From Little Acorns

This is a pretty excellent story featuring the Eighth Doctor while also being used as a framing device for all of the Short Trips: The Quality of Leadership. Like many of the writers in Quality of Leadership, John S. Drew is a writer with more of a background with Star Trek getting a chance at some Doctor Who, but you wouldn't really know that from reading this.

From Little Acorns feels like a proper Doctor Who story. I think Drew got a great sense of the Eighth Doctor's voice and it really comes through in the short story. I like how we get this story perspective from a man named Lycon, who gives us the perspective of somebody who encounters the Doctor and can think back on the man years later. It is very cool to get a sense of the Doctor's effect on this world after he leaves, while there is some good character work between Lycon and another main character named Mihal.

As a framing device for Quality of Leadership, it is quite effective in setting us up for the rest of the Short Trips and giving us a good reason for the theme of Leadership in this Short Treks anthology. The Doctor is using all these stories of leadership to inspire Mihal to genuinely help his people. My only issue with it is how willingly the Doctor seems to go along with Mihal's presumed authoritarianism over the setting of this story, a planet called Zalezna. Though the doctor does seem to be working in a way to benefit this world, he doesn't ever seem to question the notion that no people really need to be ruled over by a King. But that is a small aspect of an otherwise entertaining story that I found to be an easy read and featuring some fun character work throughout.