The Temporal Logbook brings together a selection of stories from writers throughout Doctor Who’s fandom. We have a story for each of the ‘classic’ line-up of the Doctor’s incarnations (so those looking for a War Doctor story amidst this collection will be thoroughly disappointed). To begin with, A Modest Intervention by Michael Baxter sees the First Doctor taking a vested interest in scandal-hit Victorian society. Next, in J.E. Remy’s Breathe, the Second Doctor cannot even take time out to refuel the TARDIS at the Medusa Cascade when trouble emerges. And this patterns, we are given snapshots into the Doctor’s life throughout his incarnations including: The Telecamad, a not so straight forward trip to Ancient Greece for the Third Doctor, Impossible Things Before Breakfast sees the Fifth Doctor encounter a certain Lewis Carroll, meanwhile, Mud & Metal sees Christopher Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor encounter the Cybermen and rounding off at the end is Many A Weary Foot in which the current Twelfth Doctor reflects on his past adventures with a young girl lonely at Christmas.
This is a wonderful anthology of stories and cannot be praised highly enough. For such short stories (the average length being about 18 pages), their level of description provides vivid detail for the reader; the benefit these stories have is that the main characters are already established so the writers see that they can they can spend more time establishing a credible problem for the Doctor to solve. Meanwhile, with such a vast cross-media history to draw from, the stories give an opportunity to make reference to past (and future) adventures and to past incarnations (even in the wrong order in true timey-wimey style!).
The one minor nag that you could have about the collection (in a positive way) is that some of the stories are held back because of the general nature of the short story; in other words, some of these have the potential to become full stories.
To wrap things up, Temporal Logbook is a wonderful addition to the Doctor Who canon (the 50th anniversary having legitimised Doctor Who media between the show’s original ending and it’s revival); its vivid stories build on the show’s rich history and creates wonderful little episodes for the reader to enjoy and you can see the relationship between the stories as well; they are different adventures all belonging to the same man.
TYPE 40 TARDIS – THE TEMPORAL LOGBOOK / AUTHOR: VARIOUS / PUBLISHER: PENCIL TIP PUBLISHING / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
