Living in the Past

"They're building a town!"

Writer: Andy Lane
Format: Short Story
Released: July 1990
Printed in: DWM 162

Featuring: Seventh Doctor

Synopsis

The Doctor arrives in what will become Mongolia during the Cretaceous period to pick up Ace, whom he had dropped off there some time ago. Along the way he encounters a put of Dholes and an alien slave who has escaped from a nearby construction site. Where is Ace, and can she play a role in stopping the colonisation?

Verdict

Living in the Past was sadly a bit of an average start to my reading of the Evening's Empire graphic novel! It seems to be a good collection of stories and my final bunch of Seventh Doctor comic strips but I decided to read things in release order and that meant starting with this text story that was printed some eighteen issues before the rest of the collection. I'm not sure why they would print things in a different order to the way it was released but I do understand the desire to kick things off with a comic strip rather than a text story. Sadly, this adventure failed to capture my imagination in a great way and I was always left wanting more. But I think the very nature and format of the story meant it was defeated right from the word go. A story that is just three pages, including illustrations, really does not have a lot of room to impress but even so, there just needed to be more happening. It was basically the Doctor wondering around, seeing a few different kinds of dinosaurs, nearly falling down a hole, seeing that there was civilisation being built and then Ace emerging on a dinosaur and trampling it. It probably sounds a bit more exciting than it actually was but I was very surprised to find out that this was Ace's debut in Doctor Who Magazine fiction! Surely they could have saved such a momentous occasion for a better story? It was quite a good image though seeing her riding a dinosaur but I just felt there needed to be more going on. There just wasn't enough backstory for anything to be impactful and that begs the question of the point of these kind of stories. I mean, it won't stop me reading and blogging them but I do question their necessity. It did actually tie in well with the comic strips as Ace's whereabouts here were acknowledged in Train-Flight but I just felt there needed to be more elaboration on why Ace had been left here and why the Doctor chose now to come and pick her up. The prospect of a civilised town being built in the Cretaceous period was very interesting but it wasn't developed much at all sadly thanks to Ace's trampling on a dinosaur. I liked the idea of an alien coming to Earth in prehistory and trying to build civilisation for slaves - there's a fantastic idea for a story there - but it just needed more time to expand and become meaningful. The Doctor barely had a conversation with the escaped slave and had he, I think it would have been important. The dholes provided a decent illustration but that was about that. The Doctor and Ace were later reunited and off they went. It was a bit anticlimactic and just needed more elaboration, action and impact. Overall, the ideas are there but the delivery was difficult which I fully appreciate.

Rating: 5/10