In 1992, a new magazine appeared on the shelves of WHSmith (and other outlets). It was called Classic Comics and it’s remit was to reprint various comics based on Doctor Who. I remember buying my first copy (and the rest of the, sadly only, 2 years worth of issues). It was comforting and thrilling and new all at the same time. Here were comic strips with the Third Doctor from TV Action comic and Countdown and TV Comic and old DWMs. It was heaven. It was also weird. The comics grasp of Doctor Who, as a programme, was often tenuous at best. I’ve reviewed some old TV Comics before in my marathon and, much as I love them, there’s no doubt they bear only the slightest resemblance to the TV show.

Likewise, the Third Doctor strips from Countdown and TV Action are similarly slightly askew from the screen version of the show. There are obvious anomalies such as Bessie being called Betsy and the Doctor having a house in the countryside, but there are also the way the Doctor is characterised which doesn’t always seem to owe a huge amount to Pertwee’s performance. The colourisation which Classic Comics did on these originally black and white strips also results in an odd atmosphere. Everything is a little dreamlike. The strips are more closely related in this way to the annual stories than they are to much that was shown on TV.

Timebenders also has a time travel storyline which sets it far apart from most of the Pertwee era. This is, in some ways, similar to Backtime, the 3rd Doctor Countdown comic strip I reviewed many moons ago which saw the Doctor bouncing through time and space. Here, we only have the Doctor travelling back to World War Two but the time travel into history aspect is still something of novelty for this era of the show which really only did it a handful of times and not at all until a couple of years into Pertwee’s tenure.

The first thing to say is how, tonally, the title Timebenders is totally at odds with the very sombre atmosphere of the piece. Timebenders just sounds silly and yet this is a story with Nazi soldiers, air raids, the French resistance, the Doctor getting knocked out and a whole class of children being threatened with execution! This is quite adult stuff. This is Doctor Who extrapolated from Season 7 but with elements of World War Two based comics drafted in from the likes of Commando, Action or Sergeant Fury and his Howling Commandos.

The Nazis are nasty individuals – none of the reasonable Rommel from The Instruments of War. The officer in charge, Spiegal, has no qualms about killing people to achieve his ends and, as mentioned, holds a class of young children and their teacher hostage to force the Doctor to surrender himself. But even the members of the French resistance are violent and ‘hit first, ask questions later’ sort of people. That one of them, Marcel Sangenez turns out to be local aristocracy and owner of the nearby chateau provides a bit of plot convenience towards the end, although he does form something of an allyship with the Doctor. It all seems a little cursory though and there’s never a sense of the Doctor being anything more than an outsider who is using the people around him as a means to returning home – just as much as they use him to help defeat the Nazis.

The ‘companion’ role is taken by Monique Vedrun, daughter of Professor Vedrun. The Professor is the one who has somehow created a matter transmitter which has brought the Doctor through time. Quite how he has achieved this is left largely unexplained. Monique herself does little more than get captured and rescued although she does convince the resistance of the Doctor’s ‘futuristic’ origins by finding a coin minted in 1972 in his jacket. Monique is blonde and very 1970s in her look and is a poor substitute for the Doctor’s usual companions from TV.

Timebenders joins the subset of World War Two stories that involve the Nazis pursuing a superweapon to allow them to win the war. The Professor’s matter transporter is a project he has been commissioned to complete by the Nazis. The time travel capabilities are a serendipitous side effect of his work. Quite what happens to his technology after the Doctor returns to the present is not explained. The story also, weirdly, ends on a bit of a comedic note with the Nazis who attempt to travel into the future, finding themselves merely travelling in space, directly into an English jail cell. With clear proof the transporter works, it does beg the question as to why the Nazis don’t pursue the project any further (although Spiegal’s superior is seen dismissing Spiegal’s fanciful claims) but also why the Resistance don’t use it to their advantage.

This is such an odd story – it doesn’t feel particularly in tune with the TV era it stems from, struggles to balance quite adult concepts with brief comedic elements and has quite thinly drawn guest characters. The Doctor really feels like a complete outsider throughout the story and never quite in command of the situation. It’s been good to share some time with the 3rd Doctor as he has rarely featured in my marathon but this is, like previous brief encounters with him, a very atypical 3rd Doctor story.