Dr. Who's Time Tales (DWM 30 comic story)
The first story in the Dr. Who's Time Tales series was printed in Doctor Who Weekly #30.
It introduced the format of the series: short tales depicting strange events in the Doctor Who universe, narrated by the Fourth Doctor himself, similar to DWM backup comic stories. The difference between them and those lay not in the narrative contents but in the behind-the-scenes history: like all Time Tales, this comic story was created by adding the Fourth Doctor framing device to a preexisting Marvel comic story, in this case Man in the Mummy Case!, first published in 1962 in Amazing Fantasy #15.
In addition to the addition of the framing device, this retelling of the 1962 story made multiple changes to the narration, and therefore to elements of the narrative. The most obvious of these was the main character's identity: the Amazing Fantasy burglar's name was "Rocco Rank", while in the Doctor's telling, the tale occurs to a man named John Kelly. The Fourth Doctor version also specifies the setting as Manhattan, something not mentioned in the original.
Plot[[edit] | [edit source]]
The Fourth Doctor shares the "first" of his time tales, about a man who escaped the law in "a more dramatic way than he intended". The man in question is American burglar John Kelly. Chased by the police through Manhattan, he breaks into a museum where he is confronted by a living mummy who says he wants to help him, and advises him to hide inside his sarcophagus. The mummy vows to the frightened Kelly that he will not be turned into a mummy himself, and will be safe from his pursuers forever. Kelly finally acquiesces, just in time as the police officers enter the museum. They search the room, and even think to open the mummy case, but when they do so, it is empty — for, as the mummy knew would occur, Kelly has been transported back in time to Ancient Egypt, where he is put to work as a slave helping to build the very pyramid from which the mummy and its case were recovered many millennia later.
Characters[[edit] | [edit source]]
Worldbuilding[[edit] | [edit source]]
- John Kelly is fearful of the mummy because has "seen movies about this kind of thing".
Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]
- The story does not offer an explicit explanation for how or why the "mummy case" transported John Kelly back in time. However, in the context of the story's newfound grounding in the Doctor Who universe, it is easy to make the connection to the Osirian lodestones, time corridor technology disguised in the form of a sarcophagus, as seen in Pyramids of Mars.
Continuity[[edit] | [edit source]]
- John Kelly is transported through time and space after walking into a sarcophagus. (TV: Pyramids of Mars)
