Dr. Who's Time Tales (DWM 43 comic story)

The thirteenth story and final in the Dr. Who's Time Tales series was printed in Doctor Who Weekly #43.

It followed the format of the series: short tales depicting strange events in the Doctor Who universe, narrated by the Fourth Doctor himself, similar to DWM backup comic stories, created by adding the Fourth Doctor framing device to a preexisting Marvel comic story, in this case When The Switch Is Pulled…, first published in 1962 in.

Plot
The Fourth Doctor tells the time tale of Von Richter, an inventor who cracked the secret of time travel, but never realised his experiments had succeeded. The tale opens with Von Richter finally unveiling the product of his long years of secretive work to his friend and fellow member of a scientific institute, Ludvig. Ludvig is appalled to learn that Von Richter has wasted the institute's time and money on a "mad and foolish" project like time travel, but agrees to step inside the machine to test it. Explaining that he cannot predict exactly when in the past the machine will go, Von Richter pulls a lever and a strange feeling overtakes the travellers — but when they step out of the machine, they are in the same place and time when they started.

As Von Richter's dreams crumble and all of Ludvig's doubts wash away, the latter makes the former promise to dismantle his "useless" machine and focus on theoretical work from now on, as had always been his strong suit in the past. The Doctor explains what neither man ever realised: the machine actually did travel in time, whizzing backwards through human history at an immense speed within the few seconds when Von Richter and Ludvig felt an odd feeling inside the machine; indeed, glimpses of it phasing in and out of existence were recorded throughout the centuries, interpreted as meteors or evil omens. However, the machine's trajectory had been a "loop" through time, and it landed back where it had started before Von Richter could open the doors.

Characters

 * Fourth Doctor
 * Von Richter
 * Ludvig

Worldbuilding

 * The "theory of time travel" explains that millions of time can be crossed within a few seconds' relative time for the time-traveller.
 * Among the people across history who glimpse Von Richter's time machine are cavemen and Vikings.

Continuity
to be written