A Switch in Time! (comic story)

A Switch in Time was the Doctor Who back-up strip which appeared in the pages of The Incredible Hulk Presents #6. Like all in the series, it was monochromatic and featured the Seventh Doctor travelling alone at the beginning and ending of the story.

Unusually, most of the events of the story take place in what is a scripted drama on television. Almost everything named in the story doesn't actually exist in the DWU, except as fiction.

Summary
The Seventh Doctor materialises inside of a television programme on a world populated by non-humanoids. The only problem is that no one has given him a script, so he keeps blowing his cues. He escapes before he gets into any real trouble for it. Still, at least two members of the Holo TV viewing audience appreciate his "performance" and are glad they remembered to tape the broadcast.

Characters

 * In "real life":
 * Seventh Doctor, known within the television programme as "the Professor"
 * two audience members watching the television programme
 * In the television programme:
 * The Gherax
 * Thyron
 * a naturalist

Continuity

 * As with several stories in the COMIC run, the narrative begins with the Seventh Doctor in the TARDIS console room, tending to a malfunction. This isn't, however, terribly representative of the televised Seventh Doctor, who was only shown to experience one TARDIS malfunction — the one that led to his "death" in the 1996 tele-film.
 * Like Remembrance of the Daleks, this story features a continuity announcement which appears to be advertising a new series of Doctor Who, but it's cut off before the whole name of the series can be completed.

Timeline
There is absolutely nothing in the narrative of A Switch in Time that places it in any particular place, except for the fact that the Doctor is depicted as wearing his question mark pullover and is travelling alone.

Following general Marvel UK conventions, this means its events take place between TV: Survival and DWM: Train-Flight, the first of three narratively-linked stories which lead to Ace's debut in Doctor Who Magazine.

That said, this story is so atypical that it could really go just about anywhere.