This story is kind of cool in that it has shades of Crisis on Infinite Earths. The Patrol must stop a rampaging Neanderthal with a laser gun (sounds like a bad B-movie) who emerges through a gateway that is combining time periods. This kind of combination occurs in the latter issues of Crisis, so I head-cannoned that this was a ripple of that, which made an otherwise run-of -the-mill story a bit better.
Though I should clarify the term "run-of-the-mill." There is nothing normal about any of the Doom Patrol's adventures. In his text piece as he takes over the series, Morrison says that they're a team that he found scary. And they kind of are. They don't fight the usual supervillains. They fight a brain in a jar and a talking Gorilla. Or the Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man. Or a caveman with a laser gun. They fought the weird stuff that you really can't imagine Superman or Wonder Woman dealing with. If we consider the runs of the series that have been less-successful, they're the ones that forget this and treat the team like any other superhero team. But they're not a superhero team. They're a support group who, by virtue of their weirdness, get sucked into very bizarre situations.
Which is, of course, what we love about them so much.
"A genius, a man of peace -- and your caveman!"
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