By Rob McCow

Timeslip

First published in Doctor Who Weekly 17-18, 1980 and was reprinted in the 1981 Best of Doctor Who Summer Special. This one didn’t even make it into The Iron Legion graphic novel, but for some reason they decided it was suited to the Fifth Doctor collection, The Tides of Time, published in 2005 by Panini Books.

Plot – Dez Skinn

Script and Art – Paul Neary

K-9, the Doctor’s mechanical mutt from the TV series accompanies him on this adventure. Hurrah! Pompous as ever, K-9 is seen to be thrashing the Doctor at Four-dimensional Ludo, winning his fourteenth game in a row. "Star-Groan to Zelf’s Bishop Two… Game terminates in my favour, Master… score now fourteen to nil!"

The Doctor wishes he could get some word to Romana. Quite why and where she is remains unclear, even in these enlightened times.

The TARDIS unexpectedly materialises in space next to a giant creature that has flown in from the Galactic rim, where once it fed mindlessly on the great reefs of time. Under the creature’s influence, time in the TARDIS slows down and starts going backwards! K-9 is disassembled and the Doctor reverts through his past lives (and well-known publicity photos) right back to his first incarnation. The creature devours the TARDIS’s Temporal Energy, until it becomes gorged, just as time reaches the point where the Doctor is about to turn the TARDIS off once and for all. Time reverses and flows through the creature, reducing it to the size of a small lump of jelly that the Doctor accidentally steps on. K-9 reassembles and as time returns to the present, the Doctor is on his way.

Timeslip is too short and too slight to really make for a TV episode. William Hartnell had already passed away by the time of writing, which would have made this story impossible to achieve anyway. On the other hand, the effect of the giant creature outside the TARDIS is easily imaginable as a familiar CSO wibbly blob.

K-9 and the fourth Doctor are believable, but when the first Doctor arrives the characterisation is weaker. It might not have mattered at the time though, as very few readers in 1980 would have been able to remember Hartnell as the Doctor. Without and video or DVD releases, there would have been little opportunity for people to compare the first Doctor in the comic strip with his TV portrayal.

K-9 is destroyed, which is practically a regular event on the TV show and the comic strip from this point on. He then reverts into a blob of molten metal before being reassembled at the end of the story. It’s for the best that there was only K-9 as a companion; we wouldn’t have wanted an Adric foetus turning up. Eeurgh.

There is a school of thought that says that even if you know someone very well, you wouldn’t remember every detail about their face. In truth, you’re far more likely to remember someone’s image from a photograph. Timeslip backs this idea up with aplomb. The Doctor’s image changes from one familiar looking photo to the next, without a pause to pose naturally. Then again, perhaps because the TARDIS is moving backwards in time, it’s only natural that the Doctor would be pulled back through all his old publicity photos.

Paul Neary’s art is scratchier than Dave Gibbons’ efforts, but the likenesses are still decent in general. There’s some nice use of solid areas of black, but there are also images of the Doctor with a scratchy moustache or a black eye and the first Doctor looks like a scarecrow made of straw.

The space creature, K-9 and exterior pictures of the TARDIS all look pretty good. One neat touch is that as time reverses, the TARDIS changes back to how it looked in the Hartnell era, with the old console and roundel layout.

Frequently with these fourth Doctor stories, at least one part will end with a close up on the Doctor’s face while he says something portentous in capitals. This time he bellows in wide-eyed horror that "I’m travelling back THROUGH MY OWN EXPERIENCES!" Only in this story, he says it as William Hartnell!

Timeslip is a definite filler, with no real effort at telling a story. The resolution to the paradox is confusing and hard to follow unless you read it very carefully. It was nice to get the three previous Doctors into the comic strip, but not only is the premise wafer-thin, both Troughton and Pertwee only appear briefly as time flies backwards and forwards. In that respect it’s a waste, but it is notoriously difficult for writers to conjure up a satisfying multi-Doctor story. It’s hard enough having one plot-solving genius running around, let alone four, six or ten. This story purely showcases each Doctor in turn, which is a worthwhile aim, especially given that this was some seven or eight years after the last appearance of an old Doctor in the TV series in The Three Doctors.

The concept of the creature feeding on the great reefs of time on the galactic rim is fairly intriguing. The creature is more a force of nature than anything sentient. Anyway, I’m sure Timeslip fitted in well with the Web Planet archive, Jackie Lane Photo-File and K-9 blueprints that the comic was running at the time.

The mid-story cliffhanger gives us a full page spread with four Doctors, Daleks, Cybermen, a Zygon, Ogrons and Movellans. All clearly identifiable from publicity stills of the time!

Romana gets a mention.

The Doctor is still using the Randomizer, there’s an editorial comment explaining how it works and the back-story with the Black Guardian.

This strip definitely implies that the Doctor put the TARDIS together. As he slips back in time, he is shown calibrating the TARDIS circuits and turning the ship ‘ON’ in the first place.