I could easily imagine reading this as a bedtime story around Christmas to a young child gazing at it in wonder. This story seems to have the youngest intended audience of all the tales in the collection, which fits Matt Smith’s Doctor well, given how closely he is associated with performing anlongside and connecting with children.

It’s a simple story with mild peril and has a touch of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which is interesting, as that idea was already explored in Matt Smith’s era during a Christmas special. The narrative is sweet, particularly in how the kind action of one young girl goes on to transform an entire alien society. While it’s a lovely idea, the story doesn’t have much depth or complexity and isn’t as texturally rich as some of the others in the collection.

This is a short story from The Twelve Doctors of Christmas collection. However, I actually watched the Fan Show's Youtube video featuring Frances Barber reading this with accompanying illustrations.

It's a sweet little tale of the 11th Doctor turning up on a child's doorstep, as he often did, and whisking her off on a brief adventure. It's a bit like an expanded DWA comic strip in it's tone. It's also got a typical 11th Doctor 'come back when the child is an adult' coda, very much in keeping with how this incarnation of the Doctor flits in and out of his companions lives.

Written by Scott Handcock, it doesn't do anything particularly original but is diverting enough. The illustrations that accompany Barber's rather fruity reading are a nice accompaniment.

The Christmassy message is a bit more overt in this one than in other short stories I've looked at in this marathon and does suggest the target audience for this is pitched a little lower than some of the other of this marathon's fare.