Doom’s Day: Dying Hours

Doctor Who: Doom’s Day #20-23

by Jacqueline Rayner, Simon Clark, Robert Valentine

Someone has sent literal Death after Doom. She can only outrun it for 24 hours. Unless she can find the Doctor...

Doom's Day is a multi-platform Doctor Who story to celebrate Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary by introducing a brand-new character on a 24-hour pursuit of the Doctor.

Tick... Tock...

As Doom's final hours come into sharp focus, she'll need to do whatever's necessary to complete her missions, find the Doctor, and escape what increasingly seems like the inevitable. But how best to find the person who can save Doom's life? Will the Doctor's friends be her salvation? Or perhaps the Doctor's enemies will be the route to survival? Doom is about to travel across thousands of years of time, and lightyears of space in search of her last, best hope. But even if she finds the Doctor, will a person who is all about saving lives help a person whose only job is to take them? Doom's day is almost over. Time is running out. This could be the end.

Dawn of an Everlasting Peace by Jacqueline Rayner - Venus, 3975. The day of the non-aggression pact. The perfect ironic location for an assassination! But Doom’s mission is about to become much more complicated thanks to an explosive plot to undermine the treaty itself.

The Howling Wolves of Xan-Phear by Simon Clark - A warring world of wolves. Doom’s target turns out to be the puppeteer of the warring Xan: a Silent. But what if she’s already completed her mission? How will she know? What if this wasn’t even her mission in the first place? No time to waste. The countdown is on.

A Date with Destiny by Robert Valentine - A romantic dinner turns life-threatening for an unsuspecting human in 2007. But this time, Doom has competition. And if she loses, then her last chance to find the Doctor could be snatched away. Cue an action-packed chase through the streets of London. But has Doom met her match?

The Crowd by Lizzie Hopley - “Follow the crowd”, that’s what they say, right? In this case, however, devastation, murder and destruction follow this particular Crowd - Doom’s next target. But amongst them - an unfamiliar face, with a familiar name. Could this be Doom’s salvation?

Doom's Day is a multi-platform story to celebrate Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary by introducing a brand-new character on a 24-hour pursuit of the Doctor.

Genres: Doctor Who, Audiobook, Time Travel

Audio CD

First published September 1, 2023

About the author

Jacqueline Rayner is a best selling British author, best known for her work with the licensed fiction based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who.

Her first professional writing credit came when she adapted Paul Cornell's Virgin New Adventure novel Oh No It Isn't! for the audio format, the first release by Big Finish. (The novel featured the character of Bernice Summerfield and was part of a spin-off series from Doctor Who.) She went on to do five of the six Bernice Summerfield audio adaptations and further work for Big Finish before going to work for BBC Books on their Doctor Who lines.

Her first novels came in 2001, with the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel EarthWorld for BBC Books and the Bernice Summerfield novel The Squire's Crystal for Big Finish. Rayner has written several other Doctor Who spin-offs and was also for a period the executive producer for the BBC on the Big Finish range of Doctor Who audio dramas. She has also contributed to the audio range as a writer. In all, her Doctor Who and related work (Bernice Summerfield stories), consists of five novels, a number of short stories and four original audio plays.

Rayner has edited several anthologies of Doctor Who short stories, mainly for Big Finish, and done work for Doctor Who Magazine. Beyond Doctor Who, her work includes the children's television tie-in book Horses Like Blaze.

With the start of the new television series of Doctor Who in 2005 and a shift in the BBC's Doctor Who related book output, Rayner has become, along with Justin Richards and Stephen Cole, one of the regular authors of the BBC's New Series Adventures. She has also abridged several of the books to be made into audiobooks.

She was also a member of Doctor Who Magazine's original Time Team.

Reviews

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hour 20 Dawn of Everlasting Peace - Definitely another step up from previous chapters of this multi-media crossover event. These kinds of things are often pretty terrible and so far, Doom’s Day has been pretty disappointing. While Doom’s character is pretty poorly established in the initial chapters, over the course of the entire event, she does get some more depth. Unfortunately, she still seems pretty ineffectual and incompetent in that most what we see of her carrying our her various assassinations she accomplishes by accident or by tricking and deceiving her employer. Still, it’s a fun story and has the usual Big Finish polish and soundscape that adds ambiance and credibility. (3/5)

Hour 21 A Date With Destiny - And another misstep in this whole ordeal of Doom’s Day. Camille Coduri, as Jackie Tyler, really wasn’t allowed to let loose, which was what I was really hoping for. And again, Doom herself comes across as more of a joke than “the universe’s greatest assassin.” This is really the whole Wolverine thing, “I’m the best at what I do. What I do isn’t very pretty,” it all gets very tedious after we get it repeated over and over, but we never get SHOWN the actuality of it. So, this one ended up being disappointingly average. (2/5)

Hour 22 The Howling Wolves of Xan-Phear - And here I am again, I might have enjoyed this more, had I any attachment to these characters or events. But this is just a mess of uninteresting miasma. It epitomizes all the crap that this whole crossover event has been built on: lame uninteresting characters in uninteresting events. I’d only give this a 1/5, but I’m going to boost it up a point because of the excellent production values. (2/5)

Hour 23 The Crowd - Definitely finishing up with the best chapter. Fast paced and a fun Eighth Doctor & Charley adventure. (4/5)

Sadly though, this whole set, and in fact the entire crossover event, has been disappointing at best and at worst a waste of time and money. (3/5)

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely the best story in this dreadful Doom series, and only because Big Finish is so good at what they do. It's still boring, though. And that's because Doom is not an interesting character. I don't know what compelled the BBC to create a storyline for Doctor Who's 60th anniversary that mostly excludes the Doctor from the story. I guess they've never really respected the show and its fans so it shouldn't be surprising...

Edit: gave it 1 extra star because McGann is so good.

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

1. Dawn of an Everlasting Peace by Jacqueline Rayner

3975年、プロの殺し屋Doomは殺しの依頼を果たすために金星で開催される4大惑星平和条約調印式典に紛れ込む。しかしセキュリティをすり抜けるために利用した車椅子の老人を連れた女性が実は式典に参加するSSSの幹部に夫を殺された恨みを持っていて復讐しようと爆弾を仕掛けていたと知り予定が大きく狂う。

ドクターlessストーリーなのでなかなか攻略する時になれなかったのだけれどせっかくなので根性振り絞って聞いてみた。思っていたより面白くDoomもちょっとルーシー・ミラーを彷彿とさせるキャラで、殺し屋といいながら困った人は見捨てられないっぽいところから何かやんごとなき事情があるんだろうなぁと。今回はあかされてないけれどドクターをなぜ狙うのか。次回はジャッキーも登場するので楽しみ。

2. A Date with Destiny by Robert Valentine
やっぱりジャッキーが出るとこっちのテンションがあがる。ドクターを殺せと依頼をした相手からジャッキーを守るためにたたかってくれるDoom。命を助けてくれたことに感謝はしても殺しを生業とするDoomに完全には心を許さないジャッキー。Doomがいなくなってから携帯電話でローズを呼び出しドクターに忠告するジャッキー。ちょっと待って。ジャッキーが話してるのってつまり10？
ジャッキーをデートに誘ったデニス氏が巻き添え死。いくらなんでも気の毒すぎだろ。

3. The Howling Wolves of Xan-Phear by Simon Clark

サイレントとウォルフの戦争の真っ只中。Doomはドクターを探し続けていた。しかしいよいよ命のタイムリミットが近づいてくる。

ドクターを探して命を助けてもらおうとしているDoom。アロンジーとか言ってるところから10とあったことがあるのかな？ドクターとどこかの戦場で一緒に行動したことがあったのかも。
サイレントとの戦争は恐ろしすぎるなと。

4. The Crowd by Lizzie Hopley

8、チャーリーと旅してた頃なのかな。Doomに冷たい。アサシンを生業としているDoomをどうしても受け入れられない模様。殺し屋な登場人物ってこれまでDW界隈でいなかったかな？？？Doomに恨みをもつ種族にチャーリーをさらわれてしまう。しかしDoomがドクターを探すハメになっていたのも黒幕がターディス狙いだったからな模様。8はDoomのドクターではなかったというか多分10に会いたいんだろうなぁと思いつつ、続きはどこに進めばいいのやら。これだからマルチメディアクロスオーバーイベントは大嫌いなのよー😞

[Steven Shinder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Doom finally feels more like a character, though it’s unfortunate how “too little too late” it feels, given that these four stories are just before her final hour. My higher rating can also be attributed to the inclusion of Jackie Tyler, Charlotte Pollard, and the Eighth Doctor. They bounce off of Doom so well in a way that didn’t work quite as well between her and other characters in previous hours. While I enjoyed this box set, I would say that the Doom’s Day experiment overall didn’t quite work.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Big Finish continues the Day of Doom. The suffers from a compressed narrative based on the hour time frame for each story. While Big Finish adds its storytelling method to this boxset, there is little to no progress to the whole story arc save for the final scene of the story.
While I have warmed to Doom I would avoid this storytelling method. Stories about time....need time.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably the best outing so-far for this multi-part story on Doom, which isn’t saying much. The first story in the collection was a bit embarrassing, followed by two snoozers (although I liked the Jackie Tyler bits). The last story featuring Paul McGann, however, was rather good. Overall, the production values were exceptional. Too bad the story quality didn’t match.

[Joseph S · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are the final four stories of this character’s journey and we don’t get resolution? Or am I missing something?