Time Bomb (comic story)

Time Bomb was a Sixth Doctor comic strip published in Doctor Who Magazine. It dealt with some of the issues involved in the alteration of history.

Summary
After a time cannon hits the TARDIS, the Sixth Doctor and Frobisher find themselves among a people who are disrupting time's correct path.

Plot
Peri Brown has been dropped off in New York City to see the Dodgers play baseball. The Sixth Doctor and Frobisher are travelling in the TARDIS to pick her up when they are hit by a time cannon — technology only Gallifrey is supposed to have. To find and destroy it, the Doctor materialises the TARDIS near the cannon on the planet Hedron. The Hedrons have used the cannon to destroy all traces of genetic imperfection in their species.

As the Doctor and Frobisher exit the TARDIS, they are captured by a robot, placed with the other genetic imperfections and hit with the time cannon. This sends them to prehistoric Earth. The TARDIS is also hit by the cannon and goes with them. The Doctor locates the cube of genetic imperfections and takes it to prevent it from contaminating life on Earth. However, before Frobisher and he can reenter the TARDIS, bodies of dead Hedrons begin to appear. It seems the Hedrons are continuing to use their cannon.

Although he is desperate to prevent the Hedrons from contaminating Earth any further, the Doctor decides that he should pick up Peri in case she can help talk to the Hedrons. Materialising in New York City in the year 1986, the Doctor and Frobisher find Earth controlled by sentient reptiles. Apparently the Hedrons' genetic material has altered the course of history on Earth to the extent that humans never evolved.

The Doctor and Frobisher make a hasty retreat and return to prehistoric Earth to attempt to reverse the damage done by the Hedrons. While the Doctor mulls over the situation, Frobisher decides to grab a bite to eat, but before long a large aquatic dinosaur decides to eat him. Trying to rescue Frobisher, the Doctor grabs the nearest object and hurls it at the dinosaur. However, the nearest object is a sphere containing Hedron genetic material. It smashes open, causing the dinosaur to flee but also irreversibly contaminating prehistoric Earth.

Angry that Frobisher has caused him to further contaminate life on Earth, the Doctor and Frobisher return to Hedron so they can at least destroy the time cannon and prevent it from doing any further damage to the universe. When they arrive on Hedron, however, they find that everyone has died through some terrible cataclysm. They find a recording from one of the last Hedrons and learn that the cause of the destruction was a spaceship that had crashed on the planet, releasing microbes and poisons which the Hedrons had eliminated and to which their immune systems had no defence. As it turns out, the origin of the deadly space ship was none other than the planet Earth. Thus, time had healed its own wounds and the genetic material that the Hedrons had banished from their planet had come back to them with deadly results.

The Doctor destroys the time cannon and Frobisher and he take the TARDIS back to Peri's baseball game. As the Doctor exits the TARDIS he wonders if they will be able to sneak into the game without paying. This seems unlikely, however, as the TARDIS has materialised in the middle of the baseball field, much to the players' confusion.

Characters

 * Sixth Doctor
 * Frobisher

Worldbuilding

 * Frobisher takes on the form of Godzilla to scare away two of the reptiles that attack him and the Doctor. He then says afterwards that he got the idea from a video he had watched with Peri.
 * Ruminating on the infection spreading through the prehistoric Earth, the Doctor reflects that: "[He's] a Doctor, not an undertaker."
 * According to the Doctor, the mechanics of a temporal disruption pulser (or time cannon) are meant to be a closely guarded Gallifreyan secret.

Continuity

 * The Doctor has left Peri in New York City before. (COMIC: )
 * The Hedron "genetic waste" expunged from their species contributes to the development of the human species. (TV: )
 * The alternate timeline in which humanity's ancestors never evolved is populated by a feudal reptillian species. (TV: )
 * Frobisher is visibly disturbed by the Hedron massacre, a stark contrast to his earlier, more superficial attitude to the slaughter of Kaon's warriors on Actinon. (COMIC: )