Seasons of War: Tales from a Time War

This is an unofficial Doctor Who short story anthology, created to raise money for a charity called Caudwell Children. You can find out all about the charity and the project here. The stories focus on the Time War and the War Doctor, played by John Hurt on screen. 

It would be tempting to say you should donate and get this book just because it's a great cause. But actually the book itself is really rather good. Here's a little bit on each story:

Epilogue- Warsmiths by Matt Fitton: In typical timey-wimey fashion the prologue and epilogue are the wrong way round here. This story sees the War Doctor confront someone trying to stop the daleks from ever existing. It's set just before we meet the War Doctor in "The Day of the Doctor" and is an excellent start. 

Karn: This tells the story of the War Doctor's first moments of life after his regeneration in "The Night of the Doctor". It's a bit bleak but pretty wonderful.

Crowsnest Past by Warren Frey: Not very war-y, this is the War Doctor doing a typical Doctor Who story involving banking-based monsters set in Canada. I wasn't too keen on this story. It's fine but I felt any Doctor could have been involved here, and the book is focusing on the War Doctor.

The Eight Minute War by Lee Rawlings: The War Doctor assembles an army on board his TARDIS but things don't work out too well. This is one of my favourites of the collection and is a story that only feature this incarnation of the Doctor.

Everything in its Right Place by J.R. Southall: A weird land of fiction type story that features Alice from Alice in Wonderland. I fear this type of story has been overdone in the written world of Doctor Who and there's little that makes this particular story any better than others.

Corsair: The War Doctor works alongside fellow Time Lord the Corsair. It's fun to see more of a character only mentioned in the actual show. 

The Ambassador From Wolf-Rayet 134 by Kate Orman: An ambassador for an alien species that is time-sensitive visits Gallifrey. The War Doctor is on hand to ensure things run smoothly. An interesting alien species and interesting to see the War Doctor be war-like without having to be violent. 

The Amber Room by Simon Brett and John Davies: A new room in the TARDIS! And a human soldier meeting the War Doctor. A really enjoyable tale. 

Things the Daily Mirror got Wrong

Yesterday British "newspaper" the Daily Mirror published an article about Doctor Who with the headline"Doctor Who to go back in time as BBC ditches 'edgy' adult plots following ratings slump". The article can barely be called journalism at all and as such I thought it would be highly amusing to point out everything they got wrong.

It opens with the promo image for Series 8 with the following caption below it:

It is ridiculous that a professional newspaper can not spot such a silly mistake, unless of course it was intentional. Twitter user @ellardent speculated that "It's a new villain. A mad chemist fused himself with Tumblr" whilst @NicklebyWelks said "'Chemistr' is actually a rarely used abbreviation... ChemistRANIvoratrelundar".

The article then says some fans want changes and some want Steven Moffat to be sacked. This is perhaps the one thing the article has got right. There isn't really anything to make a story here though as you could find similar comments on the internet during any series of Doctor Who, and there's plenty of fans writing about how much they have enjoyed the series.

Next we have a quote from a "senior BBC source". There's also 'quotes' from "another insider" and "one [fan]". As any good historian knows, it is difficult to trust how reliable a source is when the actual source isn't revealed. Maybe someone did say these things, who am I to distrust? But actually it looks suspiciously like these quotes were simply made up. The irony is that it would be pretty easy to go on Twitter or a Doctor Who forum and find some genuine negative quotes from fans, but it looks like they couldn't even be bothered do to this.

The article then goes on to talk about ratings with the following paragraph:

 

Now that final part about Eccleston's debut is obviously irrelevant- of course it was going to have a huge audience when it was revived and the ratings were nowhere near as high for the rest of the series. Only one of the episodes of Series 8 actually had between six and seven million viewers (In the Forest of the Night with final ratings of 6.92m) with the rest being over 7 million and Deep Breath having 9.17 million viewers. They are pretty impressive figures anyway but when you consider that these figures only include people who watched on the night in the UK you realise how high they are- they don't include repeats, iPlayer viewings or the millions who watched acrosse the world. 

So Series 7 had 8 million viewers did it? I think that's what that sentence is supposed to mean, although with that grammar it is difficult to be certain. Well only three of the Series 7 episodes had over 8 million viewers and only one of those was in 2013. It is difficult to average out the number of viewers across a series but the numbers are probably very similar between series 7 and 8. The BBC even declared series 8 a "ratings success", although the Mirror seems to have forgotten about this.

I end with my favorite part of the article, this bit: 

The lack of chemistry thing does seem odd- from what I have seen on the internet most fans seems to like the chemistry between Capaldi and Coleman. The amusing part here though is the fans calling for the return of the Daleks and Cybermen. I had to read this several times because I was a little confused. Did I somehow watch a different series to these fans? Or have the Mirror made up this fact too? The daleks appeared in the second episode of the series, titled Into the Dalek (no question that there were daleks in that!) and the cybermen appeared in both episodes of the two part finale, Death in Heaven/Dark Water. 3 of the 12 episodes of the series had either daleks or cybermen in them- that's a quarter of the episodes! It's just nonsense.

In summary, ignore this article. It's badly researched, full of errors and gives absolutely no clues to what is going on in the production of series 9. It's pure click-bait, which is why I haven't even linked to the article.

Review: Behind You By Mark Williams

2014's short Doctor Who Christmas story (available here) sees the Twelfth Doctor go to a pantomime. 

It has a surreal threat, involving animal-headed humans, and has lots of pantomime based humour which actually really suited the Twelfth Doctor (who obviously dislikes pantomimes). For a short story the Twelfth Doctor was really well characterised. 

As with any short Doctor Who story, the biggest issue here is length. If the idea is decent it deserves to be given time to be enjoyed. There is potential here for a whole novel but we only get a few hundred words and that is frustrating. 

A fun little story which has a lot going for it. A great use of the Twelfth Doctor too!

Doctor Who Unlocked: Last Christmas

Every episode of Doctor Who has much more than meets the eye so I like to put together a little post exploring links to the past and other things you might not have known about! 

WARNING: Contains Spoilers

Last Christmas is the 10th Christmas Special in a row for Doctor Who. It is Peter Capaldi's first, Jenna Coleman's third, and Steven Moffat's fifth.

It is the 11th episode to air on Christmas day- the first was The Feast of Steven, part of The Daleks' Master Plan, which aired on 25th December 1965.

It is also the third christmas special in a row to feature actor Dan Starkey- he plays Ian the Elf. He also played his usual character Strax in The Snowmen (2012) and played several Sontaran warriors in The Time of the Doctor (2013).

Michael Troughton plays Professor Albert. He's the son of Second Doctor Patrick Troughton and his brother David Troughton has appeared in Doctor Who several times. The last time he was also a professor, Professor Hobbes in Midnight (2007).

Santa Claus is played by Nick Frost. His friend and regular collaborator Simon Pegg has also appeared in Doctor Who, as the Editor in The Long Game (2005).

The Doctor helps 'old Clara' pull a cracker which is a reference to The Time of the Doctor (2013) when Clara had to help the aged Eleventh Doctor pull one.

Clara is told not to salute. The Doctor has not liked being saluted for a while (see the likes of The Sontaran Strategm [2009]) and mostly recently protested against it in Death in Heaven (2014).

The episode plays homage to the film Alien (1979) and mentions it several times (in the dream scenes and on Shona's list). The film famously starred John Hurt, who played the War Doctor, who suffered a nasty end thanks to the titular alien.

Time Trips: The Anti Hero by Stella Duffy

This latest Time Trips short story features Patrick Troughton's Second Doctor and his companions Jamie & Zoe. The TARDIS takes them to the Museaum at Alexandria but as usual something weird is going on.

The story revolves around the Muses from Greek myth and it's the typical Doctor Who thing of explaining myths through science-fiction. 

The three leads are portrayed reasonably well and Zoe feels more like an equal than she often did on the screen.

The big problem here is the length. The Time Trips series are short stories and Duffy almost has enough material for a whole Doctor Who novel here. The plot is whizzed through and it would have been nice to see the characters explore more of the interesting setting.

It's far from the worst of the series and it's great to see the Second Doctor team again but I would have liked to have read the story in a longer format.

A Message From the Doctor

Peter Capaldi made this message for a 9 year old autistic boy whose grandmother had just died. What a man!

Review: Silhouette by Justin Richards

One of the first Twelfth Doctor novels, this book sees Peter Capaldi's Doctor and companion Clara head to Victorian London to investigate a mysterious power spike. Inevitably they meet up with the Paternoster Row gang, Madame Vastra, Jenny and Strax as they investigate a series of murders. 

I always think a sci-fi story set in the Victorian era works rather well and this is another example. The story is mostly set around a Frost Fair and Carnival of Curiosities, a magical setting which is so perfect for Doctor Who. The villain is rather good, a properly despicable Victorian villain that you really dislike. Although there's no monsters as such there are some interesting characters with special abilities, all of which are fantastic creations, yet somehow not outrageous. 

I felt at times that the character of the Twelfth Doctor wasn't particularly accurate, but I suspect the author had little to do on and managed a decent if not entirely successful attempt. Clara is good here which is nice to see although I did feel the Paternoster Row trio weren't needed here. In the TV show there's always been a strong reason for them being in the episode, that they affect the story in some way, but here it feels like the plot would have been pretty much identical without their presence. They are well characterised though and as usual Strax has some really funny moments. 

The first set of novels for a new Doctor also suffer from the author only knowing the basics to what the new character is like and how the series will feel but actually Richards gives us a really enjoyable Victorian Doctor Who story.