The Time Machination is another IDW comic, this time featuring the 10th Doctor.  It falls quite squarely in the fanwank region of Doctor Who fiction so beloved of Gary Russell and Craig Hinton and seems to suggest Tony Lee, its writer, is very much from the same camp.  Within its short run of pages (it is only a ‘one shot’, as they seem to be termed) it manages to tie together Timelash, Tooth and Claw and The Talons of Weng-Chiang.  Not only this, but along the way it throws in references to Torchwood (the series), Rose, Ghost Light, The Unquiet Dead, Boom Town, Shada, possibly The Gunfighters, the Doctor Who Monthly comic strip War of the Words and, unwittingly, even foreshadows the Matt Smith Christmas special, The Snowmen!


As a story its quite fun.  The 10th Doctor is seemingly stuck in London, 1889.  HG Wells brings his friend, Jonathan Smith to meet the Doctor.  Torchwood operatives, however, are on the trail of the Doctor having tracked him through the ten years since Queen Victoria set up the organisation.  They have detected traces of him at Krakatoa, Gabriel Chase and in America (which I’m presuming is a reference to The Gunfighters, but could easily be any 19th Century America-set story, whether in spin-off fiction or unseen).

It turns out, however, that the Doctor is actually in London to stop Jonathan Smith and has enlisted Wells’s help in this matter.  He is, in fact, a time traveller from the 51st Century out to stop the Doctor from defeating Magnus Greel.  Waving some timey-wimey paradoxical explanation, the Doctor explains that he discovered Smith’s plan and so placed a fake document on the planet Biblios (as featured in the comic strip, War of the Words) to lure him into a trap.  Torchwood (who have no record of the Doctor’s appearance, apparently) mistake Smith for the Doctor and he is taken away.  Apparently, a certain Captain Jack Harkness will eventually ask to see Smith, realise he is a fake and release him back to his own time to stand trial for war crimes.

The characterisation of David Tennant’s manic 10th Doctor is spot on and the whole timey-wimey, fanwanky plot is the sort of thing the comics, audios and novels are free to indulge in far more than the TV series can, or should.  HG Wells doesn’t bear much resemblance to the version we see in Timelash which, seeing as it is only supposed to be 4 years since he met the Doctor in Scotland, is a shame.  He looks much older in the comic strip than he does in Timelash, although he does look much closer to how HG Wells really looked.  Wells was born in 1866 which means he would have been 19 in 1885 (when the ‘Scottish’ segments of Timelash are set) and only 23 by the time of this story in 1889.  He looks much, much older than 23!  He wouldn’t publish The Time Machine until 1895 and, apparently it is only with prompting from the Doctor in this story, that he even considers becoming a writer.  So apparently, it takes him six years to write the story (not unfeasible, but possibly a bit too much of a gap).  I’ve always liked the idea that the Herbert we see in Timelash actually joined the Doctor and Peri for a few, unseen, adventures in time and space before returning to Earth.  Maybe that is why he looks older in this story than he should and spent longer with the Doctor and Peri than we might assume from the TV series.


I quite like the artwork for this comic, and the artwork for IDW can be very variable.  I hated the style of Ripper’s Curse and although Paul Grist’s style here is maybe a little too cartoony, it works and is pleasing to look at.

Historically, apart from the presence of HG Wells and mention of his most famous novel, the rest is more concerned with tieing in the fictional history of Doctor Who rather than the real history of Victorian London.  That said, the Doctor does dress up as Sherlock Holmes for one section (for no discernible reason) harking back to the 4th Doctor’s costume in The Talons of Weng-Chiang and, unintentionally, foreshadowing the 11th Doctor’s wearing of a very similar costume when confronting the Great Intelligence in The Snowmen.


The story ends with the arrival of a second TARDIS, emerging from it the 4th Doctor and Leela leading directly into the opening scenes of The Talons of Weng-Chiang.  I think, with the exception of an ongoing series like I, Davros, this is the first time two stories in my marathon have been so explicitly linked together – the dialogue between the Doctor and Leela is word for word from that first scene.


This was an enjoyable, if ridiculously fanwanky, story and I rather liked the return of Herbert, one of the ‘could-have-been’ companions.