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| Originally published: 2018 Acquired: December 2020 Read: January 2021 |
by Dave Rudden
This is a collection of twelve stories set in the Doctor Who universe, most having some kind of Christmas connection (however slight), most featuring the Doctor, most featuring a monster of some sort. I started reading the book on Christmas Day 2020, and read one story per day, which turned out to be a really fun project.
Rudden had never written any Doctor Who book before this, but alone he has more variety and invention than some Doctor Who anthologies written by twenty-five different authors. Highlights for me included a noir story about a private detective on Gallifrey hired to track down the TARDIS the Doctor stole (containing a surprising but subtle tie-in to Prisoners of Fate, a Big Finish audio dram), a story told from the point-of-view of a Cyberman, a really neat story of the Paternoster Gang, an adventure for Rory and the eleventh Doctor investigating a regicide, and a story of the Master trying to be the Doctor. There was only one I didn't really like, an overly long story of a heist that I didn't really get the point of.
The best story was "The Rhino of Twenty-Three Strand Street," about an Irish girl from 1960s Dublin, chafing in Catholic school, who discovers that a Judoon has moved in next door. Really well told and heartwarming.
All of the stories have a strong sense of voice and tone, short Doctor Who fiction at its very best. This is the twelfth Doctor Who Christmas book I've read, and it's the one I've enjoyed the most except for Short Trips: A Christmas Treasury.
I read a Doctor Who Christmas book every year. Next up in sequence: The Wintertime Paradox
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