By Rob McCow

The Time Witch (or ‘Doctor Who and The Time Witch’, which means these are no longer presented by Stan Lee! Well, he was a very busy man back then.)

First published in Doctor Who Weekly 35-38, 1980, it was re-printed in the US as part of their continuing run of comic strips, issue 5. The strip is currently available in Doctor Who: The Iron Legion graphic novel, published in 2004 by Panini Books.

Writer – Steve Moore

Artist – Dave Gibbons

Editor – Paul Neary

Thankfully, Sharon’s not sidelined as badly as in Dogs of Doom. She spends the story by the Doctor’s side, asking questions and getting tied up. That’s what companions should do. At the start of this story she gets a brand new hairstyle. She also learns about all the Doctor’s old enemies thanks to the ‘Retinal Implant Viddy Machine’. This is a classic sci-fi speed-learn device that the Doctor picked up on Mobeli-Four (or maybe it was Flogstrune. He’s not sure.).

With her new hair and outfit from Dogs of Doom, Sharon is virtually unrecognisable as the schoolgirl from Blackcastle who joined the Doctor in Star Beast. To further the changes, at the end of this story Sharon gets aged by four years. It seems that the writers were unsure of the best type of companion for the Doctor.

K-9 appears briefly at the start and the end of the story, but he gets stuck in the wrong half of the TARDIS when it splits into two. Later on, the Doctor tries to summon K-9 through to Brimo’s world, but only succeeds in conjuring up a hat.

On the planet Nefrin, a psychic lady named Brimo is found guilty of "using her subconscious mind to conspire with creatures unknown to pervert the course of destiny". She is sentenced to imprisonment in the Eternity Capsule, where she is to spend the rest of time. After billions of years, the sun she is orbiting turns into a black hole and she is sucked into a white nothingness. To her delight, she finds that in this world her every whim becomes reality.

A split appears in the space-time continuum that rips the TARDIS into two. The Doctor and Sharon are sucked into the split and arrive in a strange world. They meet Meltron, the Guardian of the Gate-Way, who offers them a cup of tea. He tells them that he is just a figment of Brimo’s imagination. The Doctor realises that anything they imagine can become real, but that Brimo’s fantasies are drawing energy from the Universe. They have to stop her before the Universe goes Fzzzzz.

Brimo attacks Sharon and the Doctor, worrying that they may be a threat to her. A battle of wills ensues and Meltron is split in two. Brimo summons up an army of killers, but the Doctor creates a pit that they all fall into.

The TARDIS has plugged the gap into Brimo’s dimension and her strength is fading. With her power stretched to its limit, the Doctor tricks Brimo into thinking of her worst fear, which is The Eternity Capsule. With Brimo imprisoned forever, the Doctor and Sharon return to the TARDIS. In order to re-unite the two halves of the TARDIS, the Doctor has to compress four years into an instant, which ages them both. The effect on the Doctor is negligible, but Sharon enters her twenties with a bang!

There are elements of this story that may have been achievable on 70’s TV. The only event that the original series would have fallen down on is the splitting of Meltron into two; though I can picture some CSO or cheap overlay effect as he steps outside of himself. The effects certainly wouldn’t be beyond the scope of the new series and with a little embellishment, The Time Witch could easily fill a 45-minute episode.

The Doctor is still on wonderful form, with lines such as "Gosh, that’s jolly decent of you old chap," upon meeting the giant Meltron and as Brimo burns his scarf : "Young woman! Will you kindly stop doing that!" There’s even a line straight out of City of Death in "BRIMO?!… Never heard of her…"

In a shock move, Dave Gibbons gives the female protagonist of a comic strip a stunning figure and large breasts. It’s the only way, believe me!

Brimo has an extremely well-sculpted and expressive face. A proud nose and elfin features, her features quickly distort from wide-eyed beauty to furious arrogance, yet she always looks distinctly evil. Even when confronted with the Eternity Capsule at the end of the story and filled with fear, she still retains the air of a villain.

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: "GOOD HEAVENS!" as his teacup explodes.

It’s a little more disturbing when Sharon the schoolgirl ends up with a similarly pneumatic physique, but they were hardly likely to present her as a spotty hormonal disaster area. From now on, Sharon is an Űber-Babe.

Poor Brimo. Never has a character had such a hard time of it without good cause. Her crimes are spurious at least, with some vague reference to her subconscious forming an alliance with mysterious forces that may pervert destiny, whatever that means. Frankly, it couldn’t be any more vague. When the Doctor arrives in her fantasy world, she perceives him as a threat rather than an adversary – and it turns out that she was right to do so. Brimo spends the last episode in absolute terror as her power collapses. The net result of the Doctor’s interference is that Brimo loses her private fantasy world and is returned to her prison. In some ways she is like Cessair of Diplos, (You can read more about her in Si Hunt’s column, here) living in quiet reclusion, enjoying her life and protecting herself. The Doctor does have some justification though, because Brimo’s fantasy world may be destroying the Universe, but that’s the kind of up-in-the-air worrying that can prevent people leaving the house in the morning.

Catharsises of spurious moralities aside this is an excellent story, one of my favourites of the Tom Baker run. It has a lot in common with the Troughton era story, The Mind Robber. The TARDIS undergoes a power drain and breaks up; there’s a strange fantasy world built on imagination; and the Doctor engages the enemy in a battle of wills to control the world. Fortunately, the comic story takes the fantasy world concept in a different direction and is also full of joy and wit. The whole Meltron sequence makes me laugh each time I see it, as the two halves of Meltron fight each other shouting "KILL THEM!" and "MAKE A CUP OF TEA!", each separated with a WOKK!

Best of all though, is the awe-inspiring page showing Brimo’s eternal imprisonment. As the decades, centuries and millennia pass, empires rise and fall, the planet turns to dust and even the sun decays into a black hole, before Brimo finds herself cast into nothingness. Billions of years pass in six frames. That’s science fiction for you. God I love it.

The Time Witch is the final complete story published in Doctor Who Weekly. Part way through the story following this, Dragon’s Claw, Doctor Who Weekly was no more.

This is the first strip by Steve Moore, soon to be a regular writer.

In the Galactic Crime Fighters Handbook, Sharon sees images of a Zygon, The Master, a Moonbase Cyberman, Davros, a Voc Robot, the Daleks, what is possibly a Krynoid and of course, that arch criminal master-mind, Styggron. "Ooo, yes that’s a very good plan Styggron!"

The Doctor’s age is 743, or 730. He can never remember. He was a spotty teenager for fifty years.