Three Wise Men

"Even an astronaut could be superstitious."

Writer: Richard Dungworth
Format: Short Story
Released: October 2016
Printed in: Twelve Doctors of Christmas 04

Featuring: Fourth Doctor

Synopsis

Apollo 8. It's not the mission it has been set out to be. NASA aren't as in charge as they would like - but they will never know. UNIT have commandeered the mission and it's all for the strange purpose of a madman in a box. Would the Doctor really highjack the mission?

Verdict

Three Wise Men was another very good little story to continue along my reading of the Twelve Doctors of Christmas collection of adventures. This was my second successive solo outing for the Fourth Doctor so I think I timed things pretty well in that regard but this was very different to yesterday's story as the Doctor himself didn't actually feature all that much. The story, as the title may suggest, was more centred on the three-man team that made up the crew of NASA's Apollo 8 mission to orbit the moon in 1968. The title is a superb one for what the story was and the collection in which it appears, but I was somewhat glad that the Christmas theme was very loose with the crew just being up in Space at the festive time of the year. There were a few passing comments but there was no real focus on Christmas and for a story set in space, I thought that was the right way to go about things. I'm not so sure what that means for my opinion on Voyage of the Damned, then! See a past blog entry from long ago for that one. Even though this was such a short format, I really liked that we got to learn a lot about the individual men that manned the spacecraft and of some of the background of the Space War (no, not the Target novelisation of Frontier in Space) and their progress thus far with dealing with the likes of space sickness and sleep deprivation. I felt like we got to know the three historical characters very quickly which was great to read. I really did enjoy that aspect of the story. It made the arrival of the Doctor mean a little more and I just love to think of how the astronauts reacted to seeing the Doctor, particularly the huge grinning face and curled hair of his fourth incarnation, from the outside of the spacecraft as they orbited around the dark side of the Moon and would lose contact with Earth for a brief amount of time. Of course, that provided the perfect timing for the Doctor to step in and not become part of the history books which was nice placement, even if a little convenient. I really adored the idea of the Doctor just using Apollo 8 for his own gain, but my only little qualm about this story was that there wasn't a lot actually concerning why the Doctor needed what he'd been brought by the three dumbfounds astronauts. They couldn't quite believe that they'd been used by UNIT once the Doctor had gone. Their getting to go into the TARDIS was cool and I loved how stunned they all seemed by just about everything that was happening! It definitely brought a sense of realism to the story which was good. I absolutely loved that one of the UNIT packages for the Doctor contained the completely unnecessary item of jelly babies, but it wouldn't really be a Fourth Doctor story without them would it? A really great moment that was furthered by the continued stunned reactions of the three astronauts. The ending was good and I liked how the Doctor literally set them on the right track and right to the moment where he arrived. There would be no surviving log and their experiences would remain secret. Overall, a very good little adventure full of intrigue and spatial interest. Thumbs up.

Rating: 8/10