The Uncollected Internet Doctor Who Short Trips, 2004–21

A few years ago, I wrote a blog post about all the short Doctor Who stories with Christmas themes that had never received some kind of hard-copy publication. In the process of researching it, I had to also figure out all the Internet-published short Doctor Who stories that were not Christmas-themed. Just as I read all the Christmas-themed ones as a sort of "book" in 2022, for Christmas 2025, I read all the other ones. Once again, here is a handy guide to all of them, along with my thoughts. (Note there were a bunch of short stories published on the official site during lockdown in 2020, but those were all subsequently collected.)

Adventure Calendar

As covered in my previous post, the official Doctor Who web site used to run an annual "adventure calendar" that often included short stories. Some were Christmas-themed, but some were not. Here are the ones that were not:

• "Number 1, Gallows Gate Road" by Rupert Laight (4 & 11 Dec. 2008). The tenth Doctor lands at a boarding house in 1940 where everyone—including himself—is curiously lacking in ambition. Published in two parts, I found the first pretty strong and atmospheric. Like a lot of Doctor Who stories, the second part, where you have to give explanations and solutions, is less engaging, but still I enjoyed it.
• "Houdini and the Space Cuckoos" Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four by Joseph Lidster (15-16, 19, & 25 Dec. 2012). In this story, the eleventh Doctor must team up with Harry Houdini to stop some aliens. I usually get on with Joseph Lidster's work very well, but this is more action-focused and less character-focused than plays to his strengths, I think. I did think he did a good job of capturing the voice of the eleventh Doctor.
• "Doctor Who and the Horror of Coal Hill" by Gavin Collinson (21 Dec. 2017). This is a bit longer than some of the other ones, and I found it surprisingly engaging. The main story is about the first Doctor visiting Coal Hill School during the time Susan is a student there, and helping a teacher fight off an alien menace; the story periodically jumps ahead and shows later Doctors coming back to the school later on to remember the events of the story. It's a neat story that parallels the Doctor's status as an outside with the perils of immigration. I thought Collinson's Christmas stories were a bit slight, but this one is strong.

Other Stories from the Official Site

• "The Feast of the Stone" by Cavan Scott & Mark Wright (3 Apr. 2004). This is the only story in this post to predate the 2005 revival, back when the official Doctor Who site was a subsection of "BBC Cult." (It is amazing to me that twenty years on, it's still there, though!) This is the only other story to ever feature the Doctor and his companions from the webcast Scream of the Shalka; it was part of a BBC Cult vampire-themed initiative. It's decent enough, but I very much enjoyed the glimpses of this unique Doctor with his unique companions, particularly the robotic shell of the Master. Scott & Wright to a good job capturing the voices of both Richard E. Grant's Doctor and Derek Jacobi's pseudo-Master.
• "'42' Prologue" by Joseph Lidster (12 May 2007). You may remember the 2007 episode "42," about the tenth Doctor and Martha, told in real time aboard a dying spaceship. This story chronicles the four minutes before they showed up, from the perspective of one of the characters on the ship. It doesn't particularly work on its own (it would be interesting to read it and then immediately start the episode, I think), but it's Joseph Lidster, so it has a strong sense of voice and character.
• "The Lonely Computer" by Rupert Laight (24 May 2008). The David Tennant years were really the peak of content on the official site; this story is based on a passing reference to the Doctor having met a lonely computer in Belgium in "The Unicorn and the Wasp." It's a little underdeveloped but Laight does well by both the tenth Doctor and Donna.
• "Blue Moon" by Oli Smith (July 2009). For the fortieth anniversary of the Apollo missions, the BBC site released this story about the Doctor discovering secret alien intervention in the moon landing—a premise the show would use itself just a couple years later. I thought this one was just okay, not much to say about it.
• "The War of Art" by Paul Cornell (Aug. 2010). I forget what the occasion for this one was, but I feel like it did have one, like it was a tie-in to a game or something. Paul Cornell is one of my favorite writers (not just Doctor Who writers, but writers full top) and he can do good, beautiful character work—but as this story shows, he can also be quite funny. Aliens invade a futuristic gallery, and Cornell uses this as the opportunity for a number of art jokes; I laughed out loud repeatedly.
• "The Night after Hallowe'en" by Mark B. Oliver (29 Oct.–5 Nov. 2010). This is the first of several stories by Mark B. Oliver about a family of kids the eleventh Doctor keeps meeting; they also appeared in a couple Christmas stories. I find the kids pretty generic, as is the plot here. I don't feel like they warranted repeat appearances.
• "What the TARDIS Thought of 'Time Lord Victorious'" by James Goss (15 Nov. 2020). This is one of two online prose tie-ins to the "Time Lord Victorious" event; it is told from the perspective of the TARDIS, picking up from the end of "The Waters of Mars," establishing how the tenth Doctor gets from there to the events of the crossover. It's fine. Goss always writes with a strong sense of voice, but the basic premise of the crossover was a bit silly.

Stories from Other Sources

• "My Dad, The Doctor" by Jamie Mathieson (First News, 29 Oct. 2015). Mathieson, writer of several Peter Capaldi tv stories, writes this prose story about him, one where the Doctor uses his sonic sunglasses to take over the mind of a kid's dad in the middle of a crisis. Well written but I found the final twist didn't make a ton of sense. It was written for a kids newspaper, but Mathieson republished it on his own blog.
• "The Dawn of the Kotturuh" by James Goss (official newsletter, 25 Sept. 2020). This is another tie-in to Time Lord Victorious, one explaining how the alien Kotturuh brought death to the universe during the Dark Times. It was originally published in the official Doctor Who e-mail newsletter. Frankly, even by the standards of Doctor Who, I don't think the idea of a universe with living things without death makes any sense, and this story didn't make it work any better.
• "The Voice of Many Angels" by Gavin Collinson (Maze Theory’s Into the Unknown web site, 18 Mar. 2021). My understanding is that the videogame Doctor Who: The Lonely Assassins had a tie-in website called Into the Unknown, purporting to be a conspiracy theorist blog focused on the Weeping Angels. This was the final post on the site, a short story from the perspective of the guy who ran the site. The site and the story are gone now, but author Gavin Collinson was kind enough to share a copy of it with me via e-mail. I really enjoyed it; creepy and suggestive, and it expanded on Weeping Angels lore in interesting ways that I liked. Amazing to think there are new angles on them, but I loved the idea of a support group!

Since the time span covered in this post, there have been a least a couple more, tie-ins to another crossover event ("Doom's Day") but I haven't read those yet. These thirteen stories run over 250 pages if formatted like an official BBC Books anthology, so it makes for a nice set of readings. I wonder if any official publisher will ever be motivated to collect any of this work?

The Uncollected Doctor Who Christmas Short Trips

Over the past decade, I've had a tradition of reading a Doctor Who Christmas book every Christmas. (Scroll down on this page to see the complete list.) Last year, I reached the endpoint of that tradition when I read the last one I hadn't read, Dave Rudden's The Wintertime Paradox.

Except that there are a number of Doctor Who Christmas short stories only available on the Internet or in various periodicals that have never been collected or reprinted. Once I finished The Wintertime Paradox, I spent some time tracking them all down, and this Christmas I read that "book." Here is a handy guide to all of them, along with my thoughts. (This is an expanded version of a GallifreyBase post; thanks to the commenters there for cluing me into an extra one.)

Doctor Who Magazine

Somewhat surprisingly, I think DWM have only ever done just one prose Christmas story.

• 
  Prelude to The Left-Handed Humminbird by Kate Orman (Doctor Who Magazine, no. 207, 22 Dec. 1993). Most of Virgin's The New Doctor Who Adventures had exclusive preludes published in DWM; this one happens to be set on Christmas. It's very much scene-setting for the novel, and the Christmas elements are incidental. But, you know, it's by Kate Orman, so it's well-written and horrific. Someday I'll read the book. Like all the preludes, it's been copied out on the unofficial Doctor Who Reference Guide, so it is easily accessed.

Newspaper Stories

Two times Paul Cornell published a Doctor Who short story around Christmas time. This sort of became a trilogy; see below under Unofficial but Interesting.

• "Deep and Dreamless Sleep" by Paul Cornell (Sunday Times, 24 Dec. 2006). The tenth Doctor encounters a five-year-old boy who hijacks the TARDIS in search of a perfect Christmas. It's by Paul Cornell, so it's pretty good. The ending in particular is great. It has some bits that made me think he had to condense it to fit the newspaper's space, but overall you can't go wrong with Paul Cornell doing Doctor Who at Christmas. (His anthology Short Trips: A Christmas Treasury is a thing of beauty.) [Link takes you to an archived copy of part 1 of 6. To get all six part, I think I signed up for a Times account and cancelled before the free trial ended.]
  

• "The Hopes and Fears of All the Years" by Paul Cornell (Daily Telegraph, 22 Dec. 2007). Another story of the tenth Doctor at Christmas; this one is about him popping in to see a single family at multiple Christmases across the course of a boy's life. I really liked this one: sentimental without being mawkish, and I'm always a sucker for a bildungsroman, even in miniature.
  

Adventure Calendar

From 2006 to 2017, the BBC's official Doctor Who web site always promoted the upcoming Christmas special with the "Adventure Calendar," where every day from December 1st to Christmas Day, you could go to the official site and receive some kind of treat: desktop wallpapers, Flash games, interviews, commentary tracks, artwork, and fiction. Not all of this fiction was seasonally themed, but I've included here a list of all the stories that have Christmas or winter links. (Someday I'll do another post looking at the others.)

• "The Frozen" by Rupert Laight (2 Dec. 2007). The tenth Doctor takes a graduate student from the future back to the February 1814 frost fair, the last time the River Thames froze over. (Luckily he doesn't bump into the first Doctor or the twelfth; see Frostfire and "Thin Ice.") A lot of these Adventure Calendar stories are, to be honest, pretty mediocre. No characterization to speak of, just dialogue and actions, like a television script, with often awkward prose.
  
• "The Advent of Fear" Part One and Part Two by Mark B. Oliver (6 & 10 Dec. 2009). The tenth Doctor encounters a girl with an advent calendar that keeps sending her through time. To be honest, I was into this one at first, but in the end I found it rather confusing and disjointed. This is the first one to have a juvenile companion stand-in, which is true of most of these.
  
• "The Doctor on My Shoulder" Part One and Part Two by Daniel Roth (17 & 23 Dec. 2009). The Doctor gets shrunk down and ends up wrapped in someone's present. To be honest, that's a lot more interesting sounding than the story actually is. Again, a pedestrian runaround without a prose style, and I didn't find the alien plan very believable even by Doctor Who standards.
• 
  "Snowfall" by Gavin Collinson and Mark B. Oliver (9-10, 17, 20, & 23-24 Dec. 2010). This is actually two short stories with a frame; they feature the eleventh Doctor with Amy and Rory in the frame. It was released across several days (each of the embedded stories was divided in half), but then collected as a complete novella. In the first, Mark B. Oliver's "Cold Snap" the Doctor bumps in a couple kids he met before in a previous web exclusive story (a Halloween one, so not relevant to this project) and also meets a guy named "Big Jack." They work together to stop a heat-draining alien on Christmas. The second, "Vampire Hurricane" by Gavin Collinson, is about the Doctor and a guy named David working together to stop a toy magnate from accidentally creating a vampire army on Christmas. The frame, also by Collinson, is about Big Jack and David—estranged brothers—reconciling... on Christmas. The embedded stories are fine, if a bit shallow like all the other Adventure Calendar tales. I didn't find the estranged brother thing worked at all.
• 
  "Attack of the Snowmen" by Mark B. Oliver (20-21 & 24 Dec. 2011). The kids, Louie and Millie, from "The Night after Hallowe'en" and "Cold Snap" are back, this time facing evil killer snowmen with the eleventh Doctor, a year before Moffat did evil killer snowmen on tv. Once again, it has the same issues as all the others of these.
• "Behind You" Parts One, Two, and Three by Mark Williams (19-21 Dec. 2014). Original fiction took a few years off, but returned with this twelfth Doctor story. Again, par for the course in terms of quality, but enlivened by a couple good jokes about how Peter Capaldi's Doctor hates panto.
• "Haunted" Parts One, Two, and Three by Joseph Lidster (21 & 23-24 Dec. 2015). The Adventure Calendar continued a couple years after this, but without original fiction, alas. But! The last of these stories was undoubtedly the best of them. Of course it was—it's by one of my favorite Doctor Who writers, Joseph Lidster, who gives us a child protagonist with meaningful struggles, a sparky twelfth Doctor, and some good twists.

That was it for Doctor Who advent calendars, I guess because that was also it for Doctor Who Christmas specials. And also that was it for the BBC web site doing anything interesting, and that was also it for the producers of Doctor Who being interested in promoting the show. (Actually, we got a lot of cool web content during 2020 in Lockdown, but I don't think any of it was Christmas-related.)

BBC Studios Web Site Stories

We did, however, get two Christmas stories from the BBC Studios Doctor Who web site, in 2016 and 2020.

• "Christmas Special" by Cavan Scott (23 Dec. 2016). This ninth Doctor and Rose short story ties into Titan's then-ongoing comic series, also featuring the original companion and a recurring character from that series. (It's set between the two stories collected in Official Secrets.) The story is pretty minimal, and it's a tie-in to a series I found pretty ho-hum. If this was meant to promote the comic series to a wider audience, maybe Tara should have been given any indication of being interesting at all.
• "Canaries" by Dave Rudden (15 Oct. 2020). Okay, not released seasonally at all, but it is set on Christmas. It was a tie-in to both Time Lord Victorious and the anthology The Wintertime Paradox—and indeed, doesn't quite count as "uncollected" because it was added to Wintertime Paradox for its ebook and paperback releases, and thus I have read it already. It's a prequel to Wintertime Paradox that sets up the book's villains.

Unofficial but Interesting

Lastly, this category is made up of things that are not officially licensed (so they are technically fan fiction) but have some kind of claim to quasi-official status, usually based on who wrote them.

• "The Last Doctor" by Paul Cornell (13 Dec. 2009). Cornell posted this story on his blog. It's about what seems to be the last incarnation of the Doctor, at the very end of the universe, as the last humans experience the last Christmas. It's by Paul Cornell, so it's good—really captures that Doctor Who at Christmas vibe of hope in the face of the coldness of the universe. I really liked it, and it nicely caps off an emotional trilogy continuing from Cornell's two stories above, about the Doctor's emotional engagement with people.
  
• "Mrs Wibbsey's Festive Diary" by Paul Magrs (21-27 Dec. 2013). Across seven blog entries in 2013, Paul Magrs serialized a Christmas story about Mrs Wibbsey, who was the fourth Doctor's companion in his Nest Cottage Chronicles series of audio dramas; in 2014, he rereleased it as a single post. It's told in the form of Mrs Wibbsey's diary as she waits for the Doctor to come back one Christmas in Hexford, but gets a very different Christmas visitor instead... It's by Magrs, so it has some good jokes, and is a bit meta about storytelling in a way that worked for me, especially at Christmas. (Some day I must actually listen to my Nest Cottage Chronicles box set!) Magrs collected this in an anthology of original fiction, but edited it to be about characters and situations not copyrighted to the BBC, so it became "Mrs Frimbly's Festive Diary."
• 
  "Who the Dickens...?" by Juliet E. McKenna (Paul Cornell's blog, 14 Dec. 2019). This third Doctor and Jo adventure was intended for Paul Cornell's Short Trips: A Christmas Treasury in 2004. However, it got cut because it conflicted with an episode of the upcoming screen revival: it features the Doctor going back in time and meeting Charles Dickens for the first time! So it was cut at the last minute, and posted to Cornell's blog fifteen years later. It's a cute story that I enjoyed reading; good handle on the Doctor and Dickens.

And that's it! It runs almost three hundred pages if formatted like the BBC's own anthologies. I have to say some of the stories are better than others—I tended to prefer ones that actually were Christmas stories rather than stories with Christmas trappings—but on the whole it makes for a nice Christmas treat to read them all.

Doctor Who: The Lost Dimension by George Mann, Cavan Scott, Rachael Stott, Mariano Laclaustra, et al.

Collection published: 2018
Contents originally published: 2017
Read: September 2021

Collection published: 2018
Contents originally published: 2017
Read: September 2021

Doctor Who: The Lost Dimension, Book One

Writers: George Mann, Cavan Scott & Nick Abadzis
Artists: Rachael Stott, Adriana Melo, Cris Bolson, Mariano Laclaustra, Carlos Cabrera, Leandro Casco, & I. N. J. Culbard, with Pasquale Qualano, Mony Castillo, Klebs Jr, JR Bastos, & Fer Centurion
Colorists: Rod Fernandes, Marco Lesko, Dijjo Lima, & Hernán Cabrera

Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

 

Doctor Who: The Lost Dimension, Book Two

Writers: Gordon Rennie, Emma Beeby, George Mann & Cavan Scott
Artists: Ivan Rodriguez, Wellington Diaz, Rachael Stott & Mariano Laclaustra, with Anderson Cabral, Marcelo Salaza & Fer Centurion
Colorists: Thiago Ribiero, Mauricio Wallace, Rod Fernandes & Carlos Cabrera, with Mony Castillo
Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

 

Titan's Doctor Who crossovers got bigger every year. This one is eight issues and two collected editions, and crossed through its ongoings (instead of just featuring characters from them), taking in issues of The Tenth Doctor: Year Three, The Eleventh Doctor: Year Three, and The Twelfth Doctor: Year Three. It also features the ninth Doctor, Rose, Jack, Tara, Madame Vastra, and Jenny; Jenny, the Doctor's daughter; the fourth Doctor and second Romana; and River Song in a set of specials. Plus every other incarnation of the Doctor puts in at least a one-scene cameo. Is that enough already?

 

It is, in fact, too much. It follows the Big Finish model: the characters are mostly separate for most of it, which means they undertake pretty generic adventures, and then the characters come together at the end, which means the narrative doesn't have room for anything other than simple solutions and generic Doctor sniping... something we've seen twice in the past two years! I have posited in the past that Big Finish's nostalgic crossovers are pointless because they bring together characters we see in ongoing adventures all the time already, and the same is true here. There is no novelty to bringing "back" the tenth Doctor, Gabby, and Cindy when I read their adventures already. The only characters we don't already see all the time in Titan adventures are Jenny, the fourth Doctor and Romana, and River, but the first of those I had no desire to see come back, and the others I listen to the adventures of already via Big Finish. (Plus, I didn't find the stories or dialogue very good; the River story in particular was confusingly written and poorly illustrated.)

 

If we aren't getting nostalgia, then we're not getting anything, because this story isn't really about anything. A dimension turns people into mindless zombies... as Doctor Who threats go, it's definitively bottom tier and generic. Does this story have any interesting themes or clever characterization? Basically, no. The one exception is the Eleventh Doctor issue, which isn't by any of the regular Eleventh Doctor writers but is at least by regular Eleventh Doctor artists Leandro Casco and I. N. J. Culbard. It's a decent tale of the eleventh Doctor and Alice being trapped on ancient Gallifrey and becoming inadvertently involved with the Time Lord's early TARDIS experiments. The rest of it all is sound and fury, signifying nothing. I'm glad that after three goes, Titan finally abandoned these annual events; I had mixed thoughts about Four Doctors, but it was overall pretty interesting. The latter two have been exercises in tedium.

 

(If, like me, you are curious about what issues are collected where, the collected editions give incomplete information, and the Tardis wiki is flat-out wrong. Book one collects what was originally published as parts 1-4 and 7: The Lost Dimension: Alpha #1, Ninth Doctor Special #1, The Tenth Doctor: Year Three #9, The Eleventh Doctor: Year Three #10, and the Jenny and Alice stories from The Lost Dimension Special #2. Book two contains parts 5, 7, 6, and 8 in that order: the fourth Doctor story from The Lost Dimension Special #1, the River Song story from The Lost Dimension Special #1 and 2, The Twelfth Doctor: Year Three #8, and The Lost Dimension: Omega #1. Thanks to a friendly Gallifrey Base poster for working this out for me. Not confusing at all! I also have a feeling the credits are incomplete or inaccurate.)

I read an issue of Titan's Doctor Who comic every day (except when I have hard-copy comics to read). Next up in sequence: The Tenth Doctor: Facing Fate: The Good Companion

Review: Doctor Who: Sin Eaters by Cavan Scott, Adriana Melo, and Cris Bolson

Collection published: 2017
Contents originally published: 2017
Acquired: January 2020
Read: July 2021

Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor, Vol 4: Sin Eaters

Writer: Cavan Scott
Artists: Adriana Melo & Cris Bolson

Colorist: Marco Lesko
Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

This is the last volume of The Ninth Doctor, making it the first of Titan's Doctor Who ongoings to draw to an end. As a result, it has to tie up all the various threads Cavan Scott has introduced since the series began. It consists of two stories. The first, "Sin Eaters," is about the Doctor, Rose, and Tara investigating a space prison that extracts people's bad thoughts and injects them into separate bodies; the Doctor goes undercover as a criminal, and Rose as an inspector. I thought the central premise of this one was pretty silly, and Doctor Who stories about evil Doctors rarely convince me, because evil Doctors don't act very Doctor-ish, and just act like the kind of stupid bad guy the Doctor stops all the time. The last chapter of "Sin Eaters" switches perspective to Jack, and shows us some flashbacks of his time as a Time Agent, with a small appearance by the Doctor. It was fine, and mostly serves to set up the next story.

"The Bidding War" is about a con being played on the TARDIS crew, to capture and auction off the Doctor's memories. Again, it was fine. It feels rushed, like the series was cancelled earlier than expected... but it had fifteen issues, so surely Scott should have known "Year One" was up even if he had expected to get a Year Two, and Titan Who comics usually reset at the end of each year. Some of the explanations for what we saw at the year's beginning don't entirely convince, and I think the incessant continuity references interfere with this comic's attempt to recapture the tone of the 2005 series.

Having read the whole series now, I'm not really sure what the point of Tara, the new companion (a 1970s UNIT nurse) was. She never really seemed to do much (these stories already have three leads), and I never got a real sense of her personality. Her writing-out here is pretty perfunctory. And again, having a companion who is friends with Harry Sullivan really cuts against the 2005 vibe. This was probably the weakest of Titan's ongoings; at least The Tenth Doctor has had the occasional enjoyable story for all its flaws.

Also, what's up with the right side and bottom of the cover of my comiXology edition? Why is there that weird mirroring?

I read an issue of Titan's Doctor Who comic every day (except when I have hard-copy comics to read). Next up in sequence: The Twelfth Doctor: Time Trials: The Terror Beneath

Review: Doctor Who: Official Secrets by Cavan Scott, Adriana Melo, and Cris Bolson

Collection published: 2017
Contents originally published: 2016-17
Acquired: March 2020
Read: May 2021

Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor, Vol 3: Official Secrets

Writer: Cavan Scott
Artists: Adriana Melo & Cris Bolson

Colorist: Marco Lesko
Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

This is better than previous volumes of The Ninth Doctor, though I still don't get what this comic is going for. I mean, there's no reason it needs to evoke Saturday tea-time 2005 per se, but plunging the ninth Doctor, Rose, and Captain Jack into a 1970s UNIT adventure doesn't strike me as particularly interesting, either-- or rather, what writer Cavan Scott does with it isn't interesting. DWM did something neat with a post-Time War tenth Doctor meeting the Brigadier way back in the day. What was it like for the Doctor himself to finally be an old soldier, meeting the man he'd always denigrated for his military mindset? But the ninth Doctor here doesn't really act much different than any Doctor would. Harry Sullivan is a focal character, but I don't know why, and he doesn't always ring true as being very Harry-y.

The second story, about the TARDIS team in Brazil during the era of Portuguese slavers, struggles with length, feeling both too long and too short. Too short in that a lot of its ideas get short shrift: it's about the Doctor confronting slavers, and about alien refugees, and about Rose discovering some of Captain Jack's secrets from his Time Agency days, and about new companion Tara's first trip in the TARDIS. Most of this is rushed and/or underexplored. The conclusion has the Doctor happily mentally subjugating some aliens to another group of aliens, seemingly just because finding a better solution would take more pages than the comic has. But it's also too long in that not much actually seems to happen; it mostly feels like two long scenes, one of Rose and Captain Jack looking at a computer, and one of the Doctor and Tara wandering around the jungle. The more I read of The Ninth Doctor, the more I feel like Cavan Scott doesn't get how to tell a comics story, but he seems to be quite experienced, having written dozens of Star Wars comics for IDW, so I dunno. That might have mostly been after this, though?

I read an issue of Titan's Doctor Who comic every day (except when I have hard-copy comics to read). Next up in sequence: The Tenth Doctor: War of Gods

Review: Doctor Who: Supremacy of the Cybermen by Cavan Scott & George Mann, Ivan Rodriguez, Walter Geovanni, et al.

Collection published: 2017
Contents originally published: 2016
Acquired: September 2018
Read: May 2021

Doctor Who: Supremacy of the Cybermen

Writers: Cavan Scott & George Mann
Artists: Ivan Rodriguez & Walter Geovanni, with Alessandro Vitti & Tazio Bettin
Colorists: Nicola Righi with Erica Eren Angiolini

Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

Event Teasers Art by Dan Boultwood, Andrew Pepoy & Jason Millet, Mike Collins, Blair Shedd, Simone De Meo & Arianna Florean, Stephen Byrne, Simon Myers, Lee Sullivan & Luis Guerrero, and Rachael Stott & Marcio Menys

Like Four Doctors the year before it, this crosses over all of Titan's ongoing comic series, which now includes the ninth Doctor in addition to the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth. It takes a very different structure, though; while Four Doctors had its three Doctors meet up by the end of the first issue and then treated them like a team, the four Doctors in Supremacy of the Cybermen never actually meet. Instead, each is involved in a parallel adventure of the Cybermen taking over the universe with Time Lord technology: the ninth Doctor, Rose, and Captain Jack battle them on the Powell Estate; the tenth Doctor, Gabby, and Cindy encounter them at war with the Sontarans; the eleventh Doctor and Alice discover them in the Silurian era; and the twelfth Doctor visits Gallifrey to discover the root of the problem.

The issue this causes is that since each Doctor gets a totally separate story, they in effect each get just one issue of story. Only that one issue of story is spread across five issues, making it feel like nothing is actually happening, because when you finish an issue, each Doctor has experienced just one-quarter of an issue of events. The end result is a five-issue collection where nothing happens: the ninth, tenth, and eleventh Doctors each have very simple battle with the Cybermen; the twelfth Doctor resets it all. The end. Even though it reads fast, I quickly came to dread reading it, so little did I enjoy it.

(Weird that when the Cybermen take over Gallifrey again in "Ascension of the Cybemen," the Doctor doesn't mention that she just went through this!)

from Doctor Who: The Fourth Doctor #4
(art by Lee Sullivan)

Titan also did one-page preludes for the pre-ninth Doctors, showing what happened to each of them in the aberrant timeline where the Cybermen took over the universe. These set the stage for the main story... but for some reason the collected edition puts them all at the back! One of the cool things about reading in PDF is that I just moved them all to the front and read them first, as was clearly meant to be. They are fine, mostly noteworthy because Titan gets in some good artists for them, especially Mike Collins and Lee Sullivan.

I read an issue of Titan's Doctor Who comic every day (except when I have hard-copy comics to read). Next up in sequence: The Ninth Doctor: Official Secrets

Review: Doctor Who: Doctormania by Cavan Scott, Adriana Melo, Cris Bolson, et al.

Collection published: 2016
Contents originally published: 2016
Acquired: September 2018
Read: April 2021

Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor, Vol 2: Doctormania

Writer: Cavan Scott
Artists: Adriana Melo & Cris Bolson [with Mariano Laclaustra]

Colorists: Matheus Lopes & Marco Lesko
Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

I didn't care for vol 1 of this series, and I feel much the same about this. In my review of that one, I wrote, "[t]he plot seemed to pile complication on complication and incident on incident for the sake of it." The same is true here. More specifically, the stories read like they were made up as they went along, with no attempt at unity of character or theme. The first one, "Doctormania," is about the Doctor, Jack, and Rose arriving on a planet where everyone is a big fan of the Doctor; it turns out that this is because a Slitheen is running around in Doctor skinsuit. But the story isn't really about this in any meaningful way, the implications and permutations of this concept aren't explored. Instead, they're discarded and it becomes a story about Rose being stuck on a jungle planet with a Slitheen, and the climax of the story is about negotiations between different factions in the Raxacoricofallapatorius solar system. There's a brief return to the original hook at the end, but the permutations of the story feel arbitrary and inorganic. I hate saying something doesn't follow "rules" for writing, but it really doesn't live up to the MICE Quotient. It's an event story, but the event that is solved at the ending isn't the one that was a problem at the beginning!

The second story, "The Hunted," wastes a good premise too for no readily apparent reason. The Doctor is summoned by Mickey-- only it's post-"Journey's End" Mickey who's married to Martha, not the useless "Mickey the idiot" that he knows. I think there's potential here for a story about how the Doctor has misjudged Mickey, but it's not used, it's just a random continuity detail, not a storytelling concept. Worse, Martha is there to just be a mute woman in distress for Mickey to worry about! Like, she's a protagonist in her own right, you shouldn't be treating her like this... except that, of course, she's a woman. The actual plot of the story (something something superpowers something something mutations something something a wormhole) is too dependent on techno-gubbins to be interesting. I think a lot of writers who try to imitate Russell T Davies-style Who don't get that, for all its flash and speed and color, his stories were about something, they were about people in real and meaningful ways rarely equaled on television. These stories have flash and speed and color, but aren't about anything at all.

This also contains what was originally published as a Free Comic Book Day story, "Hacked." There are no credits for it anywhere in the book: if I was artist Mariano Laclaustro, I'd be pretty hacked off.

I read an issue of Titan's Doctor Who comic every day (except when I have hard-copy comics to read). Next up in sequence: The Twelfth Doctor: The Twist

Review: Doctor Who: Weapons of Past Destruction by Cavan Scott, Blair Shedd, et al.

Comic PDF eBook, n.pag.
Published 2016 (contents: 2015)
Acquired September 2018
Read December 2019

Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor, Vol 1: Weapons of Past Destruction

Writer: Cavan Scott

Artist: Blair Shedd with Rachael Stott
Colorist: Blair Shedd and Anang Setyawan
Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

I felt like this failed to capture the tone of the era it's supposedly recreating. It felt too action-y, too continuity-y. The Doctor talks a lot about the Time Lords and the Time War in an era that on screen was content to mostly hint obliquely. The plot seemed to pile complication on complication and incident on incident for the sake of it. It's a shame because Cavan Scott did a great job capturing this era in Night of the Whisper.

I also didn't care for Blair Shedd's weird faces, or his tendency to use silhouettes for random panels, which I think is meant to look artistic but is actually done to save him time drawing things.

Short SF&F Week: Voices from the Past edited by Scott Harrison and Lee Harris

Kindle eBook, n.pag.
Published 2011
Acquired May 2011
Read July 2012

Voices from the Past
edited by Scott Harrison and Lee Harris

Once again, I picked up this book because Paul Cornell has a story in it; I really am obsessed. Voices from the Past is the first (and apparently only) publication of H&H Books, collecting 1,500-word stories from almost thirty of British sf's best authors, released for charity. (Though "British sf's best authors" has a curiously high correspondence to "people who write Doctor Who tie-in fiction".) The linking theme seems to be the title itself; nearly all of the stories have literal or metaphorical "voices from the past." (Rob Shearman's, though, has a creepy man-dog creature. We love you, Rob!)

The main thing I learned is that the 1,500-word short story is immensely difficult to write; many of these stories are just an idea, but they're slightly too long to get away with only being an idea. Worse than a story that's just an idea is a story that's just a twist, and that's an all too prevalent mode here. Especially if that twist is just a cliche or a joke I've heard before. I could complain about a lot of those, but instead I'll focus on the good ones, such as Alastair Reynolds's "Ascension Day," which is about a spaceship that stays in a place for years upon years... but is about to take off. But of course, like all good twists, it's not twist, but simply a revelation about what's come before.

Other good ones: Cavan Scott's "Just Do It" was striking and creepy, Jasper Fforde's "Shuttle" had a great, vivid concept, Joseph Lidster's "Success" feels like the flipside of an aliens-invade-London episode of Russell Davies Doctor Who, Maura McHugh's "Mustn't Grumble" puts a poor father/son relationship into a disturbing light, Mur Lafferty's "750,000 of Your Friends Like This" was a great idea and funny even if it wasn't much of a story, Paul Magrs's "The Curious Package" was charming fun, and Robert Shearman's "The Runt" was darkly true in that way that Shearman always is.

So there's some good stuff, but the hit ratio is slightly lower than one might hope for. They're all over quickly, which means that most of the bad ones don't outstay their welcomes (though there are some capable of doing that anyway!). It's an okay book in the end, but you'd kinda hope for better from many of these authors.

All that said, for an eBook-only release, the formatting on this thing (at least in the Kindle edition) is terrible. I can (begrudgingly) understand bad formatting on print book also released as an eBook, but when a book is only an eBook, every line of text consistently being indented on the left side is inexcusably sloppy. Check your work, people!

Dr Who and the Ghosts of Christmas

Every now and then, I encounter a Short Trip on my reading list, but it feels right to read Christmas-themed ones at Christmastime, so I let this one jump the queue a bit:

Doctor Who: Short Trips #22: The Ghosts of Christmas
edited by Cavan Scott & Mark Wright

Hardcover, 278 pages. Published 2007. Acquired May 2009. Read December 2011.

Paul Cornell's A Christmas Treasury, Big Finish's first Christmas anthology, remains a high watermark for me-- not just in terms of the Christmas books, but Short Trips in general. On the other hand, their second one, The History of Christmas was kinda disappointing. Still, Doctor Who and Christmas just go together in a way that's right, something I think Paul Cornell realized before even Russell T Davies did, and so I was happily looking forward to this book.

It didn't disappoint. Even at its weakest, it still has a sense of joy about it. It's divided into three section, for Christmases Past, Present, and Future, which correspond to when the stories are set. The title and the blurb implies an element of spookiness or horror, and thankfully that's minimal, because in the few cases where it's tried, it doesn't really work. "24 Crawford Street" by Ian Farrington feels more arbitrary than spooky, while Xanna Eve Chown's "Do You Believe in the Krampus?" takes a great premise (the Alpine legend of a demon that eats naughty children) but is completely boring. "The Stars Our Contamination" by Steven Savile is a zombie story that doesn't really click. Most disappointing is Peter Angelhides's "The Somerton Fetch," a saccharine muddle of a story about a character I don't really care about.

But on the whole, the stories really work. This collection includes such joys as:

• "For the Man Who Has Everything" by Dan Abnett: A private secretary to a Cabinet minister spends Christmas with the eighth Doctor after the two of them save the world together.
• "Tell Me You Love Me" by Scott Matthewman: The best TARDIS crew ever (the first Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Susan) experience Christmas in the London Blitz. Ian and Barbara are both sharply captured in this ominous tale.
• "Do You Dream in Colour?" by Gary Russell: No Doctor, but Ben and Polly after their time in the TARDIS. The story avoids the obvious route of having them romantically involved, and is all the better for it. It's nice to see some post-TARDIS companions who aren't depressed or traumatized, but the Doctor has clearly made his mark.
• "The Nobility of Faith" by Jonathan Clements: A Christmas pantomime where the Doctor meets "Ala Urd-Din."
• "Dear Great Uncle Peter" by Neil Corry: A little boy discovers that he's forgotten his Christmas day! How terrible! Thankfully the Doctor and Leela can set it right. Maybe trying too hard to get the voice of a small child, but fun and worthy of its position in Re:Collections.
• "They Fell" by Scott Handcock: Charley Pollard! What else do you need?
• "The Christmas Presence" by Simon Barnard and Paul Morris: The writers of The Scarifyers tackling Doctor Who? I hadn't even suspected that the world could be this kind.
• "Snowman in Manhattan" by John Binns: Worth it just for the image of the first Doctor as a department store Santa, but it turns out to be a good story beyond that, too.
• "The Crackers" by Richard Salter: Evelyn Smythe discovers that her Christmas memories live within the TARDIS itself.
• "Dr Cadabra" by Trevor Baxendale: The sixth Doctor is mistaken for a clown at an office Christmas party. Naturally.
• "Keeping it Real" by Joseph Lidster: As in The Gathering, Lidster demonstrates that he knows why Tegan is one of the best companions.
• "Christmas Everyday" by Mark Magrs: It's Christmas once a week in a future where the United Kingdom is one giant shopping center.

I also enjoyed "Faithful Friends" by the editors, a three-part story about the Doctor and the Brigadier at Christmas. Something about the Brigadier and Charley being reunited at Christmas just makes me smile.

My favorite was definitely "Far Away in a Manger" by Iain McLaughlin, a quiet tale with no monsters or villains. The Doctor, Peri, and Erimem land on an Earth colony during a snowstorm and help the colonists through their various problems. It's a charming story, clearly meant to be read on a long night during a snowstorm, helping hold back the cold just like a fire in the hearth.

I love Doctor Who, and I love Christmas. Any book with one of those things is good, but this one has both. How can it not be great? Every book should be a Doctor Who Christmas book. Except that that much Christmas would be saccharine, and that's something this book avoids nicely. Not as good as A Christmas Treasury, but that's no black mark; it's still one of the best books the Short Trips series has done.

This collection is also noteworthy for featuring three sequential stories using the term "bobble hat," which I had not previously been aware of.