Timeslip is an odd little comic story. It’s a story which ran for two weeks in Doctor Who Weekly and was not written and drawn from the then current team of writers Pat Mills and John Wagner and artist Dave Gibbons. Magazine editors Paul Neary and Dez Skinn came up with this particular story and slot it in between City of the Damned and Doctor Who and the Star Beast. It is a plot which is confined to the TARDIS exclusively for the eight pages the story runs. The plot is pretty simple: there is a space amoeba creature which the TARDIS runs into which causes the time machine to reverse in time. Reverse in time in this strip means for whatever reason the Doctor and K9 are sent back on their personal time streams, so the Doctor cycles back through his regenerations which ends the first issue. The second issue quickly wraps the story up a la The Edge of Destruction: flipping a switch after connecting a gizmo to the console which saves the day. As a story there isn’t much to go on in terms of plot, but what can you do to fill only eight pages of story on a time crunch so there cannot be too much fault for it. The opening panels feel ripped straight from Season 17 with the Doctor and K9 playing a board game before the events of the story proper begin. There are decent little dialogue exchanges between the Doctor and K9 throughout the comic which really feel like they are coming directly from the TV series.
The biggest drawback of this particular comic is the shift in art style from Dave Gibbons’ style of detailed backgrounds and thick lines, to one of almost scratchy character designs. Most of the comic looks like it was traced over from a photograph which isn’t a compliment. Building a story based on publicity photographs stitched together in black and white makes the poses of the Doctor and K9 awkward to look at. There’s a point where the Second Doctor’s head looks like the neck has been snapped with one shoulder up in a rather awkward pose. Jumping from publicity photo to publicity photo makes the costumes and hair of the First Doctor in particular lack continuity. One moment it will be a costume from 1963, then one from 1965, and then back to a 1963 costume. The montage of the Doctor going back through his previous regenerations takes a full page spread filled with memories of past villains, for no particular reason than to remind the reader that this is a Doctor Who comic strip I guess. Overall, Timeslip is one of those comics which really doesn’t fit into what the strip has established and can be taken or left. It’s obvious that it was only included in The Tides of Time and not the more appropriate The Iron Legion to complete the set. 5/10.
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