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TARDIS Guide

Overview

Released

Thursday, July 7, 2005

Written by

Nev Fountain

Pages

9

Location (Potential Spoilers!)

TARDIS

Synopsis

The Five O'Clock Shadow was the fourth short story in the Short Trips anthology Short Trips: A Day in the Life. It was written by Nev Fountain.

It featured an unspecified Doctor and saw him create fictional doppelgängers of himself and Susan Foreman, who were none other than Dr. Who and Susan as they appeared in the theatrical film Dr. Who and the Daleks and its sequels. As such, the story presented a potential origin for those two characters within the mainstream Doctor Who universe.

The story was mostly written in rhyming couplets, deviating between patterns of ABAB, AABB, and ABABCDCDEE.

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2 reviews

This review contains spoilers!

The First Doctor #7

'The Five O'Clock Shadow' (2005) from Short Trips: A Day in the Life.


Quite an irritating little poem - not much of a fan of the way that it's written, nor of the storybook villain that has no visual descriptors and its only other description is a bunch of vague themes. I was hoping that The Five O'Clock Shadow would be in some way related to the man that Susan saw in the mirror in The Exiles but alas it seems not to be. I suppose the inclusion of the Peter Cushing Doctor and Susan is a fair way to attempt to draw them into the First Doctor's canonical timeline, but in a one-note and too brief story that doesn't do much else for me it feels like a bit of a wasted concept.


This review contains spoilers!

This poem is told from the perspective of Dr.Who the 1960s film doctor played by Peter Cushing and goes into how him and Suzy came to be. Its quite genius, The Doctor our Doctor creates a fictional Doctor and Susan who are the theatrical versions.

Of course this is one of many creations of how the films fit into canon, and I think as a quick story in this quick review Nev did a good job explaining it. However due to other explanations which I think are more fun, its not gonna be a recommended re-read but its defiantly worth at least one


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