Timeslip
2 parts (DWW 17 & 18) 6th and 13th February 1980
Writer: Dez Skinn (plot), Paul Neary (script), Artist: Paul Neary, Editor: Dez Skinn
Aboard the TARDIS, the 4th Doctor is missing Romana, when the ship begins to unexpectedly materialize.
The ship's sensors indicate that time itself is being slowed down all around the TARDIS.
The effect is being caused by a giant amoeba in space, in which the TARDIS has become trapped.
As the amoeba begins to consume the time energy from the TARDIS, time within the ship begins to run backwards...
...causing the Doctor to de-generate through his previous incarnations.
K9 is reduced to his component parts, and the Doctor to his youngest, original incarnation.
The Doctor races against time to deactivate all the TARDIS systems so as to starve the amoeba.
The creature underestimated the TARDIS energy, and having absorbed too much time energy too quickly is weakened...
...so that as it fights to keep time moving backwards in the TARDIS it over-exerts itself and dies.
When the Doctor re-activates the TARDIS, time moves forward...
...and he once again reaches his 4th incarnation, with K9 seemingly none the wiser as to the events that have just transpired!
Timeslip is a very slight story, a brief two-part interlude between longer stories, that sees K9 arrive on the pages of the DWM strip, and is in truth little more than an excuse to trot out the Doctor's pevious incarnations, however briefly.
Coming a good 7 years after The Three Doctors and 3 before The Five Doctors, this was not as hackneyed a trick as it will unfortunately seem now when multi-Doctor stories are something of a cliche, particularly in comic strip form.
The artwork's a bit static and somewhat too photo-reference dependent on times, but it's a story with charm and a twinkle in its' eye that elevates it above being pointless filler.
6/10
(N.B. This strip was originally published in black and white, but the snapshots presented here are from the sympathetically coloured reprints by IDW)
TTFN! K.
Coming Soon... Time & Time Again
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