The Doctor Who Stories

This ridiculously-titled book is a deceptively chunky hardcover; there are a lot of pages, yes, but there are also wide margins, big space, large font, and lots of pictures-- basically everything my students do to pad out their papers. But I am always unable to resist the prospect of Doctor Who short story anthology, as the format lends itself perfectly to displaying the wide variety of formats that the series has to offer. Unfortunately, most of these stories are too slight to work. Some, like Stephen Cole's "The Hero Factor", simply reproduce a "typical" Doctor Who adventure, but that never really works in a story of this length, as the ending is too abrupt. Many others show adventures away from the Doctor for various characters and monsters, and these work somewhat better. It's nice to see an origin for the Cult of Skaro in Justin Richards's "Birth of a Legend", even if the story does need a plot. I also liked Mickey Smith getting a chance to shine in "Taking Mickey" by Justin Richards, which showed one of his alien-investigating adventures before he moved to the parallel Earth, and "Blind Terror" by Justin Richards, which depicts a good old Sontaran/Rutan showdown. "Speech Day" by Justin Richards is a nice glimpse into the Master's time as Harold Saxon.

"The Final Darkness" by Stephen Cole, which retells "The Christmas Invasion" from the perspective of the Sycorax, should have been better than it was. And I found it odd that while "The Secret of the Stones" acknowledged the discrepancy between The Kingmaker and Sometime Never... regarding the fate of the Princes in the Tower, it introduced a new one by providing a whole new origin for Stonehenge than "The People's Temple"! The flat-out best story in this volume, however, is "A Dog's Life" by Justin Richards, which tells the tale of the end of K-9 Mark III. Who knew that a tin dog meeting his end could be so sad? A nice little surprise tucked away in the mediocre collection, as it's definitely one of the best Doctor Who short stories I've ever read.