Under
Virgin Publishing, the series of Decalog short story collections were
quite successful so when BBC Books took charge of the Doctor Who line of
books, editor Nuala Buffini commissioned Traveller in Time, which would
be an anthology featuring all eight Doctors in some historical setting. Stephen Cole was commissioned to contribute a
short story but before his writer’s block could be overcome he became the
editor of the Doctor Who merchandise line of books, cassettes, and VHS
tapes. I’d say he never actually
contributed a story to Short Trips, the collection that Traveller in
Time became, but that isn’t strictly true.
He contributed three under the pseudonyms Tara Samms and Paul Grice (and
possibly a fourth under the name Sam Lester) clearly to round out the
collection. Short Trips is a
collection of stories of variable length from authors old and new, mainly
authors who contributed to the Virgin Books and in a way is a time capsule of
where Doctor Who was in 1998. The
Eighth Doctor Adventures had eight installments, same with the Past Doctor
Adventures line, but adding a third line of short stories allowed again
potential new writers and new styles of stories to be explored. It would sadly be limited to three entries
before being taken up by Big Finish Productions, but still.
The
collection opens with “Model Train Set”, Jonathan Blum’s first solo Doctor
Who story and one of the bookends with the Eighth Doctor. It’s a solo character piece about the Doctor
playing with his model train set, built over the course of several
lifetimes. Blum likes stories that end
particularly hopefully and this is no exception, it’s all about who the Eighth
Doctor is, but that’s really all there is.
It’s more of a study in who this Doctor is, separated from the general
line of novels occurring at the same time.
In many ways it feels like the starting point for the Big Finish audio
adventures. 6/10.
The first
appearance of Iris Wildthyme is next in “Old Flames” which is also Paul Magrs’
first piece of Doctor Who fiction in general. It’s certainly got more to it than “Model
Train Set”, playing off what was considered the Doctor/companion dynamic
with the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith.
What’s interesting is that Iris in creation is very much meant to be a
one-off character, a foil and flirtatious force for the Doctor. It’s the most different Iris has ever really
been, because she won’t really crystallize into the character that her fans
will entirely know until The Scarlet Empress, she’s almost treated like
a joke. Okay, she is still very much a comedic
character today, but the one-off nature really does shine through. The short story itself is this eighteenth
century style affair complete with ball, romance, betrayals, and the Doctor being
a true bohemian. 7/10.
“War
Crimes” says trans rights, but sadly it is also a story by Simon Bucher-Jones
so ultimately it is saying nothing.
There is the hint of an interesting idea, but like “Model Train Set”
this is a short character portrait with the evolution of a creature being a
parallel to the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe stuck right near the end of The War
Games. It’s fine, honestly kind of
bland and has the usual Simon Bucher-Jones thinking he’s actually saying something
with dense prose. 5/10.
Another author
writing under a pseudonym comes next, but this isn’t Stephen Cole but Rebecca
Levene writing as Evan Pritchard, Levene clearly tributing her love of the pure
historical. Set in Judea under the Roman
occupation, instead of doing a comedy historical a la The Romans, it’s
very much Levene’s attempt to reconcile The Aztecs for a second
time. Though, instead of Barabara being the
one in the position not to change history, it is actually Ian which narratively
is an interesting choice. In
construction Ian and Barbara as characters represent the future and the past,
respectively. They are a science and
history teacher for a reason, so giving Ian this story is honestly a weird idea. It actually works because Ian as a character
cares about the people he finds himself with while the Doctor and Susan are
oddly delighted at the weird conflict around the setting, Israel and Palestine
as a conflict is outright mentioned as something for the future that is a
little bit odd in places. It’s a solid
enough tribute really, but that’s all it is, a tribute act. 7/10.
Mike
Tucker and Robert Perry are usually a really great writing partnership, there’s
a reason they are responsible for many of the Seventh Doctor novels in the Past
Doctor Adventures line, but “Stop the Pigeon” is a weird one. It’s a short story that feels far more suited
to an actual novel, and goes against the premise of these being all historical
stories, being set in the far future of Earth while dealing with a space probe
that is an intelligent pigeon. Tucker
and Perry present the story through the viewpoint of Joe Dakin who is a really uninteresting
protagonist; attempting to be an everyman he is just kind of annoying and
unsuited for the mess of a story that includes aliens, the Master for some
reason. It’s clear that Tucker is not done
with the Master as a character after this, the ideas are good in the
story. The pigeon is an interesting idea
and personality but there isn’t nearly enough time to really explore any of the
ideas the short story proposes. 4/10.
And from
one story with the Master, to a superior story with the Master. “Freedom” is Steve Lyons attempt at examining
the Third Doctor’s general relationship with his exile on Earth, set with the
Master being in charge of a corporation just to taunt the Doctor’s general
exile. There are also time experiments
and the entire thing is meant to be the tantalizing glimpse of freedom that the
Doctor is clearly never going to get.
The climax hinges on the Doctor being tempted to fall down basically a path
that would make him just as bad as the Master.
It certainly helps that there is a handle on the Master as a character
and where they are at the point where this story is set, after The Daemons
specifically, making it harsher that the Doctor has had glimpses of freedom although
freedom on a very short leash. 7/10.
And now
begins Stephen Cole’s first of multiple stories in the anthology, “Glass”, this
rather short adventure examining a young woman terrified by seeing evil in
glass. Despite being a story with the Fourth
Doctor and Romana, this is incredibly short and sweet and atypical. Cole isn’t playing the story for comedy, he
is doing an effective psychological examination of a young woman needing to be freed
from a monster largely representing anxieties of sex. It’s short, but oh so engaging. 8/10.
The second
of Stephen Cole’s stories is another short and sweet character piece. “Mondas Passing” is about Ben and Polly after
the Doctor in 1986, when the events of The Tenth Planet are going on
around them. It excels at having the pair
have moved on despite being integrally linked by their travels with the Doctor
always laying heavy. It’s also only 5
pages long so it doesn’t overstay its welcome, but Ben is especially well served
in the end. 8/10.
Sam Lester
may also be a pseudonym for Stephen Cole, but there isn’t evidence either
way. “There Are Fairies at the Bottom of
the Garden” is a short story about the First Doctor and Dodo that does absolutely
nothing. After a streak of solid
character pieces, Lester clearly doesn’t really understand how to even characterize
Dodo, something that only Daniel O’Mahony knew how to do at this point in his controversial The Man
in the Velvet Mask, and David Bishop in Who Killed Kennedy?. This is a short story that seems to want to
be a First Doctor/Dodo story in earnest but doesn’t actually have much of a
story to tell. Despite being short it
also just drags with amateur prose and no real sense of anything going on. 5/10.
It's surprising
to me that Matthew Jones came over to write an installment for Short Trips,
but then “Mother’s Little Helper” is another little character piece from the perspective
of an unnamed protagonist that has more interesting things to say than half of
this book’s installments. It’s a Second
Doctor story set post-The War Games because the BBC Books were slowly
going all in on the Season 6B idea, with the Doctor having to essentially make
a choice to sacrifice a boy which has the ability to take away pain. The obvious central idea is that we have to
live with out pain, though will find ourselves surrounded with people who can
dull the pain and make life worth living.
8/10.
“The Parliament
of Rats” by Daniel O’Mahony is the short story that really blows the
rest of the Short Trips collection right out of the water. It’s the only Fifth Doctor story in the
collection and it’s clear that O’Mahony understands really how to deconstruct who
this version of the Doctor actually is. He
is travelling with Nyssa post Time-Flight and the weight of the universe
weighs quite heavily on him. This is
through a story that is metafictionally aware that it is a short story so leads
to a particularly surreal adventure. The
characterization is wonderfully done, really making the Fifth Doctor feel like
an old man who is slowly becoming tired with the universe as he faces an
Eldritch horror. It hits exactly the
right boxes for me. 9/10.
Stephen
Cole decides that he needs to do a story about authoritarianism. It’s uncomfortably bad because this is the
third story he’s written to fill pages.
3/10.
“Wish You Were
Here” is a story that wants to deconstruct the abusive and sexist aspects of
the early Sixth Doctor’s characters, those being the reasons that in the fandom
at large in 1998. It’s from the
perspective of an alien agent called Janis who the Doctor charms in a way that
is basically the opposite of the brash nature of the Sixth Doctor. Guy Clapperton is having a lot of fun in writing
the Sixth Doctor who comes across as lively.
8/10.
Mike
Tucker and Robert Perry had another shot at a Seventh Doctor short story and
made it a charming little piece following up on the trauma Kathleen Dudman
underwent in The Curse of Fenric, the use of the playing card is a bit
silly though. 7/10.
Short
Trips ends with
Paul Leonard essentially writing a novelette.
It’s a 50 page Eighth Doctor and Sam story called “The People’s Temple”. Like “The Last Day”, “The People’s Temple” is
a short story tributing The Aztecs for Sam Jones. Sam as a character at this point is in an
especially messy place, she’s one that Leonard excelled at writing in Genocide
and that level of detail is done here.
Leonard likes to play around with the mysticism surrounding Stonehenge
and Sam attempts to cause a slave uprising.
Again Leonard is generally tributing The Aztecs in particular
because that is seen as the don’t change history story in Doctor Who’s
history. It does struggle with the
ending, something Leonard generally does, but the Eighth Doctor and Sam are
great, the supporting characters feel like actual characters and it has room to
breathe. 7/10.
Overall, Short
Trips is honestly a mixed bag. It
excels the most when it is focusing on smaller character pieces, but it’s clear
that at this point a lot of the BBC Books hadn’t quite worked out their in
house style and you get writers excelling by doing things that worked in the
Virgin Publishing line that the BBC Books would actively avoid. 6.6/10.
