City of the Damned

The City of the Damned has ideas that are like catnip to me. A society where emotions are prohibited and bubbling under the surface. Where any show of individuality is a defect punishable by death. Again the comics are exhibiting how they can explore big ideas on a scale that would be difficult to handle on TV. It's a very well paced drama.

Discussions of “primitive transmat beams” and cables plugged into the back of people’s heads - you can see a straight line between this and stories that make it to the screen decades later. In and amongst these big emotions, and constantly developing plot, are some genuinely funny moments of humour. It’s quite different from the television show of any era, but it’s very much Doctor Who.

City of the Damned - ★★★½☆

It's is an interesting story. It has strong brutal emotional moments that take advantage of the very bleak nature of the scenes to make its point. It works, a lot of pages stuck in my head; the opening scene is a punch to the gut and the ending however optimistic is also very bittersweet. There is a very unique kind of grief that will haunt the people of this city of the damned for the rest of their lives.

City of the Damned is a tale of a city its people let go of their emotions for the greater good. It's a cautionary tale of how hurtful that can be, of how important emotions are to our sense of self - and of how that self itself is something so much valuable. And of course, the Doctor arrives at the heart of the matter, making it his mission to bring back emotion to a souless city.

With a premise like this it's really hard not to think of the Cybermen, since they have already a strong hold in an extremely similar premise and are one of the most iconic recurring villains of the show. So I question a bit if this shouldn't have been an actual Cybermen story, but I also think there is interesting arguments to make about how humanity can perpetuate in very distinct scenarios the worst it has to offer.

I like the characters. The habitants of the city are for the most part very stoic, which is the point and hits HARD. As I just said, the opening scene is powerful. I am not sure I love ZEPO as comic relief characters, but I appreciate that they give a single emotion to each of them - it makes so much sense that after living an entire life without feelings there is something you feel so strong about you'll latch to it. I also love the Brain Trusts design. I really like the slugs But the strongest character is surely the city itself.

I have a bit of a problem with the designs though. I love the city itself and there is nothing wrong with the designs in a vaccum (they are really good, actually), but the aesthetic brings a lot from 2000 AD/Judge Dredd (which is to be expect with a creative team made of John Wagner, Patt Mills and Dave Gibbons). That can be felt in other stories in this run too, but City of the Damned and the later The End of the Line is when it's most noticeable. And besides I not being the biggest fan of it (just not usually my cup of tea), I have mixed feelings if it fits Doctor Who. I like to think that anything can fit in Doctor Who, but I don't know.

But please don't misunderstand me - the art is gorgeous.

Honestly this is half for that first part alone, that's genuinely haunting, it's like The Happiness Patrol dialed up to eleven.

The worldbuilding and haunting imagery that comes with it would already be enough for this story to be great, The Doctor bringing emotion back to an emotionless world is a great premise, but then it goes and does even more with it than I'd expected.

The ZEPO are admittedly a little silly, but Doctor Who is at it's best when it's silly, and I think they're a really interesting part of the story. A people who've been forced to live without emotions, knowing that they want to feel, but not understanding how to, so each of them choosing just a single emotion to take on and keep alive. It's a great bit of worldbuilding that paradoxically makes somehow makes the resistance feel even more real through how cartoonish they are.

And then they use this as a commentary not only on the need for emotions, but the pain they can cause to others as well with Big Hate releasing essentially a biblical plague on the city out of frustration towards the moderators. The Doctor gives people back their emotions which conveniently stops it, but in that attack so many people are killed, there's a haunting panel showing how for some it came just too late, a man violently squishing the bugs as his wife's skeleton is covered in them in the background. Imagine your first emotion being that mix of grief and rage, it's just brilliantly written.

The black and white art style as well works perfectly, I've had a quick look at some of the colourisations, and while I think it adds a little to The Iron Legion, it just takes away from this story, the almost clinical nature of the monochrome art adds so much to the world of the story.

Also couldn't find anywhere else to mention it, but the designs of the Brains Trust are just so good, I love it so so much.