Doctor Who Short Trips: Repercussions

Big Finish Short Trips #8

by Gary Russell (Editor), Peter Anghelides, J. Shaun Lyon

Doctor Who Short Trips is a series of themed short story anthologies of new Doctor Who fiction, featuring the Doctor in all of his first eight incarnations. They feature stories written by some of the leading names in Doctor Who, past and present, including Paul Cornell, Gareth Roberts, Christopher H. Bidmead, and Paul Magrs. Repercussions features 16 tales set on a strange airship taking its passengers on a trip to who-knows-where. Among the people aboard is young adventuress Charley Pollard, just a few weeks into her life aboard the TARDIS alongside the Eighth Doctor, a man whose past she knows frighteningly little about. She encounters a diplomat trying to stop a war, a young man seemingly murdered by the Doctor, a tramp, a seismologist, and a republican trying to save the life of his plague-stricken daughter. One thing they all have in common: an encounter with a strange alien visitor who seemed to help them, but perhaps should have left them alone.

Genres: Doctor Who, Short Stories, Science Fiction, Anthologies

246 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2004

About the author

Gary Russell is a British freelance writer, producer and former child actor. As a writer, he is best known for his work in connection with the television series Doctor Who and its spin-offs in other media. As an actor, he is best known for playing Dick Kirrin in the British 1978 television series The Famous Five.

Reviews

[James Bowman · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the framing story, Charley (the Eighth Doctor's companion) finds herself on a ship flying through the time vortex. On board are others whose lives changed course due to their encounters with the Doctor... removed from history due to unintended effects on history.

Overall, I enjoyed the stories in this anthology, particularly since many dealt with more of the implications of time travel. However, I had a problem with the framing premise - it seems like the Doctor should be able to find a better solution.

Comments on the specific stories:
- The Time Lord's Story (Eight): A neat little tale, very tied in with Big Finish's Gallifrey canon. Though in retrospect, it seems like Tianna's reasons for being exiled don't quite match the others...
- The Ghost's Story (Seven): A solid story, certainly apropos for the Doctor-and-Ace era.
- The Rag and Bone Man's Story (One): Pretty good, and I always appreciate a story that deals with the Doctor and Susan's early days.
- The Seismologist's Story (Three): Not too impressed with this one, it was kind of a mess.
- The Dead Man's Story (Three): This one was sad, but well done. At least the ending was less depressing than I expected.
- The Inquisitor's Story (Six): Not bad, with a good discussion of the killing-Hitler-in-the-crib debate.
- The Gangster's Story (Five): A fun gangster drama.
- The Bushranger's Story (Four): The most dreamlike of the stories, with kind of a non-ending.
- The Schoolboy's Story (One): Probably the story that most deals with actual repercussions, with one of the more sympathetic protagonists.
- The Juror's Story (multiple): Fun, if particularly time-breaking. (The Internet tells me the last Doctor to appear is Seven, but I had assumed it was Two...)
- The Farmer's Story (Two): A solid enough historical, apropos for the show-era.
- The Republican's Story (Four): Good enough, but it feels like it might have benefited more from a longer treatment.
- The Assassin's Story (Five): Felt uncomfortably like a dark wish fulfillment at times, though at least the results were presented fairly.
- The Diplomat's Story (Six): I liked it, but the actual involvement of the Doctor was pretty minor. The rest felt like a general SF story. A good one, mind, but not particularly Whovian.
- The Steward's Story (Two): Interesting, but the unquestioned magical angle made this feel non-canonical.
- The Tramp's Story (Seven): Melancholy, but effective.

Final verdict: A-. Big Finish's anthologies are often worth reading, and this has some of the better tales I've seen in that series. Definitely recommended.

[Billy Martel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review by story…

The Juror’s Story: just fan service bs. 1/5

The Farmer’s Story: really cool to see the Doctor in a pure western. Not the best writing but a lot of fun. 4/5

The Seismologist’s Story: Decent atmosphere but the Doctor was out of character and I hate stories which add new TARDIS journeys to before the Doctor escapes exile. 1.5/5

The Dead Man’s Story: Well, if you didn’t hate Jeremy before you read this you will after. Bizarre that this follows up Ghosts of N-Space since that story established that ghosts do exist in the Doctor Who universe, but this story says they don’t. Anyway… 4/5

[Tobias Cooper · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Short Trips collections are a bit of a mixed bag, all too often they degenerate into a pseudo literary, angst ridden fan-wank which you can, just about, if you're lucky get away with with a strong plot and a full length novel but which is usually death to a short story. That being said this collection is a rare find all the stories, which are of people whose lives were irrevocably altered by the Doctor's actions, are eminently readable and cover a wide scope of style.

[James Allen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I ended up reading this Short Trips Anthology next, after looking at them all on my shelf. I think what drew me to this one was that Joseph Lidster had written another short story, and I have thoroughly enjoyed the other stories of his that I have read.

I found the premise for this anthology quite clever. Some anthologies within this series don't exactly bother with a setup as to why these stories are being told, but here we have an airship, the one on the cover, that travels through the time vortex, with its occupants being people who have endangered the web of time in some way or another by meeting the Doctor. Its most recent visitor is one Charlotte Pollard, a new companion for the 8th Doctor, after she was saved from dying in the R-101 airship when it was destroyed. Her continued existence endangers the web of time, and so she finds herself on this journey with those whose stories we will hear.

As with other anthologies of this range, it's difficult to rank them as there are multiple stories within, 16 in this volume to be exact. Of the 16, I found myself enjoying 6 of them. I wouldn't say it was a bad anthology or a bad read. I know that not every story will be for me, but it just makes those that are much more enjoyable to read.

My favourites were (in order of contents): The Rag & Bone Man's Story, The Dead Man's Story, The Inquisitor's Story, The Schoolboy's Story, The Juror's Story and The Tramp's Story.

Y'know, I think I'm quite sick and tired of hearing about the blooming web of time.

[Mark Higginbottom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another one in the series of short stories from the world's of Doctor Who.Often these collections can be a bit hit and miss but I actually found this one to be one of the better ones,each story being particularly good.Also this one does contain a connecting story running through it of sorts so that was nice .Overall a good enjoyable read.

[Joseph Tavernier · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another concept that I think would work much better in an original IP than the established canon of Doctor Who. Some of the stories are dull, some are VERY interesting, but the framing narrative and conclusion don't seem like something the Doctor would do. I don't know if I can accept the book if the framing narrative is distasteful to me.

[Wendy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this anthology quite a bit, though it wasn't quite what I was hoping for. What I was really looking for was an anthology about times when the Doctor screwed up, when he (with the best of intentions and motives) genuinely made things worse rather than better, or mangled the time stream in ways that he later had to correct.

Some of the stories in this volume fit that bill pretty well. However, a lot of the stories run up against a problem that Doctor Who has had nearly from the beginning: there's no clear-cut way of telling which of the Doctor's interventions in history are permissible or not. Over the years, there's been plenty of handwaving about the Web of Time, or fixed points in history, or whatever. But short of really blatant paradox creators like travelling back in time to talk yourself out of doing something, or introducing a technology that won't be invented for another few centuries, who's to say whether a particular action shreds the Web of Time or not? In too many cases, these stories seem like perfectly ordinary Doctor Who stories, except with "...and then the Web of Time was broken." tacked on the end.

Still, there are some really good stories in this volume. I particularly liked Eddie Robson's tale about the jury in an unusual murder trial, Peter Anghelides's 3rd Doctor and Jo story, and a story featuring Sarah and the 4th Doctor during the Great Fire of London.

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1175564.html[return][return]I got this collection mainly because it had the only Erimem story I had not otherwise read or listened to - 'The Gangster's Story', by Jon de Burgh Miller. I was not bowled over by it, or indeed by many of the other stories in the collection, which is built around a theme of people whose survival affects the Web of Time and who are therefore removed from history by the Doctor - completely un-Doctorish behaviour, it seemed to me. I did rather like Kathryn Sullivan's 'The Diplomat's Story', but otherwise you can give this one a miss.

[8thdoctor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every great decision creates ripples, like a huge boulder dropped into a lake. The ripples merge, rebound off the banks in unforeseeable ways. The heavier the decision, the larger the waves, the more uncertain the consequences.' - Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks by Ben Aaronovitch. This is a compendium of the repercussions that even doing good can have terrible consequences.