The collection opens with “Model Train Set”, Jonathan Blum’s first solo Doctor Who story and one of the bookends with the Eighth Doctor.  It’s a solo character piece about the Doctor playing with his model train set, built over the course of several lifetimes.  Blum likes stories that end particularly hopefully and this is no exception, it’s all about who the Eighth Doctor is, but that’s really all there is.  It’s more of a study in who this Doctor is, separated from the general line of novels occurring at the same time.  In many ways it feels like the starting point for the Big Finish audio adventures.  6/10.

Look, I really like the idea of a story that just follows the Doctor playing in the TARDIS like a child, particularly when the focus is how this incarnation views the world differently from his predecessors…the issue I have is that we just don’t learn enough.

This is essentially 20 minutes of describing wooden men and toy trains, with a paragraph at the end that starts to stumble upon something interesting, only to end the story right there.

Disappointed.