Peaceable Kingdom

Peaceable Kingdom is, to date, one of the more bizarre stories of Doctor Who I've encountered.

On the one hand, I applaud the ambition of author Steven Savile (who has written for many sci-fi franchises Who included) as this story is quite different from even the average Doctor Who affair. Featuring the Seventh Doctor, an alien world populated by a sentient insectoid warrior race that have a hive mind, and an alien called the White Preacher, Peaceable Kingdom features no humans nor mention of Earth. It is a completely alien story, with a lot of complex ideas about nature, morality, and kindness.

However, the theme of Short Trips 24 is leadership, and that tie is quite lacking. The story itself is also a little hard to grapple with. The Doctor is the last main character introduced, and before that, the alien point of views left me struggling to follow exactly what was going on. When you get down to it, the story has some interesting ideas, though I'm not quite sure I'm with the Doctor here. His actions are questionable, though, to the credit of Savile, he does recognize this and the Doctor openly wonders if what he does is right. I think, as a short story for Doctor Who, it works. Both the White Preacher and the insectoid aliens (called the Kotari) have traits that would make them worth seeing again in the future. Though it is a bit out of theme with Short Trips 23, especially given how focused this anthology is on historicals with little to no alien content, that also means that Peaceable Kingdom is a pleasant change of pace, too. Furthering that, it is distinct from the rest of Quality of Leadership's main run of stories so far in that there is no companion in this tale, either, which did lead to this story feeling wildly different than the other Short Trips 23 stories. The Doctor is on his own here and it feels like that added tension around his survival at a couple of moments.

All told, though it was strange, a little difficult to get through, and had a somewhat questionable resolution to its moral dilemma, it was also quite thoughtful, wildly creative, and a proper dose of science fiction in an anthology otherwise lacking it. This might have been a missed opportunity, come to think of it of Short Trips 23 as a whole. Quality of Leadership features a number of Star Trek writers, yet has them largely avoiding science fiction topics. I think I would have rathered the stories of Short Trips 23 be more like Peaceable Kingdom, than for Peaceable Kingdom to be more like the rest of this anthology.