead.

The Fifth Doctor paid a brief visit to the Big Bang in Castrovalva.

4-Dimensional Vistas

This story sees a welcome return for John Ridgway, again illustrating the exploits of the FHD. The artwork emphasises the dark tone of the story with lots of black backgrounds and shadows.

Although not spectacular, there are some very good stand-out images such as the bug getting caught in the trap, the depiction of the space-time vortex aspect of the library infested with bugs and the final shot of the FHD surrounded by hundreds of uncatalogued books.

End of The Line

Hunger From The Ends of Time is a remarkably short comic strip. Although it’s a two-part adventure it has a total page count of ten, which makes it only two pages longer than a standard one-part story. There’s a spooky set-up, a fairly interesting concept, a little bit of drama and then it’s over with a click of the fingers. There’s not time to build up enough of an atmosphere to make this a particularly memorable story. It seems to me that there was a whole lot more they could have done with such a universe-shattering concept as chaos bugs from the ends of time.

It's quarter past five at Sandhurst Library and the last few bookworms prove difficult to send home

Unfortunately, the arrival of this story in DWM was a bit of a two-fingers-up-to-the-readers space-filler. The story had already been published in October 1989 in the doomed publication ‘The Incredible Hulk Presents’, which ran a regular Doctor Who strip using the same writers and artists as DWM. It’s appearance a few months later in DWM could only be taken as a lazy cost-cutting exercise. Even if now, decades later, copies of the Hulk title are impossible to track down! It transpires that Marvel UK insisted on the reprints to cut costs, but that obviously couldn’t be explained to readers at the time.

It’s a spooky and clever little story, but its so slender it may as well have not been there.

Follow That TARDIS!

DWM made good use of the extra space afforded through having such a short comic strip by giving its readers a full-page pin up of Dinsdale Lansden as heartthrob Doctor Judson. It’s what the fans wanted.

Hulk Presents was originally conceived as a cheap to produce comic that would reprint old US comic strips. The new Doctor Who comic strips that were included were deemed so expensive by Marvel UK that they insisted that some of them were included in DWM to recoup costs. This is according to an interview with John Freeman available here.

Don’t expect me to review the stories from Hulk Presents unless you want to sell/send me a copy of the comics. I’ve only got the stories reprinted in Classic Comics. Email stuff@thevervoid.com and mark your email ‘You Want HULK?’