Einstein and the Doctor

"He's a right party animal, old Bertie."

Writer: Jo Cotterill
Format: Short Story
Released: December 2019
Printed in: Star Tales 03

Featuring: Thirteenth Doctor, Yaz, Ryan, Graham

Synopsis

"Even though they're gone from the world, they're never gone from me."

The Doctor is many things – curious, funny, brave, protective of her friends... and a shameless namedropper. While she and her companions battled aliens and travelled across the universe, the Doctor hinted at a host of previous, untold adventures with the great and the good: we discovered she got her sunglasses from Pythagoras (or was it Audrey Hepburn?); lent a mobile phone to Elvis; had an encounter with Amelia Earhart where she discovered that a pencil-thick spider web can stop a plane; had a 'wet weekend' with Harry Houdini, learning how to escape from chains underwater; and more.

In this collection of new stories, Star Tales takes you on a rip-roaring ride through history, from 500BC to the swinging 60s, going deeper into the Doctor's notorious name-dropping and revealing the truth behind these anecdotes.

Verdict

Einstein and the Doctor was a somewhat average continuation of the Star Tales anthology of stories where the Doctor encounters famous names. This time around we had a full tale featuring the Thirteenth Doctor and the rest of Team TARDIS which differed from the first two adventures in the book and that was quite nice given that Series 12 has just started. I'm very keen to get in as much as I can with the current team and this is just another addition. We had the Doctor meeting Einstein which was a wonderful, but not unprecedented, prospect and the excitement of the companions at getting to meet one of the most famous figures in history was excellent. However, the actual use of Albert Einstein in a Doctor Who story just wasn't what it should have been for me. Instead of Einstein being part of the threat and actually causing it to some extent, I think it would have been much more beneficial for Einstein to have been helping the Doctor and her companions solve a threat. Use his mind to tackle evil, not produce it! I was also a little frustrated that the arrival of Albert Einstein into the story was a little delayed with the revelation that children were suffering in the local proximity of Bern. Switzerland is sadly not a country I have been able to visit yet, but it is definitely on my bucket list. Any story taking place in a major European city outside of the UK is good with me because of how uncommon that is so having it occur just over a century in the past as well was an added bonus. The use of imagination as an element in a Doctor Who story has so much potential, but for it to feature again so quickly in a Thirteenth Doctor short story just seems a bit overboard to be honest. Now, I know that The Target Storybook came out just after this book, but Gatecrashers dealt with very similar issues. Albeit in a different way, but the similarities were just too soon. I thought the characterisation of Jodie Whittaker's Thirteenth Doctor was mostly good but it could definitely have been better which was a tad of a shame. I did really enjoy the relationship between the Doctor and Yaz in this story and it really allowed for the latter to have exposure and development. With that being said, I thought it was a great shame for Ryan and Graham not getting to meet Einstein after that was the entire purpose of the trip! The emotional play on the Einstein family was quite saddening, but it sounds heartless but I didn't quite care for it a great deal. The writing wasn't quite there in pulling the heartstrings. It was unexpected that his mother arrived and I found it quite amusing when she voiced her displeasure at who he was worrying. Ahh, the greatest fears of men from a time of old. What a strange society the past was. The ending with Albert and his wife imagining their daughter into existence for a brief moment was a nice touch and I thought it was quite interesting to find that his spouse had helped Albert with a number of papers but couldn't have her name on them because of the stance of the time period. It's quite shocking really. That was why I was so surprised the Doctor didn't reveal her true name/title and went with calling herself Rose instead. She's been further back in time and called herself Doctor so I don't quite understand the change here. Regardless, I've focused on the negatives but this was still a decent little tale, but not quite there for me.

Rating: 6/10