This was slow going.
As our fourth multi-doctor story this marathon (and technically our third Christmas story), I’m starting to feel the marathon fatigue somewhat. But there’s only more to come with the other/timeless child/fugitive Doctor.
The Other only appears for two paragraphs towards the last few chapters and the reference is so vague that it could mean anything or nothing. Which is my preference honestly. I strongly believe that the Doctor's past should forever remain a mystery. I mean, it's called Doctor Who after all.

That said, vague allusions and metaphors seem to be all that this book has going for it.

The plot is actually very simple, the Doctor and Ace become trapped inside a dreamscape; inception style. Which should be right up my alley. I love surrealism and character studies, and I'll admit that there are some cool ideas featured here, but it takes so long just to get to the bloody point!

In the beginning we're treated to some neat visuals and set ups, ideas that could have been their own adventures in their own right, but these are swept aside almost as soon as they are introduced and then we're off to the next new thing. It's not until the Doctor enters the dreamscape himself does the story pick up and that's nearly halfway through the book.

All this is to say that the first half of the story is very disjointed and as a whole the book doesn't really gel together. There's also just the general problem with tone that I tend to take issue with with most New Adventures. Unpleasantness for the sake of seeming more mature than it really is, that leaves me cold. In the author's defense it's better handled here than in other books and most of it is reversed by the end, but I still don't like it.

Also did we, the audience, really need know that Ace has a foot fetish?

What rescues the book is the character development. Both Ace and the Doctor receive tons of it and it's a refreshing change of pace, that sadly only emerges during the last quarter of the novel. But if you have the patience to wade through the gobbledygook to get there, you'll be rewarded with a pretty satisfying ending..... so long as you ignore the fact that the New Adventures will go on to undermine this new found development later, but oh well.

Finally, Saul the sentient church is such a lovely character that I would adore seeing in the show proper.

During Doctor Who’s hiatus in the 90s, an independent company called Reeltime Pictures created a bunch of made for home video spin-off movies and documentaries of the show. They received the license to make these films on the condition that The Doctor couldn’t make an appearance himself. Therefore the features focus on the The Doctor’s former companions instead.

While Sarah Jane makes an appearance, the film mainly focuses on The Brigadier and Victoria. Who, in an interesting turn of events, plays the antagonist. She’s not the main big bad, that’s the Great Intelligence, but it’s such an intriguing twist to see one of the Doctor’s companions go rogue without him around to guide them.

Especially Victoria, one of the series most innocent and naive characters. She’s now become this cold and distant figure, lost in a time that’s not her own. And tragically you see her younger self trying to get out. She still cares about people. She wants to help, but she inadvertently becomes just a pawn in the larger villain’s game as she slowly loses control.

This is the best Victoria has ever been written and Deborah Watling just sparkles on screen when finally given something meaty to play. I am so sad we never got more of this version of the character, especially since the film left her ending open.

That’s not to say that the other characters don’t get their share of development either. This story marks the first appearance of The Brigadier’s daughter, Kate Stewart. Kate herself will eventually go on to replace her dad as head of UNIT in the new series, but here they’re estranged and finally reconnecting after six years of not talking.

See the Brig never told his family what he did for a living, not fully. Most likely for their own safety and for legal reasons. However, it did put a strain on his relationships with them.

Downtime gives us a more personable look at The Brigadier and his life after UNIT. It’s a compelling bit of realism that helps to ground the film.

And boy does it need grounding! The plot makes more sense then say, Ghostlight, but only just. There’s a lot of strange editing choices and it feels like there are scenes missing from the final cut. The borderline mystic technobabble used in place of exposition doesn’t help matters. But most confusing of all is how the heck did Victoria get to Tibet?

Like, apparently she’s rich because her dad left her money invested in the bank, that quadrupled over the centuries. I get that she has the means to go there... but I don’t understand why. Last we saw her she was being adopted by a loving family, so why is she going through all this expense to find her dead dad.... who she knows is long gone.

Basically we’re missing some backstory. What happened to her foster parents? Why didn’t she keep in contact with Travers and Ann? Why didn’t she look for the Brigadier and get in touch with him before going to Tibet?

The film wants to isolate her as a means of motivating her to the dark side, but that requires explaining where her previous support group went. Which it never does.

Plot holes aside, I did find myself enjoying this outing of Doctor Who (minus the Doctor). Oh sure, it has a very cheap, fresh out of film school aesthetic, and less then stellar editing/plotting. But I went into this not expecting much and came away pleasantly surprised by the character work and strong acting.

This was cute.

A 1950s housewife who moonlights as a science fiction author for pulp magazines gets caught up in one of the Doctor's adventures when Zoe suddenly materializes inside her living room.

It's a very simple story, despite the set up. A mad scientist from the future wants to mutate humanity into insects and has a robot army. There's a plot MacGuffin that can stop him, and Betty the housewife/sci-fi writer is recruited to help out because she can sneak past the robots who wouldn't have her on file in their memory banks yet.

No, what makes this story stand out is the change of view character. Rather than the Doctor or one of the companions, we're seeing the adventure from the view point of one of the normal people who get caught up in these things. Who has a life changing experience and then just moves on with their normal lives.

It's refreshing, and absolutely what the Short Trip range is for. Giving us a look at the wider universe of the series as a whole.

So we return to the TV comic, and it is much less fantastical than last time.

The Doctor and Jamie get chased by some quarks inside a jungle, and not even a cool alien jungle, but a modern day one in Africa. That's it.

It's not bad, but it's also a nothing of a story. The Doctor and Jamie run around a bit until they steal a bulldozer from a construction site nearby.

It says a lot about the quarks that they're easily defeated by a bulldozer.

The only notable thing about the comic is the insensitive 60s crap that you wouldn't find today, like the quarks employing stereotypical native tribes as their foot soldiers and the Doctor killing an innocent leopard that wasn't doing any harm.

I'm still not over that.

No, the most interesting thing about the comic is the 6B meta stuff surrounding it but that's not really the focus here.

I would recommend the TV comics as a whole but this one, in particular, isn't anything special.

When the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe are forced to land the TARDIS unexpectedly, they wind up stranded on a mining colony on an ice moon of Saturn during the early days of Earth’s space exploration. The little colony is little more than a slave camp run by the Bootstrap corporation and it’s melomaniac CEO. But while tensions start to rupture between the children of the colony and their oppressors, a new threat emerges. A much older threat. An ancient threat. And it wants to go home.

Alright, let’s talk about what I liked about this story first.

The world building is great, to start with. In fact it maybe the book’s biggest strength. The author not only lays out this futuristic colony and culture extremely well, but he also fills in the past leading up to it’s creation, giving you an idea of how everyone got there and why.

The author also does a good job of providing little character moments to make you care about his original characters while also representing the regulars very well. I especially liked the conflict Zoe had to visiting her near past, where everything was familiar and yet wrong at the same time to her. And of course, the most successful of these new characters is MMAC the Scottish robot, who you wind up feeling for very deeply.

Though this does lead to a minor problem. Some characters are introduced and then not given much of a resolution... like with First and their growing sentience or Harry trying to reconnect with his estrange kids after a divorce. These plot points are introduced and then either dropped or given a measly pay off.

Worse is the villain's arc. The author tries to give her depth and and a tragic backstory, and it just doesn’t work because her past doesn’t logically connect back to her current goals. The Doctor says she’s just out for revenge, but revenge against whom exactly? No one aboard the colony has anything to do with what happened to her in her childhood, and her plan doesn’t stand to gain her anything against those she does blame for her woes.

Which is a shame because I would have gladly accepted her as just a Elon Musk/Jeff Bezos stand in. She doesn’t actually need to be anything more than greedy and stupid.

Which loops me back around to what I do enjoy about the conflict. The classism and socio-economic disparity between the uber rich and the exploited poor is a tale as old as time, but is sadly even more relevant today than when the book was publish only a decade ago. It’s a nice little allegory to real world problems, with interesting socio-political problems born from advance technology reshaping the world; just as all good science fiction should be.

At least the political conflict is interesting, the alien invasion stuff not so much. The Blue Dolls/Soldiers and the ancient being controlling them, are just a little too similar to Autons and the Nestene to really make an impact. And efforts to try and make them more unique, only fail in the end because of the lack of follow through. The idea that they might have minds of their own are dropped in favor of generic base under siege stuff.

There’s also the weird pacing at times. Like the author builds up to something climatic only to cut away and claim it was resolved off screen. Then we get chapters of exposition instead. Or in the case of the runaways subplot, Jamie having to rescue a bunch of teenagers from their own stupidity over and over again.

I mean there’s only so many times I can read about a dumb kid braking his ankle on a scooter for the umpteenth time, before I start to think that maybe the adults had a point in trying to ‘ground’ them, so to speak.

Really the trip to Titan is such pointless filler in the end and is where the book starts to drag a bit. Which is a shame because it would have been the perfect time to give us some more world building/character development and it just doesn’t. It’s also when the more boring alien invasion stuff reaches it’s peak.

Fortunately, once Jamie returns things start to pick back up again, as the book heads towards it’s finale.

All this is to say, I really enjoyed the novel over all, despite its weaknesses. I think it’s a strong contender for the top five slot in the Second Doctor ranking I’ll do later, but it’s never going to beat the likes of The Invasion.

Oh I lucked out with the randomizer on this one. The Invasion is arguably one of Troughton’s best stories. At eight episodes, rather than feeling over long, the story uses it’s length to slowly build tension and mystery. Even the two missing episodes are well animated and fit the rest of the story nicely.

It features the creation of UNIT, the return of the Brigadier, the debut of Benton, and at the heart of the story, a cat and mouse game between the Doctor and Tobias Vaughn. Vaughn is one of the most entertaining and charismatic villains the franchise has ever produced, and it all hinges on Kevin Stoney’s fantastic and commanding performance.

Which is only backed up by Troughton’s equally mesmerizing acting. It’s truly a tragedy that so much of Troughton’s work in Who is lost. His performance is so physical, so much so that most of his stories simply don't translate to other mediums, even with decent animation. Watch his movements, his understated facial expressions. The Doctor is a character who is always thinking, and Troughton arguably conveys that aspect of the character better then any other who has played the part.

If I have any complaints about the story they’re all very minor.

For starters, some of the pseudoscience and fake military jargon is silly sounding to anyone who is remotely familiar with the real stuff. A machine that forces you to feel emotions is pure fantasy, but it’s also very Doctor Who so I can’t dock the story for it too much.

Also poor Jamie isn’t well served in this outing. He brightens any scene he’s in and gives the characters someone to bounce off of, but he himself accomplishes very little. However, Zoe gets tons of cool things to do so I guess it balances out.

And finally, I just don’t like the character of Isabelle all that much and she’s sadly everywhere in the story. She’s less than useless, flighty, stupid, and infuriatingly stubborn, turning her nose up at everyone save for Zoe. Worst she gets two people killed trying to ‘help’, and she still makes no impact on the plot as her endeavors wind up being pointless. Let’s just say I’m glad the show brought Benton back and not her for the next season.

It’s been a few years since I’ve seen the tv story this book is adapting, but I remember enjoying it at the time. It would seem that I enjoyed it for all the wrong reasons though. Without the silly 60s designs and over the top acting this story is rather dull.

I don’t mean that it’s bad, per-say, or that I was bored reading it, but it’s very Who by the numbers, isn’t? On paper it becomes very clear that this was supposed to be a Daleks (serial not monster) reboot.
The Quarks are discount Daleks (monster not serial); lacking in both personality and menace
The Dulcians are just even more boring Thals
The story is located in a barren land destroyed by nuclear war
The only thing new here is the Dominators, and they’re one dimensional, ineffective villains that would rather argue more amongst themselves then do, well anything really. They’re only a threat because the Dulcians are just that pathetic.

The only thing that makes this story interesting is the regulars. The Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe are such well defined characters that they make any scene shine… yet their true strength lies in the great actors playing them and this aspect is of course lost on the page. They’re still entertaining but not quite as much as they are on the screen.

And that’s pretty much my assessment of the novelization as a whole. It’s a passable adaptation, but the original story is better. Not because of any failure on the author’s behalf, but because the change in medium takes so much away from the story.

During the middle of the pandemic, Emily Cook, then editorial assistant of Doctor Who Magazine, created a multimedia campaign to help keep the show going and to provide outreach to people trapped at home. This project was called Lockdown! and it involved live streams of older episodes, original minisodes, singlongs, comics, short stories, charity outreach, and even fanworks.

The project had it’s own website, youtube channel, and twitter feed. It also featured cast and crew from various areas of Who, to provide semiofficial media.

Doctors Assemble! is a minisode, that’s more like a mini-podcast. It features all 13 Doctors (plus War) communicating over a live screen share chat as they try to figure out how to stop the Fourth Doctor’s Tardis from collapsing. The story is told through voice over only and still images. The only thing animated is the interior of the Tardis. This is both because of safe social distancing practices, and because none of the original actors reprise their roles here.

All of the voice actors are good, though some are better at impersonating their respective doctors than others. Some are uncanny in their recreations, and others you can tell are a recast but they get the personality right which is what’s really important.

Of course though what really shines here is the writing. It’s nothing complex and half the dialogue is in-jokes and memes, but the characterization is spot on and it’s just pure fun listening to all the Doctors bounce off each other. I especially like the dynamic of them all acting like bickering siblings, except for the first, who is their clueless old Grandpa who can’t figure out the tech and who they’re all trying to avoid getting in trouble with.

Also if you can track it down, Cook posted a special edition with a fun extra cameo at the end.

The Early Adventures are a cross between The Companion Chronicles and a regular full cast audio. It would feature returning actors to their original companion roles, recasts for characters who’s actors had past on, and new actors brought in to play bit parts and guest characters. However, along with this full cast, there would still be narration like in the CC ranges and oftentimes actors from the original run would double up on parts. Which is the case for this story.

Frazer Hines plays both the Doctor and Jamie in this outing, and I think he does a fine job. Less convincing, sadly, is Deborah Watling as Victoria. It’s no one’s fault really, but you can’t help but notice how much her voice has changed over the years every time she speaks. It’s something of a distraction from an other wise strong cast. Speaking of which the guest characters are all superb in this.

It’s hard to talk about the story without getting into spoilers but I shall try.

The Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria land inside a spaceship colony that’s been entrapped by a black hole. Everyone but them is affected by this; with time suddenly freezing or people winking out of existence. The only people who know what’s going on is the leader of the colony and an another investigating Time Lord.

There’s some great twists in this serial. Hence my reluctance to spoil anything. I truly appreciate anyone being able to pull off a decent twist correctly, let alone the three or four we get in this story. All of which you don’t see coming but make absolute sense once revealed.

If I have any criticism it’s that the final act does feel a bit rushed. The monster of the day arrives late on the scene and fails to make much of an impression, and being on audio, the action can be hard to follow at times. But as these creatures aren’t the main focus of the story, this is a very minor complaint.

Overall I do recommend this story to anyone who is a Second Doctor fan. It’s a well executed story that plays around with continuity without braking it, brings back some fun old foes, introduces new and interesting characters, and gives me the shippy Jamie and Victoria scenes that I’ve been asking for this marathon.

This the first of many multi doctor stories that we’ll be looking at for the Second Doctor. This one is a PC adventure game released back in 1997. (but apparently made back in 1995)

As for the plot of the game, the Master, played brilliantly by Anthony Ainley, has kidnapped all seven of the Doctor’s incarnations inside a place called the Determinant. A psychedelic prison that the Master has created with his mind by taking control of the planet Siralos, which is made of "pure psychic energy".

Basically it’s a mindscrew land where the Master can warp reality at his will. You play as Graak, a gelatinous blob like creature that the Doctor created by utilizing the planet’s psychic energy. You have to free each doctor by solving the Master’s riddles, fetch quests, and games before running out of energy; all while dodging famous Doctor Who monsters who have teamed up with the Master to stop you.

The various Doctors only appear as a series of reused audio and video clips, though they hired a couple of VAs to voice the First and Second Doctors who had past on at this point. Also the Brigadier shows up to give the players hints over the radio. Nicholas Courtney I believe did record new lines for this but he never makes an on screen appearance. The only person you actually see on screen is Ainley’s Master, and you can tell he’s having blast.

This was Ainley’s final performance in the role and it’s arguably his best. Ainley himself has gone on record to state that this was his favorite Doctor Who story to work on. It’s also the only reason to seek the game out. The Master sells the the show and the story neatly ties into the tv movie with Paul McGann, which makes that bizarre opening sequence make a little more sense.

Outside of those two things though, there’s really no reason to play the game. The story is good, but the controls are atrocious. You’re wondering around in low-polly maze-like corridors with no direction nor map, using tank like, first-person controls which hamper your visibility even more. Oh and there’s underwater sections!

On top of that there’s some quality of life mechanics that are either missing or should be removed all together. The limited energy countdown/timer mechanic isn’t a fun challenge. The save points are literally hidden within the maze and you have to pick them up, if you miss any you can be shot back to square one. The sound mixing is bad. The weapons don’t do much against the bad guys chasing you. And due to graphic limitations, it’s hard to keep track of where you’re going and where you’ve been as everything looks the same, and you have no markers to indicate whether or not you came this way before, so it’s easy to get stuck walking in circles.

It’s a shame really. You can tell a lot of effort was put into this, and there are good ideas buried in it but it lacks polish. This is one of those games that would actually benefit from a remake/release if someone went in and fixed the controls and tweaked the mechanics a bit, maybe add a mini-map in the corner or something.

This story was another mini history lesson for me. As an American, who’s never seen Braveheart, I knew jack all about William Wallace. I didn’t know who he was, what he did, or what he was known for. I didn’t even know what time period he lived in. Which made things a little confusing as the author clearly expects you to know these basics going into the story.

Today’s Short Trip comes from the anthology The Quality of Leadership. The central theme of the book is the Doctor meeting various leaders through out time and space. Hence where William Wallace comes in; the leader of The First War of Scottish Independence.

Aboard the Tardis, Jamie and Victoria have an argument over the historical figure. As a Scotsman who has fought the British army himself, Jamie idolizes William Wallace as a hero. While Victoria, an upper-class woman from late Victorian England, has bought into the British propaganda she’s been told her whole life and believes him to be villain. Only for the Tardis to land them in 13th century Scotland where they get to meet the real William Wallace and both have their preconceptions about the man challenged.

Let’s talk about the things I liked in this story first.

I liked how Jamie’s and Victoria’s backgrounds are used to flesh out their characters. They’re some of the few historical companions to travel with the Doctor, so of course their points of view are informed by how they were raised. Everyone feels completely in character.

I also like how the setting plays into those backgrounds. Jamie is right at home, even if he’s technically centuries in his past, because he has a chance to reconnect with his culture. Victoria is more out-of-place, and believes herself to be from a more ‘advance and civilized’ age, but is then faced with the harsh reality that all that she’s been taught about the British Empire is wrong.

Which is where my problems with the story come in. I know it’s only a short story but I wish the set ups and themes here were pushed even further.

Like I said, the author expects the audience to already know who William Wallace is and what time period he lived in, so there’s not enough effort spent on establishing how out of time Jamie and Victoria really are. Which is something you have to take extra care in establishing since they’re already historical companions.

I also don’t think Victoria was challenged enough on her beliefs. She seems to view Wallace’s injustice in isolation rather than as part of a larger systematic problem. The villainous English officer who hounds them and threatens them is just a bad egg to her mind and not a product of his environment. Therefore, it feels like she’s just sorry that the she’s being separated from the guy she has a crush on instead of learning a valuable lesson on the evils of imperialism.

Which leads to my second complaint. As a Victoria and Jamie shipper, I’m not too fussed over her romance with Wallace. Which just abruptly ends when he has to go on the run from the law, and she has to continue on traveling with the Doctor. He doesn’t even ask her to come with him or anything, so we don’t even get a rejection to resolve the plot point.

All in all, it’s not a bad tale, but I think this is one of the few Short Trips that could have benefited from being a longer story.

In an effort to experience missing episodes, the BBC has released the surviving audios with narration. This one being narrated by Anneke Wills.

Now naturally Power of the Daleks is one of Troughtons best stories and the production work on the soundtrack is very professional, but I'm not sure if these audios are for me.

While there's a lot of detail that comes through with the narration, I also find it hard to focus on what's going on without images. Perhaps because the episode was made to be seen, or because I have adhd, I found my mind zoning in and out; even when only listening to one episode at a time and trying to do things while it plays in the background so that I'm not distracted. (Yes, I get more distracted just sitting and doing nothing while listening to audio...blame the ADD)

I'm glad to have given it a proper try, but from now on I'll probably stick to retcons and animations.

There’s not many Doctor Who based video games out there and even fewer with the First Doctor, but there are a handful of multi-doctor games that he features in. The randomizer chose one such game for the marathon.

Doctor Who: Legacy was a free-to-play mobile game created for the 50th anniversary of the show. I say, ‘was’, because the game has since been discontinued. In order to play it you need an Android emulator and the APK file of the game.

I tried the game out using this method and it seemed to work fine. You can’t use the online features but the story mode and events are playable.

The game is a typical match three style game. Where you try to match three or more colors. You build a team of one doctor and five companions. Each color corresponds to a member of your team and how many combos you get determiners your attack power. It’s a turn based battle system, and during your turn you have the option of using a character’s special abilities if they’ve made enough successful hits.

It’s nothing ground breaking, but the game-play is solid enough, using basic match style features and rpg level ups. The more you play the more characters you collect and the stronger they grow. My problems with the game are mostly the same complaints I have for any free-to-play mobile game; the story is poorly paced out, too much grinding, you have to level up every new character you gained from scratch, ect. and so on. However, I do like the feature of being able to move pieces wherever you want to on the board instead of having to move only one space at a time like you do in other match games.

The story, what little there is of it, involves the Sontarans gaining time travel technology and creating a new time war that threatens all of reality, recruiting various villains from the show and fracturing the Doctor’s timeline.

There are four ‘seasons’ where the stakes are increased as new threats build upon the other. The First Doctor doesn’t appear until season three, where the big bad is the various incarnations of the Master.

Which all sounds very interesting, except it takes so bloody long to get through the thing that the story just limps long dully in the background. And it doesn’t even have a proper conclusion because the BBC dropped the game in favor of an entirely different mobile game later on! Which just reinforces my belief that on-going mobile puzzle games shouldn’t have stories to begin with.

The only other thing I want touch upon is the uneven representation between Classic and New Who. Polly is the only 60s companion to be playable in the entire game and yet the most random-ass, forgettable, one-off characters from the new series completely swamp the story, especially early on.

Like I have no interest in playing as the bitchy boss lady from the Rebel Flesh who’s name I can’t even remember. Give me Ian, dammit!

Anyways, the game is a decent time waster, but I can’t recommend it on a story front, and if you’re a classic fan you’re not going to get much in the way of fanservice either.

The Gunfighters is my least favorite Hartnell story on tv. It’s not bad, but I do consider it weaker than most of his other outings. So imagine my surprise when the randomizer landed on the novelization for it.

I would argue that this adaptation is better written than the episode it’s based off of. The plot is more or less the same, but the characterization is stronger, the tone is more consistent, and there’s no blasted song nor fake western accents to sit through.

The story is written almost like a parody of Mark Twain, if Mark Twain had a darker and more violent sense of humor. The book reads like how Revelation of the Daleks watches. It’s a black comedy through and through, where death is common, casual, and caviler.

Almost too caviler at times. I personally did not care for the additional scene of the Doctor accidentally shooting some bystanders, presumably killing them, and the story treating it as no big deal. The overall story is well written, but it suffers from being saddled to a preexisting, family friendly series where we have established characters that simply would not behave in the way that they do on the page.

While it was an interesting read, the actual filmed story, for all its faults, feels more like Doctor Who.

Big Finish’s Short Trips are basically audio versions of the anthology series of the same name. One episode adventures recounted by a single narrator. Sometimes in first person perspective, like a shorter companion chronicle, and sometimes told in third person instead. There’s always only one narrator, and some audio production, but the series is more like an audiobook than a full cast play. However, unlike the novel collections, these stories are often sold individually rather than as a connected anthology.

Steven and the Doctor land inside a pine forest on Christmas day, where the only sign of civilization is a lone cottage in the middle of the wood. There they find a little girl and her ill grandfather. The girl’s father is missing.... and there’s something wrong with the trees...

Yes, we have yet another Christmas themed short story, and no I did not plan it that way. Just believe me when I say this is a common reoccurring theme in Doctor Who.

We also have another Steven focused adventure, only this time he and Doctor are traveling alone. This takes place between that brief period where Vicki has left the TARDIS but Dodo hasn’t joined them yet.

Peter Purves reprises his role as Steven, telling the story in first person, and plays the part beautifully as always. I do enjoy the insights into what Christmas growing up was like for him, as he’s from the far future. It contrasts nicely against the very rustic early 20th century setting. There’s no exact date to the story, but the only technology shown is a gramophone, so that gives one a vague idea.

Speaking of the gramophone, the sound design is excellent and incorporates the title song into the scene seamlessly, setting up a nice atmosphere. And indeed, atmospheric is the best word to describe this tale. The plot and it’s resolution, (the trees are spoiled teenaged aliens and just need a good lecture from the Doctor to convenience them to stop kidnapping people), is rather silly, but the story doesn’t break immersion because of it’s confidence in itself and its presentation.

I give this tale a solid recommendation of, ‘Good’.

The Doctor and his two grandchildren, John and Gillian, are on a quest to rescue the children of Hamlin from the Pied Piper. A seemingly magical being who has trapped everyone within a magical realm, and it’s up to the Doctor to outsmart him with science and his bag full of modern equipment.

This was cute. I haven’t looked into the old tv comics much, but each time I have they’ve been delightful. Doctor Who’s spin off media seems more willing to skirt the line between science fiction and fantasy, which I appreciate.

I also like what I’ve seen of John and Gillian. I find it ironic that some people will bend over backwards trying to make the Fugitive Doctor a pre-Hartnell incarnation despite the obvious potholes surrounding that theory, yet absolutely refuse to acknowledge the Doctor’s other grandchildren as canon. I mean come on, it’s not like their existence is any less plausible than the Timeless Child arc.

Anyways, minor quibbles about continuity aside, the Pied Piper does come back during an episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures that explains his powers. Where’s he’s played by Bradely Walsh, who would later go on to play the Doctor’s companion Gram as well.

See, everything comes full circle.

The Cadet Sweets' Cards are consider by most historians to be the first official Doctor Who merchandise ever sold. Cadet Sweets made candy cigarettes and inside each pack came a trading card. These fifty Doctor Who themed collector cards, when read in order, created an ongoing story. Or two stories really....

It starts off on Marinus with the Voords fighting the Daleks. They then call for an uneasy truce when the Daleks discover that the Voord are planning on invading Earth, and they join forces to find a rare mushroom that's supposed to give you physic powers. The Doctor, oh sorry, "Dr. Who" sneaks aboard the Voord ship to sabotage their plans.

Long story, short, the Doctor teams up with the Chief Voord and together they double cross the Daleks by tricking them into eating poisonous mushrooms instead. It's a thin plot but nothing too egregious; it's the second half that gets real weird.

In the second part of the story a lone Dalek allows himself to be captured by Earth forces in order to seek an audience with "Dr. Who". Turns out the Emperor Dalek wants the Doctor's help in defeating a super computer they've built that has gained sentience and is attempting to destroy Sarko. The Doctor agrees to help, but only because a planet blowing up might damage other planets in it's blast radius.

This super computer controls a super nuke and is, for some reason, programed to shoot anything on site that comes near it, including Daleks... even though the Daleks would have no reason to program something that would kill other Daleks.... Even dumber, the Doctor can walk through the lasers without getting hurt because the lasers are built to only harm Daleks... even though Daleks are the ones who built the lasers... What?

Oh and the whole thing ends with the Doctor having a celebratory dinner with his most hated enemies, and him mentioning that he's half human on his mother's side or something.

 You'll also notice that each card comes with illustrations. The artist does a decent enough job at portraying aliens, monsters, landscapes, and spacecrafts, but at no point does the Doctor ever actually look like Hartnell.

The Tardis and various companions are also mysteriously absent. Making this story hard to place within any timeline. Consulting the Tardis Wiki it's suggested that any First Doctor solo stories might take place after the Five Doctors which, according to expanded media, took place shortly after The Dalek Master Plan. The reasoning being that the rose garden seen at the beginning of the special is at some sort of wellness retreat/memorial and Steven is off getting therapy.

I guess that's as good of an explanation as any, hence why I chose to review this story after the Dalek Annual featuring Sara Kingdom.

In conclusion, the Cadet Sweets Cards are an amusing, if bizarre, bit of Who history that doesn't quite fit with the wider lore. But then neither does most of the show proper, so really, what's the harm?

Charming. Utterly Charming.

Sure it’s a glorified trailer with mostly clips from the old show and badly edited in CGI, but look! It’s Vicki!

The Marketing Department didn’t have to go that hard. They could have given us an ordinary trailer and folks still would have bought the dvd, but they did and it was wonderful!

It’s so nice to see Vicki get a confirmed happy ending. Her exit from the Tardis was frothed with uncertainty, but it’s wonderful to know that she was ultimately happy with her choice.

Ah Big Finish, where would Doctor Who be without you?

For those who don’t know, Big Finish is a company that specializes in producing radio plays… radio plays that are listened to on CDs and MP3s instead. With the resurgence of podcasts recently, radio plays have come back in vogue, but Big Finish was out there decades prior still plugging along.

They primarily produce audios for old sci-fi and fantasy franchises, along with the occasional audiobook. However Doctor Who is their bread and butter. They helped keep the show alive during it’s 16 year long hiatus, and are still making new content for older eras of the show to this day.

The Companion Chronicles are a ‘spin-off’ series that focuses on the Doctor’s past companions recounting previously untold tales of their travels. Unlike the ‘main-range’ with it’s full cast audios, CCs tend to only have one to three actors at a time. They’re paired back, more intimate affairs, but they tend to be longer than Short Trips, hence why I place them in the full audio category.

Besides, for earlier Doctors they tend to be more abundant than full cast plays.

But enough background, what is this particular audio play about?

More or less, yes.

Steven, Vicki, and the Doctor land in Britain in 1912 during the height of the Suffragette movement. In a quarry they find the bones of a physic alien that can possess women. It’s goal? To destroy all men.

Not just mankind, but anyone male specifically. Basically the alien is a radfem, who becomes worse than the very thing it supposedly hates most, as it subjugates people and forces them to fight against their will.

It’s not a very subtle message, and it conveniently ignores the existence of trans people who would throw a monkey wrench into the idea of an alien who feeds off of ‘female energy’, as if such a thing could even exist. However, I did enjoy this outing more than the previous Steven and Vicki adventure I read last week.

For starters, the inclusion of the original actors does heighten the material. I won’t lie, books have their place, but they can’t recreate the chemistry of two real live people interacting. Steven and Vicki have a fun sibling dynamic that was lost in The Empire of Glass, but shines here front and center as they retell the story together.

Another thing in the audio’s favor is that it’s smaller scale. It feels like something that could have feasibly happened in the show proper, even if the approach is different because of the medium. It’s also more focused thematically speaking, as well.

I also enjoyed the humor and the insights into how classism and sexism intersects. How women themselves can uphold systems of oppression against them if they feel it will protect their own power, and how men can be important allies too. I also enjoyed the critique on what types of political protests are most effective or not. While the message isn’t subtle, it does have layers.

Honestly I would have enjoyed these aspects of the story more, but they are mostly only focused on in the second half of the story, which also features a lot of exposition dumps. They’re important info dumps as they explain the main villain’s goals and motivations, and being an audio there’s no other way to get that information across, but still it’s a bit uneven pacing wise.

Overall though, this has been one of the more enjoyable stories so far. It’s no Crusade and I liked Set in Stone more, but it was a fun romp itself.

(PS. I love how the story unintentionally implies that Steven is actually a trans man who is offended by the alien mistaking him for a woman constantly, only to try and kill him whenever it figures out he’s actually a guy. lol)

This is a novel of two halves. Half of it is very good, and the other half is not so good. But it’s by no means bad per-say.

Let’s start with the basic plot. The Doctor returns to the Tardis after being taken out of time by the Time Lords. Long time fans will recognize that this story takes place after the events of The Three Doctors, but that matters not. What’s important is that the Doctor returns with an invitation in his hand, with no memory of ever receiving it.

Said invitation lacks any sort of explanation but comes only with time coordinates for Venice in the year 1601 AD. The Doctor and his companions, Steven and Vicki, fear it’s a trap, but the Doctor wants to spring the trap and get to the bottom of this mystery. From there we have a wild romp through the late Italian renaissance with aliens, mistaken identities, and several historical figures.

Now let’s talk about what doesn’t work first. For starters, there are way too many plot threads going on. I wouldn’t say it’s unwieldy, it does all come together in the end, but it’s very convoluted.

As a side effect of this, the inclusion of so many important historical figures feels superfluous and forced. Yes they all have a function within the plot, but it’s nothing that couldn’t have been achieved with mostly original characters to begin with. Rather than enhance the story, they often distract instead, especially William Shakespeare’s ludicrous sub-plot.

Also, and this may just be a personal taste thing, but this really didn’t feel like a ‘missing adventure’. I don’t know what it is with Virgin Publishing and their Doctor Who books, but a lot of the stuff I’ve read from them are too try hard and edgy, and would feel very out of place within the show proper. This particular book isn’t the worst offender by far, but it does take you out of the story sometimes. Especially since this is trying to mimic an actual First Doctor story, albeit one that has more sci-fi/historical mash up than was usual for him.

Finally, the characterization for the Doctor and his companions felt uneven. I was told that this was originally meant to be a Third Doctor story and I think it shows. There are definitely times when it feels like the First Doctor is a later Doctor just wearing a First Doctor mask it seems.

Vicki fares a little better, but is given little to do. However I do appreciate that the author is trying to give both her and Steven depth by exploring their respective traumas in a way that just couldn’t and wouldn’t be done on screen. However, Steven feels a little too abrasive… Yeah, I mean Steven was never the most enthusiastic companion, but I don’t remember him being this much a downer. I also don’t think the romance between him and Marlowe really worked. It feels like a scene is missing from their story, one where Steven actual recuperates Marlowe’s advances or something.

So for the good things… It’s well paced. The story trots along nicely and gives plenty of good details. The character’s who aren’t the mains are well realized. I like that the threat isn’t an alien invasion, but an attempt to sabotage an alien peace conference. I also like that the person who successfully negotiated the peace conference was a human priest who thought he had died and gone to heaven. That was the best twist, but most of the twists were well thought out.

There’s also illustrations!!

These are so rare in novels! Why? They’re a great thing to have.

However the best thing about this book is Brax.

For those who don’t know, Irving Braxiatel, known as Brax to his friends, is the Doctor’s brother. He’s also a rouge time lord, but unlike the Master or the Rani, he’s not really a villain. Nor is he always a good guy, but here he is trying to do the right thing and he easily charms his way into the reader’s hearts.

This is my first real encounter with the character, though I had heard of him before. He was named dropped in the Fourth Doctor story, City of Death. The only thing we knew about him was that he owned a massive library and museum. Turns out he’s kind of like the Collector from Marvel, but slightly less of a dick about it… slightly.

Anyways, the expanded universe has since took this one off mention and spun him into an important character who appears in books, audio plays, and even some spin-off cartoons!

Like I said, this is the first time I’ve come across the character, but I shall be rather pleased if he manages to show up again in the marathon. But who can say, it’s all up to the randomizer.

Oh and does anyone else think the random no-named Time Lord from Terror of the Autons is Brax too?

I have very little to say about this story other than that it’s really, really good. I hold the First Doctor’s era in high esteem and The Crusade is one of the best stories in season two. It’s a shame half of it is missing.

For those wondering, two of the episodes are considered lost to time, so in order to watch the whole story I watched the Loose Canon reconstructions of the missing episodes.

The pacing here is superb with plenty of action and intrigue. The dialogue sparkles and the character work is sound.

Refreshingly both sides of the conflict are shown as heroic and flawed in kind with no clear good guy/bad guy except for two antagonists who are on opposite sides of the war.

If I have any complaint, and it’s very minor, I wish it was told to King Richard at some point that if he wants to end the war so badly that he could just pick up and leave. He’s the invader here after all.

I love Short Trips. Anthologies and short stories are perhaps my favorite expanded media to come out of Doctor Who.

Today’s story comes from Short Trips: The History of Christmas. As you may guess from the title the theme of the anthology collection is Christmas and it’s surrounding holidays. There’s actually quite a few such Yuletide themed anthologies within the franchise.

This particular outing involves the First Doctor, Barbara, and Ian landing in Scotland in 1950, shortly after Susan has left them. What starts off as an extended holiday, to give them time to move on from their loss, turns into a heist caper to steal the coronation stone on Christmas day.

Apparently the story is based off a real event. On Christmas Day, 1950, four college students stole the Stone of Scone, a Scottish relic that was used for royal coronations for centuries, from Westminster Abbey where the English had stolen it centuries before to use in their own coronations. They had planned to return the stone to Scotland but accidentally broke the stone in half during the theft. They had a stone mason fix it and left the stone in Arbroath Abbey, a church in Scotland, where the English authorities just picked it back up anyways.

Since then the real stone has been returned to Scotland and rests with the Scottish crown jewels, but the English royalty still gets to ‘borrow’ it whenever they want to, like for King Charles' recent coronation. I wonder how well that arrangement will work out if Scotland votes to become an independent country again.

Anyways, back to the story. Barbara, Ian, and the Doctor replace the four students within the historical timeline of this retelling. However their reasons for doing so is less political and more extra-terrestrial. Turns out the stone is an intelligent alien space rock and they’re rescuing it.

What I really like about the short trips is that they don’t have to be these grand action packed adventures. Some are, but just as many are small character studies or world building exercises. This is a small, sweet story, where the most climatic, tension filled thing is a flat tire. Nothing is in danger of blowing up, no one dies, and the main conflict is whether or not Barbara and Ian want to continue traveling when they’re so close their own time; only 13 years too early.

It’s delightful. Utterly delightful, and I highly recommend it along with the rest of the anthology. Especially as Christmas nears.