Synopsis: The Doctor returns to Blackcastle, Sharon's home. She debates returning, since the Doctor has returned her more or less to the same time when she left, but she is now matured by several years, thanks to the events of "The Time Witch".
Mid-conversation, the Doctor and Sharon are whisked away to the asteroid belt in this solar system, where an alien anthropologist has been systematically removing specimens from throughout Earth's history and keeping them in time stasis until he can return to his own time.
The Doctor proposes a different way of life for the scientist. He proposes to rewire Varan Tak's ship so that it can leave the asteroid and take him to Earth. There, he'll be able to have the companionship he so clearly wants. But as the Doctor attempts to make the necessary repairs, he figures out why Tak has never been able to do this. The ship's computer--personified in the form of a robot--has fallen in love with Tak and won't allow it. Earth is simply too dangerous a place for its master, who really will be instantly killed by the peculiar mixture of chemicals in Earth's atmosphere.
Unfortunately, the Doctor doesn't learn of the genuinely good reason the computer had for protecting its master until it's too late: Tak is now dead. And K-9 has been destroyed by the robot when it attempted to override the ship's lockout of the transporter beam.
Using the time stasis capsules, the Doctor is able to return to the past to prevent Tak's death temporarily.
The Doctor makes that change permanent by using his TARDIS to transport himself back in time a few minutes to a point at which both Tak and K-9 were alive. Once there, he warns himself away from repairing the ship--by knocking himself out--and the timeline in which Tak died closes. The collector is thus left where the Doctor found him: inside the asteroid belt, waiting to hitch a ride.
Notes: This is the first one-part story in DWM history. It may also be the first one-part story in Doctor Who comics history, although there are some stories from the TV Comic/Countdown era which had as few total pages.
