Dr. Who's Time Tales (DWM 40 comic story)
The tenth story in the Dr. Who's Time Tales series was printed in Doctor Who Weekly #40.
It followed 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, created by adding the Fourth Doctor framing device to a preexisting Marvel comic story, in this case I Took A Journey Into Fear!, first published in 1960 in Journey into Mystery #63.
Plot[[edit] | edit source]
The Fourth Doctor tells the time tale of a human scientist who believed he had succeeded in inventing time travel, Otto Bruger. Otto tries to convince his colleagues to lend him the necessary equipment to build his time machine, but they deny him, calling him mad, explaining that time travel is probably impossible, and likely dangerous if it is possible. However, Bruger, believing his colleagues are simply jealous, sets about building his time machine in an abandoned warehouse. After building all he can without the final, crucial components, he robs the laboratory at gunpoint, shooting one of his coworkers non-fatally. Rushing back to the warehouse, he manages to activate his time machine just as the police break in.
He finds himself hurled back to a "barbarous era" where he is soon thrown into a dungeon, but he is not especially upset by this, laughing madly at the feeling of intellectual victory that the knowledge that he successfully time-travelled awards him. Unbeknownst to him, however, his invention did not work correctly; he simply shocked himself with a strong electrical charge, and has gone insane; the "dungeon" is actually his room at a mental ward.
Characters[[edit] | edit source]
Worldbuilding[[edit] | edit source]
- Within Otto's delusion, the "barbarians" refer to his appearance out of nowhere in their era as a "miracle".
Notes[[edit] | edit source]
- The comic begins with a similar sequence of events to Professor Egen's time travelling adventure in an earlier Dr. Who's Time Tales story, including the detail of the scientist activating his custom-built time machine just as the authorities trying to stop him find the remote, gothic location he made into his lair. This helped sell the ultimate twist that, in contrast to the usual formula of Dr. Who's Time Tales, the story did not actually involve any "real" sci-fi element, notwithstanding the artistic liberties taken in the depiction of Bruger's mental illness.
- The comic ends on a caption box drawn in the style of a question mark, stating "What is time? What is reality? Who knows? Who knows???".
Continuity[[edit] | edit source]
to be written
