Colin Brake

If you like a Doctor Who Christmas Special, this collection of short stories will be an utter delight. With twelve stories, one for each Doctor (at the time of publication), there's plenty of charm, Doctor Who sci fi zaniness, and a dash of festive vibes. The four narrators for this audiobook edition all do excellent jobs of voicing a wide range of characters and there were only a couple stories where I felt their choices for a Doctor's voice wasn't quite right. Be warned that if you're show more listening to this collection with kiddos, the first story does state that Santa Claus is really parents giving gifts so if you're preserving that particular bit of magic, you may want to skip that story. Otherwise, an excellent festive listen for any Doctor Who fan. show less

This set of twelve Doctor Who Christmas tales, a worthy successor to the old Big Finish Christmas Short Trips collections, was my Doctor Who Christmas read for the season, though it slipped in a little late (I think I finished it up December 30th). With twelve Doctor and twelve days of Christmas, things lined up quite nicely.

The stories are an odd assortment, which is kind of always true of these Doctor Who Christmas anthologies. Some are genuinely Christmassy; others just happen to be set show more on Christmas, but are pretty much standard Doctor Who runarounds. The most Christmassy is definitely the first, Jacqueline Rayner's "All I Want for Christmas," where the first Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Vicki end up in a perfect 1963 Christmas: it beautifully captures the wistfulness and nostalgia of Christmas, of a yearning for a time that's slipped away. Rayner has always demonstrated a sympathy for the first Doctor era, and Ian and Barbara are exceptionally written here. I also really enjoyed Rayner's other story, "The Christmas Inversion," where the third Doctor, Jo Grant, and Mike Yates pick up a distress call from the future and end up in the middle of the events of "The Christmas Invasion"; it's as hilarious as "All I Want" is touching. Jackie Tyler meets the third Doctor! Brilliant.

Many of the others are fine, but not particularly noteworthy, and sometimes the Christmas links are tenuous at best. I didn't really get the point of Richard Dungworth's "Three Wise Men," where the fourth Doctor meets the Apollo astronauts (nothing happens), and Gary Russell's "Fairy Tale of New New York," where the sixth Doctor and Mel meet the Catkind, seemed to have potential, but there's no plot. I did enjoy "Ghost of Christmas Past" by Scott Handcock, where a Time War-era eighth Doctor is trapped in the minute before Christmas and ends up finding a mysterious message in the TARDIS. (It is a little weird from a continuity standpoint, though; it's consistent with the Big Finish stories in giving the Doctor a great-grandson named Alex, but given what happened to Alex in To the Death, it's hard to believe the Doctor would find comfort in thinking about him!)

Sort of weirdly, the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth Doctor tales all feature the Doctor teaming up with kids. I wonder why that approach was taken up for three of the four new series Doctors? Each would probably work on its own, or even in a different sequence, but since the stories come back-to-back-to-back, it's a bit repetitive. ("Loose Wire" by Richard Dungworth, the story for the tenth, was the best of them, because Dungworth captures the Doctor exceptionally well here.)

There are a lot of unexpected continuity nuggets, with the Catkind of New Earth, the Master, the Meddling Monk, Rose's red bicycle, the Slitheen, Jackie Tyler, and the Wire (from "The Idiot's Lantern") all popping up-- plus one really unexpected but fun reference in the last story. Even in the weaker stories, the Doctor's voice(s) is well captured, and the whole package is great looking; the cover looks gorgeous in person, and there's a full-page color illustration for each story. This is one of those anthologies whose theme makes it greater than the sum of its parts. Read it on a cold winter night under thick blankets and time travel to your own Christmases past and future. show less

Doctor Who goes to Belgium as the Eighth Doctor finally gets the TARDIS and his memory (mostly) back. There's an alien invasion involving some proto-Musk types and the introduction of a new companion, Anji. The book's gender politics are very, shall we say, of the era, and the action is by the numbers, but it's readable and Fitz continues to moon over the Doctor in a way that has him so close to getting it.

A collection of twelve Christmas-themed Doctor Who stories, each featuring one of the twelve Doctors. (The poor War Doctor, apparently, does not get a Christmas. Well, I suppose he wouldn't, really.)

I like the concept of this, and it's a very nice-looking book, complete with some cute full-color illustrations. Unfortunately, the stories just aren't very good. They're not awful, I guess. If nothing else, the character voices are mostly pretty good, which certainly counts for something. But, show more generally speaking, they're uninspired, not very interesting, and not very well-written, even taking into account the fact that, like most recent Who tie-in stuff, they seemed to be aimed largely at younger readers. (Which, by the way, is certainly appropriate, but always takes me aback slightly. Partly because Who has never really been thought of as a kids' show in the States, but mostly because I still remember the Who novels of the 90s, which were often filled with surprising levels of sex, drugs, and violence.)

So, yeah, it's pretty disappointing. I did kind of like Scott Handcock's "Ghost of Christmas Past," in which the Eighth Doctor gets a message from his past, just because it didn't even bother with the lame attempt at a plot the others had, but instead just gave us a rather poignant little character moment. But even that one wasn't great, and it left me feeling unsatisfied, if only because, doggone it, I really wanted to see him responding to the invitation in the message.

Also worth noting, perhaps, is Jacqueline Rayner's "The Christmas Inversion", which I found simultaneously the most fun and the most frustrating entry. It has a brilliantly hilarious premise: the Third Doctor picks up Harriet Jones' plea for the Doctor's help in "The Christmas Invasion," goes to see what it's about, and ends up in Jackie Tyler's flat while his future self lies unconscious in the next room. Unfortunately, Rayner pushes the humor entirely too far, meaning that it's constantly crossing the line between being funny and just being irritating.

Everything else, I'd say, is 100% forgettable. show less