The Prison Paradox concludes with some fun surprises, and a message of hope that’s distinctly Doctor Who
It’s been a good few months for the Fifteenth Doctor, on paper at least. He’s currently getting to have the Dalek confrontation in the pages of Doctor Who Magazine that fate cruelly denied him onscreen. Meanwhile, over in Titan Comics’ Doctor Who title, The Prison Paradox has proved a pleasingly surprising comic book adventure itself.
After the past three issues, you’d be forgiven for thinking you know exactly where the finale is heading. As the Doctor says, this journey has been part Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, part Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But things take some unexpected turns as the Doctor and the space pirate Felik Slitheen finally reach the inner sanctum of the most evil prison warden since The Shawshank Redemption.
Sami Kivelä’s gift for making the alien and weird sympathetic and relatable have been key to the series’ success
There’s reversal after reversal, and traps within traps. Meanwhile the moment of Felik’s inevitable betrayal arrives. Yet, despite being foreshadowed all series, it plays out in a fresh way, with unanticipated consequences.
Admittedly, the Doctor and Belinda’s ultimate escape from Pantopolis Prison, and the Black Hole it orbits, smacks a little of ‘with one leap, they were free.’
However, it’s a solution built on elements of the Doctor Who mythos stretching back decades, so it’s hard to mind.
Prison Paradox writer Dan Watters says that his attitude to taking on well known characters is that there’s no point if what he does resembles what anybody else is doing. It’s a philosophy clear not only in his groundbreaking Batman: Dark Patterns book but also here. The sheer variety of environments and alien life would tax even the biggest Disney budget (or dare we hope, soon a HBO one.) The comic book’s overall message – to live in hope –Â may be one of the show’s core tenets. However, its expression at the book’s conclusion is fairly unique.
Much of The Prison Paradox’s success is due to the clean style and vast imagination of artist Sami Kivelä. There are probably many comic book artists who could take on the task of a giant, fanged, one-eyed, many tentacled sea monster. But few would make the result as endearing and vulnerable as Kivelä.
The conclusion leaves just a few loose dangling. The tragic back stories of some of the prisoners seeds the idea that the Shadow Proclamation may not be as just and fair as Doctor Who has so far led us to believe. It’s an idea begging for a further follow up. So let’s hope that Titan Comics and Watters get to come back for more. Though who knows what face the Doctor will be wearing then?
Doctor Who: The Prison Paradox 4
The grand finale! The entire journey has led to this point, as the Doctor and Belinda face the sinister Warden. What is his staggering secret and can the time travellers do the impossible and break out of his inescapable prison?
You can buy The Prison Paradox 4 now, from the links on the Titan Comics page. You can also pre-order the trade paperback collection, out the 16th of June.
