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Overview

Released

September 2016

Written by

Eddie Robson

Narrated by

Beth Chalmers

Runtime

46 minutes

Story Type

Christmas

Time Travel

Past, Present, Future

Location (Potential Spoilers!)

Earth, England, France, Liverpool, Manchester, Sussex

Synopsis

"A few more random landings will shake off the Daleks. So to speak."

But for the Doctor, Steven and Sara, the landings are anything but random. It's Christmas Day... So many times. What terrible secret is bringing the time travellers to the same day in different years?

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6 reviews

This review contains spoilers!

its kinda insane that "the feast of steven" got a sequel which explained why they made it to christmas, and its even more insane that the story itself is pretty heartwrenching. good though


megaminxwin

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This review contains spoilers!

Essa é a história mais repugnante e NÃO Doctor Who de todos os tempos, o pior é todo esse desastre é inteiramente maquiado em uma típica história natalina aconchegante com trilhas sonoras bonitas e emotivas. Seguindo um sinal de socorro, o Doutor, Steven e Sara se deparam várias vezes em vários Natais com um jovem garoto - Quando nos aprofundamos em seu personagem, descobrimos que o menino tinha um irmão gêmeo que morreu de leucemia que se resultou em sua mãe se drogando para se matar, e seu pai fugindo de casa. Conforme a história progride várias revelações são nos apresentadas trazendo explicações aos seus pontos de interrogações - A parte repugnante está em sua conclusão, onde temos o Doutor levando o irmão doente do garoto a sua TARDIS, ele acaba morrendo nos braços de Sara Kingdom em Marte. A partir disso o Doutor tem a ideia de trocar os irmãos, para ficar mais fácil de entender vamos intitular cada um deles com uma letra:
.
Irmão "A" (o que estava vivo)
Irmão "B" (que morreu)
*lembrando que eram irmãos gêmeos
.
Como o Irmão "B" estava morto nos braços de Sara Kingdom, o Doutor tem a ideia de enviar o Irmão "A" momentos antes dos pais deles saberem da morte do "B". A ideia é que o irmão "A" se passe, finja ser o Irmão "B" assim escondendo de seus pais a morte de seu irmão fazendo os acreditarem que ele não morreu, ou seja, ficam dois Irmãos "A" só que um deles se passando pelo "B". O pior é que, quando paramos para pensar um pouco...Percebemos que claramente o escritor implica que a fonte dos problemas da família, do fato da mãe ter se drogado, de seu pai ter fugido de casa, a fonte desses problemas é a morte do pobre doente garoto. Então para resolver isso é só ignorar a morte do garoto substituindo pelo seu irmão gêmeo. Isso é extremamente bizarro, errado, NÃO Doctor Who e de muito mal gosto, nenhum Doctor teria essa tal atitude. Eu sinceramente desconsidero totalmente essa história.

This is the most disgusting and NOT Doctor Who story of all time, the worst is that this entire disaster is entirely made up in a typical cozy Christmas story with beautiful and emotional soundtracks. Following a distress signal, the Doctor, Steven, and Sara come across several times on several Christmases with a young boy - As we delve deeper into his character, we discover that the boy had a twin brother who died of leukemia which resulted in his mother taking drugs to kill herself, and his father running away from home. As the story progresses, several revelations are presented to us, providing explanations for their question marks - The disgusting part is in its conclusion, where we have the Doctor taking the sick brother of the boy to his TARDIS, he ends up dying in the arms of Sara Kingdom on Mars. From this, the Doctor has the idea of switching the brothers, to make it easier to understand let's title each of them with a letter:

Brother "A" (the one who was alive)

Brother "B" (who died)

*remembering that they were twin brothers

As Brother "B" was dead in Sara Kingdom's arms, the Doctor has the idea of sending Brother "A" moments before their parents knew of "B"'s death. The idea is that Brother "A" pretends to be Brother "B", thus hiding from their parents the death of his brother making them believe that he did not die, in other words, there are two Brother "As" but one of them pretending to be "B". The worst part is that, when we stop to think a little... We realize that clearly the writer implies that the source of the family's problems, the fact that the mother took drugs, and her father ran away from home, the source of these problems is the death of the poor sick boy. So to fix this is just to ignore the death of the boy by replacing him with his twin brother. This is extremely bizarre, wrong, NOT Doctor Who and in very bad taste, no Doctor would have such an attitude. I completely disregard this story.

(Translation generated by AI, so mistakes are possible).


KnuppMello

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The premise of this sounded dopey, but it actually works well. The ending is incredibly bittersweet and actually made me cry, which I was by no means expecting. It shows, however briefly, a real soft side to the First Doctor that I appreciated.


SophieScarlet

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This review contains spoilers!

This is a Christmas tale, originally written as part of the Short Trips: Companions collection (the story very much focusses on Sara Kingdom).

It also ties rather nicely into the 2017 Christmas special, Twice Upon a Time which featured the same historical event which forms part of this story – the Christmas Day 1914 truce between the British and German forces and the resultant football match.

The Little Drummer Boy is set in the ‘gap’ between episodes 7 and 8 of The Dalek’s Masterplan which Big Finish have exploited as an opportunity to give Jean Marsh’s Sara Kingdom a new life as a ‘proper’ companion.  The trilogy of Companion Chronicles featuring her are excellent and this early Short Trip is just as good.  I know a few fans have issues with adventures being squeezed into tiny gaps of the TV series’ narrative (such as all the stuff with 5th Doctor, Peri and Erimem being slotted in between Planet of Fire and The Caves of Androzani) but for me, it’s one of the wonders of Doctor Who – that we can have fun with the TV narrative to explore characters and give us more adventures to enjoy (and Twice Upon a Time continues this tradition by creating a whole new adventure for the 1st Doctor between individual scenes of a TV story).

The story actually flits between a few time zones but the one afforded the most time is the WW1 battlefield where fighting has stopped and the men sing carols and play football.  Steven joins in the game whilst the Doctor enjoys some time pretending to be a minister from the War Office.  Sara, meanwhile, talks to the eponymous drummer boy, Robert, who it soon becomes apparent is travelling in time.

The way he is doing this is slowly revealed and, at one point, I assumed it was going to be a human TARDIS like Compassion.  It turns out, however, to be other technology from another race.  The tale ends in a rather bittersweet way with the boy being returned to his own time.

This audio version is one of the Short Trips Rarities which are basically releases which were, originally, exclusive to subscribers but have now been put on general release.  It’s a lovely reading by Beth Chalmers (although her Steven is inexplicably more Cockney than Peter Purves ever was).


deltaandthebannermen

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What a perfect short trip I feel this is the story where Sara fully joins the tardis team as she’s very prominent in this story and also this story makes me CRY like no body’s buisness


Rock_Angel

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