A Glitch in Time

"It's a point in time when something odd happened."

Writer: John Freeman

Format: Comic Strip

Released: October 1991

Printed in: DWM 179

Featuring: Seventh Doctor, Ace

Synopsis

The Seventh Doctor and Ace arrive at a nexus point in time filled with mystery. The Doctor is immensely curious about its origin but he's soon to find out that the pair aren't the only visitors to the Cretaceous period... 

Verdict 

A Glitch in Time was a fascinating and fantastic comic strip adventure! It's bringing my reading of The Good Soldier closer to an end but that's not a problem as the collection has been superb. I've got just the one comic strip story left but I also have what looks to be a magnificent text story to get through yet. But back to the story at hand and not for the first time in this collection a one part story has really caught my eye in being superb! Why can't the recent Doctor Who Annuals follow suit and take inspiration from these? It really isn't difficult to put on a good story in 6 pages. If you've got good characterisation, decent artwork and a pacy story you are fine. If you're writing for Doctor Who then that really shouldn't be a problem. Those who produce the Annuals just seem lazy or rushed to me which, when reading stories like this, really irks me! The characterisation of the Seventh Doctor was once again magnificent as it has been throughout this collection of stories. They really have Sylvester McCoy nailed down perfectly! I always enjoy it when the Doctor gets into one of his curiosity modes. If there's something that needs to be known, and he doesn't know it, he will do just about anything to find out! We saw that from the character straight away in The Daleks. I just love it when he gets curious, that's the one consistent thing through all of the incarnations I would think. I actually rather enjoyed Ace in this story, though I can't believe I'm saying it! I loved her immediate response to getting insulted from the visitors from the future and she just instantly owned him. (That's Welsh slang for winning the argument by the way). She was interested by the Doctor's actions as was I, why was this nexus point so intriguing? Over the course of the following pages we got our answer. A bunch of humans from the future had come to the Cretaceous period to do some dinosaur hunting! Of all the things to use time travel for, that shouldn't be on anybody's list! It should be as the Doctor so delightfully displays, for visiting and sightseeing. The Doctor being disgusted, and rightfully so, at the shootings of the dinosaurs was good to see. He could see the danger immediately and the knock on effect it could have would potentially be massive! Their ancestors could be prevented or rather humorously as we saw, somewhat altered! Dinosaurs from the future were coming ape-hunting instead! Haha! The Doctor wasn't too worried by the killings though as he'd worked out that all would actually be okay. He knew what this mysterious nexus point was now and why nobody had visited it. Time, on this rare occasion but like it always does in such circumstances, was going to correct itself. The human time travellers would be sent back to the future unharmed and the dinosaurs wouldn't evolve into the masters of Earth. I'm not sure Earthshock ties into this story, but overall I thoroughly enjoyed! Short, but a fine example of how to do a comic strip adventure with little room to play with. 

Rating: 8/10