Salt of the Earth

The Third Doctor is perhaps my favourite Doctor thus far and whilst he and companion Jo Grant are characterised fairly well here this doesn't feel much like a Third Doctor story, with no UNIT, no Master yet still set on (virtually)contemporary Earth. The TARDIS lands on a salt lake in Australia in 2028 where they discover strange statues made of salt which look worryingly like people.

I really liked the setting and the idea of the Third Doctor 'blokarting'- being a man of action I could picture Jon Pertwee doing that- but this lacks in some of the key elements a really good Doctor Who story needs. The first of these is a villain, or at least a strong sci-fi element, which this story doesn't really have. Another is a strong guest cast- here we only really have one woman and a dog and oddly quite a high proportion of the story is told from the dog's point of view.

I could see that Trudi Canavan had chosen a place that she knows and loves because the setting is really strong here but it feels a bit like he had a setting and then tried to build a Doctor Whos story around it, and didn't do a terribly good job. In fact the solution is almost identical to one of the Ninth Doctor stories.

Not a complete failure but my least favorite of the Time Trips stories so far

Tales of Trenzalore

Tales of Trenzalore tells some of the stories of the Doctor defending the town of Christmas on the planet Trenzalore during his long stint there. You really need to have seen the Eleventh Doctor's final story "The Time of the Doctor" for the context.

Let it Snow by Justin Richards: This is a decent story featuring the Ice Warriors as the aggressors. It's great that we get a well characterised Ice Lord and they have a decent plan but it does feel like any alien race could have taken their place, like the Cybermen. Seeing the Doctor's relationship with the people of Christmas also works really well in this story. It's a strong start to the collection.

An Apple a Day by George Mann: Having the Krynoids is an interesting choice for this story. They are the least well known of the aliens to feature here, having appeared in just one TV story, and the seed pods can't germinate in the cold and Trenzalore rarely reaches above freezing temperatures. Somehow though Mann manages to make it work wonderfully well and he just about gets away with his way round the temperature issues. My favorite of the stories.

Strangers in the Outland by Paul Finch: Perhaps the weakest of the stories, largely because it doesn't reach it's potential. It's an Auton story and the Nestene Consciousness' plan is to send in Auton replicas of the Doctor. Strangely though the author decides to make the plan not really work- barely any Autons survive and the replica side of things never comes into play, and that's really the main reason for having the Autons around outside of an environment when there are shop dummies.

The Dreaming by Mark Morris: Morris shows his horror credentials in this story featuring the Mara. It's genuinely creepy and I felt the story really got into the Eleventh Doctor's character and his thoughts about being stuck on Trenzalore better than the other stories here. My one issue with it though is that it feels like it drifts a little from the character of the Mara shown on TV in the 80s.

Overall this is a good collection and I'm really pleased that Justin Richards and BBC Books have been coming up with lots of clever ideas for e-books which tie more directly into the TV series than most Doctor Who books. A great idea with four decent stories which make it work.