Enlightenment (comic story)

Enlightenment was a full-page comic story by Tim Quinn and Dicky Howett included in DWM 105. Unrelated to the TV story of the same name, it instead focused on the inner workings of the Doctor's TARDIS and, in the process, inadvertently foreshadowed a recurring element of the later revived series.

Summary[[edit] | [edit source]]

While the Doctor waits outside, Peri climbs a staircase in the TARDIS lined with portraits of the Doctor's incarnations to change the outer plasmic shell's light bulb, which, it turns out, must actually be done from the inside, through a hatch in the roof.

Characters[[edit] | [edit source]]

• Sixth Doctor
• Peri Brown

Worldbuilding[[edit] | [edit source]]

• The stairway leading up from the TARDIS control room to the roof of the outer plasmic shell is adorned with a portrait. Two, labelled No. 1 and No. 2, depict the First Doctor and the Second Doctor. Also pictured are "-10" (a bald, round-faced man), -6 (a bearded man dressed like a hippie), "No. 33" (a man with an enlarged forehead emblazoned with a question mark), and No. 13 (a smiling, middle-aged man with dark hair). The exhausted Peri passes by several more portraits.
• At the end of the actual stairway, a smaller ladder bridges the gap to the hatch in the roof.
• The Doctor owns an issue of Radio Times, specifically Who? on Radio 4. A cup of tea and a discarded book are also visible among the scattered items from the Doctor's picnic basket.

Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]

• As the portraits of the First Doctor and Second Doctor are labelled "No. 1" and "No. 2", the clear implication is that the other numbered portraits adorning the TARDIS staircases are of other, unknown incarnations of the Doctor; No. 33 and No. 13 would respectively be the Thirty-Third and Thirteenth Doctors, while the "minus"-numbered Doctors would, logically, be incarnations predating the commonly-understood "First Doctor", William Hartnell. However, none of the pictured individuals are explicitly identified as the Doctor, and indeed, even if they are purported, in-universe, to depict the Doctor, there is no certainty that the portraits are accurate; the eventual Thirteenth Doctor introduced on television, of course, bore no resemblance to "No. 13" in Enlightenment.
• If taken at face value, the TARDIS containing portraits of alleged future incarnations of the Doctor during the Sixth Doctor's era may hint at time within the TARDIS being flexible, an idea later explored at greater length in The Doctor's Wife.
• For unknown reasons, this story was one of the few Doctor Who works by Tim Quinn and Dicky Howett that were not reprinted in It's Even Bigger on the Inside.
• This was the only original Quinn and Howett story present in DWM 105 because the Doctor Who? instalment was reprinted from DWM 103.

Continuity[[edit] | [edit source]]

• Changing the TARDIS light bulb would become a running gag in the Steven Moffat era, as seen in TV: Meanwhile in the TARDIS, Last Night, Pond Life, and The Angels Take Manhattan.
• The Second Doctor once entered the TARDIS through the hatch on the roof. (COMIC: Peril at 60 Fathoms)
• The Doctor would be shown to open hatches on the outer police-box-shaped shell of the TARDIS to perform repairs in TV: Spyfall.