A Handful of Stardust

"All at once horror became seduction."

Writer: Jake Arnott
Format: Short Story
Released: April 2014
Series: Time Trips 05

Featuring: Sixth Doctor, Peri

Synopsis

The TARDIS is diverted to England in 1572, and the Sixth Doctor and Peri meet John Dee – "mathematician, astrologer, alchemist magician, and the greatest mind of our time"/ (Only of our time?", the Doctor asks, unimpressed). But what brought them here? When the Doctor discovers that Dee and his assistant have come across a "great disturbance in the cosmos, in the constellation of Cassiopeia", he realises that they are all in terrible danger.

Verdict

A Handful of Stardust was a decent continuation of my reading through the Time Trips series! I was very glad to get a new story with the Sixth Doctor and Peri as they're a favoured pairing of mine, and throwing in the Master was just an added treat! It perhaps didn't quite live up to my high expectations but as my rating reflects, this was still a very good little read. I liked the foray into the past and the Doctor's reaction when he was confronted by Doctor Dee after he had somehow managed to summon the TARDIS to the sixteenth century was magnificent. The little face off debating who was actually the Doctor was fantastic and probably the story's highlight. I actually thought the characterisation of the Sixth Doctor was good throughout with a nice likeness to Colin Baker evident on the page, but I felt the same could not be said of Peri which was a bit of a shame. She seemed too confident and brash in a very intelligent kind of way and whilst she's far from being dull, this just seemed a little out of her depth for me. I liked how her being an American was made use of, but would she really have blurted out that she was from four hundred years in the future? I'm really not so sure about that. I thought it was a little weird also how she was aggravated by how taken aback Dee and Thomas were with her and she wanted them to stop dropping their jaws and blurt out what it was they wanted to say. I thought that was a little harsh and out of character, but it was nice how her relationship did develop with the latter throughout the story and she came to call him a geek in a very nice way. He liked that. The slight hiding of the Master as being between a bachelor and a doctor on the academia ladder was terrific and I really liked that as I'm less than a fortnight from completing my Masters course now. So, all being well and I'll become my very own evil Time Lord. The plot of the Master was intriguing with his desire to hand over the Earth to the Cassiopeians and the whole link this story had with Cassiopeia and the supernova that would change the way astrologers would look at the universe was good. I didn't quite understand the Master's purpose though, surely he'd have researched that the Gurdian Lex was not so keen on the way humanity was used by the incubus. There was a nice twist at the end though with Peri setting the sluggish thing on the Master himself. Her reactions to that being inside her were good and I liked how she hated knowing that she'd liked it. Desire was a strong thing. The ending was a little shaky for me and seemed to leave a couple of loose ends, like where exactly did the Master go? And the Doctor had just ended up fixing his TARDIS! I'm not sure he'd really let that slide. What I did very much enjoy were nods to the show's chronological past and future with mercury needed to fix the Master's TARDIS and also the mention of him looking into the untempered schism as a child, which we would of course find out in The Sound of Drums. The Sixth Doctor here acknowledged that it drove him mad and that's true, but he'd be back to fight another day. I liked the ending as we found out a bit about the afterlife and achievements of Dee and Thomas in astrology which was a nice touch. Overall, a good little adventure!

Rating: 7/10