I didn't enjoy the writing style of this. Pretty dumbed down, and sometimes it was a first person stream of consciousness thing that's really not for me. The story was also pretty aimless, could have probably been at least one less part long.

The interactions between The Doctor and Houdini where fun though, so that's a positive.

📝5/10

Counting down to Whomas 2024, one adventure at a time!

Day Six and Seven: Escaping the Space Cuckoos!

MY SCATTERED AND TOTALLY IRRELEVANT NOTES:

Joseph Lidster delivers a four-part short story from the Doctor Who Adventure Calendar, originally published in 2012.

The story features the Eleventh Doctor teaming up with Harry Houdini to face a horde of mindless, possessed people and horses controlled by alien cuckoos with glowing eyes. As absurd as it sounds, the execution doesn’t elevate the premise. The writing is simplistic, the plot feels overly childish, and the Eleventh Doctor is reduced to a caricature of his most exaggerated traits. Houdini, meanwhile, is unremarkable, contributing little beyond some escapology tricks in the second half. Lidster fails to breathe life into the setting or the plot, and the brevity of each part—less than ten pages—only adds to the story's shortcomings.

While the story is action-packed, it lacks depth. The change of setting to a spaceship in Part 3 adds a slight visual twist, but it does little to enhance the overall narrative. The short format attempts to cram in too much content, resulting in rushed and underdeveloped plot points. The cliffhangers, instead of adding tension, feel contrived and ineffective

A fun little story with some great art to go alongside it, but it's nothing especially standout. The idea of Alien Cuckoos is a very fun one for this short of a story.

The pacing is a little odd, part four doesn't really need to be there, and I could honestly see it being cut down to half the length, but hey, it's fine, it's still only a 20 min read, doesn't exactly outstay its welcome.

Houdini and the Space Cuckoos was a four part short story published on the BBC website around Christmas 2012.

Harry Houdini is a person the Doctor has long claimed to have a history with. As far back as Planet of the Spiders, the Doctor has boasted of his friendship with Houdini but it has taken until the expanded universe of the new series before we have actually been party to any of the Doctor’s meetings with the famed escapologist.

The first of these, chronologically, features the 11th Doctor and is set in New York City, 1920. During one of his acts, involving escaping from a safe, Harry finds a doorway to the TARDIS at the back of it. Enlisting Harry’s help, the Doctor reveals that aliens called Cuculus are possessing humans in an attempt to spread a virus and kill everyone.

Being a short story, the plot is fast-paced and to the point. Pretty soon after meeting the Doctor, Harry is being whisked away to the alien’s spaceship and using his escapology skills to escape his cell and rescue the Doctor from a glass box filled with liquid. Soon after this, the Doctor discovers the deadly virus and the means to stop it, provided in part by Harry.

The Cuculus are the eponymous ‘Space Cuckoos’ and, based on the illustrations, continue the new series penchant for ‘aliens-that-look-like-animals’ by looking like huge, eight-foot birds. Continuing the ‘cuckoo’ motif, they are planting their minds in humans in much the way that cuckoos put their eggs in other birds’ nests.

Historically, the cover illustration accompanying the story shows the Doctor in a version of Houdini’s ‘Chinese water torture cell’ set-up which he introduced to his act around 1912. Apart from this detail, the Houdini of this story is a simplistic ‘he can escape and the Doctor knows him quite well’. There is little depth to his character and he adapts to the bizarre situation as quickly as the brevity of the story requires. More is brought to the character of Houdini in the other stories coming in the marathon, particularly Smoke and Mirrors, but for now we have the Houdini as might be imagined from the Doctor’s anecdotes of knowing him and being taught his skills. Houdini, here, acts much like Lady Christina or Kazran Sardick – the one story companion – adventurous, adaptable and appealing.

As a whole, the story is written in a quite simplistic way which betrays its roots as a tale published as part of the BBC website’s Christmas Advent calendar – it’s a bit of fun and, dare I say it, written with a younger age group in mind (which isn’t usually a trap Doctor Who writers fall into but seems to be the vibe Joe Lidster is going for with this).

The 11th Doctor too is simplified – he’s the mad man in the box and rushes from predicament to predicament with the enthusiasm of Matt Smith’s most energetic performances.

I’ve meant to read this for ages and am glad I slipped it into my marathon, particularly because of Houdini’s inclusion but, overall, it’s not the sort of Doctor Who story I’ll ever be in a hurry to revisit.