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“Fleeting Faces: A Charity Skit’s Unlikely Transformation”

Fleeting Faces is an oddity. The first third of it is a faithful adaptation of the 2023 Children in Need minisode Destination Skaro—the one where Fourteen arrives on Skaro to witness the genesis of the Daleks while inadvertently giving the Kaleds the name and the catchphrase of the pepperpots. Oh, and the one with the normal-looking Davros. I never thought that we'd get an official novelisation of a comedy skit made for a charity show, but here we are.

The rest of it is just a reprint of a Tenth Doctor short story (Under Control and Into Control), originally published in a Doctor Who Annual and the collection Ten Days of Christmas.

📝Verdict: 64/100

THIS WILL BE A REVIEW OF THE ‘DESTINATION: SKARO’ ADAPTATION, AS PUBLISHED IN THE 2025 ANNUAL, AND MY REVIEWS OF THE TWO OTHER STORIES FEATURED IN ‘FLEETING FACES’ WILL BE ON THE ‘UNDER’ AND ‘INTO CONTROL’ PAGES.

FIFTEEN DOCTORS, FIFTEEN STORIES: STORY 14

Steve Cole’s adaptation of the 2023 Children in Need minisode Destination: Skaro doesn’t do much to expand on its source material and reads as a straight adaptation.

But I suppose that works here, as everything that happened in the minisode is all that is really needed to tell the story.

However, the two additions to the story are definitely welcome here. A short scene in the TARDIS is added at the start, and the reveal that the voice on the intercom belongs to Nyder is a fun little detail.

This is basically just a rather short story that won’t take much time to read, but if you didn’t like the minisode, I don’t think you’ll enjoy this straight adaptation either.

The Fourteenth Doctor #02

'Fleeting Faces' (2024) from Fifteen Doctors 15 Stories.

Three stories in one here, the first being a novelisation of the Children in Need Destination: Skaro minisode, which doesn't really do anything to expand upon the source material in any way unfortunately and really just makes you re-experience the exact same scenario but just a little bit longer because you have to read it. The next two stories coming from both Doctor Who The Official Annual 2024 and Ten Days of Christmas, Under Control is an intriguing set-up with Into Control being a satisfying enough conclusion bringing back the Sycorax in an appropriately cyclical fashion, being the Tenth Doctor's first enemy encounter. Neither of these stories particuarly stand out to me in any way, but they're a decent short time spent with the Fourteenth to add to his character ever so slightly more.