‘We didn’t want to disturb you, Doctor. You’re an important man.’
The Doctor rolled his eyes. ‘Important? I’m not important. I’m the least important man in this town.’ He waived his stick at the assembled townsfolk. ‘It’s you lot who are important…”
To celebrate the return of Doctor Who, I’m going to review a second collection of Doctor Who short stories in a row. Love Doctor Who, love short stories. Both together? Can’t resist.
It’s hard to picture, since we only get to see a brief montage of it in one episode, but the Doctor was stranded on Trenzalor, on purpose, for nine hundred years. Nine centuries protecting the town of Christmas against attacks by pretty much every enemy the Doctor had ever faced. You can have a lot of adventures in nine hundred years; Tales of Trenzalore tells four of them.
It’s a great framing device for a short story collection. Actually it’s a framing device within a framing device. Authors writing for Doctor Who already have to stick to one character (albeit one with twelve, no, thirteen different incarnations), but with this book they have to stick to one incarnation, in one little snow-farming town, on a small backwater planet in the middle of nowhere. And all four of these stories are set in the three hundred years before Clara returned with the TARDIS, so no timey-wimey stuff allowed. The Doctor has to hold off an army of aliens with just his sonic screwdriver and a Cybertronian head.
It’s hard to go into a lot of detail about the individual stories without giving away too much, since you already know roughly how they’re going to turn out. The Doctor will save the day, whatever alien invader will be repelled, and enough of the town of Christmas will be saved that the townspeople will continue to see him as their wise protector. You don’t know are which classic Doctor Who villain will attack, but since you have a choice of four on the cover you can pretty much figure it out from the title. The story lies in how the doctor will save the day each time.
Of the four stories, I think Mark Morris’s “The Dreaming” was my least favorite. Not a bad story, it just felt like one of those episodes where the dramatic and daring becomes a little forced, maybe even silly.
“Strangers in the Outland” by Paul Finch features The Trenzalore Lifeboat, which provides some great visuals for what mostly ends up being a hunting-monsters-in-the-wilderness story. With some jump-scares.
For “An Apple a Day” George Mann brought back an alien from one of my favorite classic episodes. There’s also a scene of a a snowball fight that I wish could somehow be filmed for a TV episode; it’s surprisingly fun.
For me the best of the lot would be”Let It Snow,” by Justin Richards. And that’s mostly for one particular element: it’s the Doctor being clever. REALLY clever. The bad guys are outplayed from the very start.
We can probably expect more in this series, since there’s more then enough room for dozens more Trenzalore stories. Maybe even hundreds. And I might read more of them, although for the most part the the stories are mostly just kinda cute, maybe a bit predictable, and every one of them features a panicked run from danger and at least one “Geronimo!” I’m not disappointed though, because the current collection gave me exactly what I wanted: a few more adventures for a Doctor I’m already starting to miss.