The Crossroads of Time (comic story)

The Crossroads of Time
Doctor:	Seventh Doctor
Main enemy:	Death's Head
Key crew
Publisher:	Marvel Comics
Editor:	Richard Starkings
Writer:	Simon Furman
Artist:	Geoff Senior
Letterer:	Zed
Release details
Printed in:	Doctor Who Magazine 135
Release date:	10 March 1988
Cover date:	April 1988
Reprinted in:	TIDH 1, A Cold Day in Hell!
Format:	Comic - 1 part (8 pages)
DWM comic stories
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Stories reprinted in The Incomplete Death's Head
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The Crossroads of Time was a Seventh Doctor comic published in Doctor Who Magazine.

Summary

Death's Head, who was sent flying through the Vortex, collides with the Doctor's TARDIS. The TARDIS and Death's Head both land on an uninhabited moon. The Doctor gets out of the TARDIS and notes that, since he collided with something (Death's Head) in the Vortex, a Time Warden should appear. Sure enough, one does appear, and begins questioning the Doctor. Death's Head recovers, now standing at his full 30 feet height. The Time Warden gets skittish and leaves, telling the Doctor to deal with it on his own. Death's Head picks up the Doctor in his hand. After some quick negotiating, the Doctor is able to escape Death's Head's grasp and retrieves the Master's Tissue Compression Eliminator, which the Doctor confiscated inside his TARDIS. He blasts Death's Head with it. Death's Head does not shrink down to microscopic size like the Doctor planned, but rather shrinks down to the same size as the Doctor. He then attempts to kill the Doctor, who ducks under a swing from Death's Head's mace, and begins running just as the Time Warden reappeared. The Time Warden is again scared off by Death's Head, who is now pursuing the Doctor deeper into the moon. The Doctor realises that he cannot combat Death's Head, and offers the TARDIS to Death's Head in exchange for keeping his life. Death's Head agrees, and enters the TARDIS with the Doctor. The Doctor distracts Death's Head long enough to get to the controls and operate the teleporter. He succeeds, and Death's Head is teleported to the 81st century, just as the Time Warden reappears.

Characters

• Seventh Doctor
• Death's Head
• Time warden

Worldbuilding

• Among the items the Doctor uses to bargain with Death's Head are jelly babies.

Notes

Advertisement of the story in Transformers UK #154.

• This story was written to enable Death's Head to be removed from Transformers UK universe (TFUK), shrunk and dropped into Marvel UK's own Dragon's Claws title at human size.
• The crossover nature of the story prompted advertisements in other Marvel UK titles, including the "TransFormation" segment in Transformers UK #154
• While from the point of view of a contemporary reader, this DWM story directly follows the events of a TFUK story in Transformers UK #151, which explains how Death's Head ended up in the Time Vortex without a time machine, that TFUK story is considered invalid on this wiki. Later, after Marvel UK lost the rights to mention TFUK, an alternative, incompatible explanation that Death's Head was caught in the gravitational well of a collapsing planet was supplied for the linking materal created for the The Incomplete Death's Head series. This latter explanation is the only one acceptable on in-universe pages. Meet Death's Head would make the original explaination more plausible too.

Reprints

• The Marvel Bumper Comic Holiday Special 1988
• The Incomplete Death's Head #1 (colourised) - 1993
• A Cold Day in Hell! - 2009

Continuity

• Death's Head ended up in the Time Vortex after being caught in the gravitational well of a collapsing planet during a war of giant robots. (COMIC: The Incomplete Death's Head)

External links

• Doctor Who Magazine #135 at Marvel Database
• Incomplete Death's Head #1 at Marvel Database