1. The Calendar Man by AK Benedict
Answering a cry for help, the Doctor and Amy arrive on a misty colony world – but nobody thinks anything is wrong. Nobody, except for one young woman, hiding in shadows and scribbling in her notebook.
Soon, Amy is on the trail of missing colonists, while the Doctor strides into the fog in search of a fairy-tale.
But time is running out, and the Calendar Man is flicking through the pages of their lives…
2. The Top of the Tree by Simon Guerrier
On one of their annual jaunts, young Kazran Sardick and the Doctor find themselves in trouble when the TARDIS is tangled in the branches of a very strange, very large tree.
They emerge into a habitat where myriad species fight for survival: an ecosystem of deadly flora and fauna, along with a tribe of primitive humans.
This is a mystery which can only be solved by climbing. But what will they find at the top of the tree?
3. The Light Keepers by Roy Gill
Dorium Maldovar has a problem. The self-styled ‘Beacon People’ are bad for business, and now they’re in his shuttle park, digging for mysterious minerals.
When the Doctor crashes into his life once again, Dorium enlists him to find out what these scavengers are really up to inside their lighthouse.
But a lighthouse signals danger – and this beacon was placed to warn of something more ancient and powerful than anyone knows. Something that is returning…
4. False Coronets by Alice Cavender
On the trail of a temporal anomaly, the Doctor and Clara arrive in a London dungeon, where an unlikely prisoner awaits her execution. This is a 19th Century England where the King has been dethroned, and Republicans bearing false coronets hold sway.
While the Doctor seeks out the source of alien interference in the timelines, Clara recruits some local help – and gets invited to a party.
History has gone awry, and Jane Austen must help rewrite it.
THE ELEVENTH DOCTOR CHRONICLES: THE CALENDAR MAN
After volumes of narrated stories featuring the ninth and tenth Doctors, it’s Matt Smith’s turn for The Eleventh Doctor Chronicles, once again featuring Jacob Dudman as primary narrator and impressionist. The first story, “The Calendar Man” by AK Benedict, features the Doctor trying to defeat an ancient creature from Gallifreyan legend. The setup is fantastic: people on an isolated colony world are disappearing, but when they vanish they are wiped from the collective memory of the colony. Only one person remembers them, and she is dismissed as a lunatic by the other colonists. Unfortunately, when the revelation comes it’s bizarrely difficult to understand. There’s an ancient force from Gallifreyan history calling itself the Calendar Man who kills people and erases them in sync with the calendar, which is fine, but the villain’s motive is somewhat unclear and its powers and capabilities are not even loosely defined. It’s hard to feel any sense of threat, especially since the villain is defeated almost as an afterthought. Dudman’s Smith impression is utterly fantastic – it sounds like they got the real thing in studio – and Benedict expertly captures the character in prose. Amy is also there, though much less memorably. This is an odd way to start the set, but at least there’s an unusual feel to the story – it’s just a shame that the villain is very similar to an intentionally terrible Batman villain.
6/10
THE ELEVENTH DOCTOR CHRONICLES: THE TOP OF THE TREE
The second Eleventh Doctor Chronicle is “The Top of the Tree” by Simon Guerrier, and it’s every bit as good as we’ve come to expect from that author. It features a very simple idea grounded in a fantastic setting: a massive tree orbiting a star and bearing its own ecosystem. The Doctor, accompanied by Kazran Sardick, lands the TARDIS in the branches of the tree, and finds a tribe of humans, remnants of a colonial society. There’s very little plot: the Doctor and Kazran explore, journeying up and down the tree, and the tree’s natural life cycle creates the threats. There’s no villain to speak of, no maniac at the controls, just the impassive, uncaring force of nature. And the two travelers suffer at its expense: this is a story that makes you feel every bump, every bruise, every drop of acidic sap on the skin. If there’s one complaint it’s with the ending: Guerrier sets up an impossible situation for the travelers, telling us they’re cut off from the TARDIS with death rapidly approaching… and then the Doctor just goes and gets the TARDIS anyway and saves the day. “I had to go recover for six months before coming back to save you” is very much of this era, but it’s also dramatically unrewarding as we don’t actually see the Doctor making a sacrifice. Nonetheless, this is an excellent story, easily the best of the four.
9/10
THE ELEVENTH DOCTOR CHRONICLES: THE LIGHT KEEPERS
The third story in the Eleventh Doctor Chronicles is “The Light Keepers” by Roy Gill, and if you don’t remember who that is, he wrote the first story in the Tales from New Earth set. If you still don’t remember, I don’t blame you, because that set was pointless and dull. I mention this because “The Light Keepers” brings back the Lux, the villains from the New Earth set, and waits until the midway point to unveil their surprising presence. I shouldn’t poke fun – I’m sure there are massive Tales from New Earth fans out there who punched the air when the Lux returned – but my reaction was more of a bored shrug. Fortunately, the first half of the story is entertaining: the Doctor teams up with Dorium to investigate problems at the Maldovarium, which leads them across a planet and into a giant, hollow statue. While the journey the two take is entertaining, it doesn’t give us much of a window into Dorium, which is a shame because there’s plenty of room to expand upon the character we saw on TV. But once they arrive, and once the threat is revealed to be the Lux, the story sputters to an unexciting conclusion. If you’re at all familiar with the concept of Chekhov’s gun, you’ll see the ending coming a mile off, which doesn’t help. All of that said, there’s enough here to hold the listener’s attention, and it’s capably written and performed, but it feels perfunctory, as though a certain area of Matt Smith’s era had to be covered and any old story would do. Not impressed.
5/10
THE ELEVENTH DOCTOR CHRONICLES: FALSE CORONETS
The box set concludes with “False Coronets” by Alice Cavender, in which the Doctor and Clara must team up with Jane Austen to prevent history from being changed. I love the structure of the story: the TARDIS first lands in the alternate future, the Doctor and Clara realize there’s a problem, and then they head back to the TARDIS and journey back to the point of divergence. From there, we join the story after the travelers have already arrived in the past, dropping us into the middle of the action. This gives the action a more immediate, vibrant feel. Unfortunately, from there the story doesn’t distinguish itself in any particular way, apart from the refreshing nature of the villain. Instead of a deranged, violent killer, the villain is a disaffected student on a gap year, which overturns the usual Doctor Who structure a bit – but the resolution isn’t particularly creative. There’s something strange with the prose, too – the dialogue in particular sounds odd throughout and doesn’t really work. Furthermore, while the story foregrounding Clara is in keeping with the era, it relies upon Jake Dudman’s impression of Jenna Coleman, which isn’t really an impression at all. It’s more evident here than in the other stories that all the voices but one are being done by one guy. On the whole, this isn’t the best box set, though it features one excellent story. Its biggest strength is capturing the feel of the Matt Smith era: each of these stories fits right into its designated period. If you’re looking for a nostalgic trip through recent Doctor Who history, this is a fine way to do it. If you’re looking for dynamic, inventive storytelling… eh.
6/10