Buyer's Remorse

"Planet, I name thee Wet."

Writer: Gary Russell

Format: Short Story

Released: August 2015

Printed in: Heroes and Monsters Collection 26

Featuring: Twelfth Doctor

Synopsis

The TARDIS brings the Twelfth Doctor to a planet of remote wetness. It soon gets squelched below the surface and it ends up being listed for sale. So, who wants a worn and used type-40 TARDIS with a broken chameleon circuit? Place your bids!

Verdict

Buyer’s Remorse was a very fun little adventure to conclude my reading of the original titles in the Heroes and Monsters Collection! I’m fully aware that there are another 23 titles within this collection that I have not blogged, nor do I plan to, because they appear elsewhere and actually a few of them have been blogged by virtue of them appearing in numerous of the Doctor Who Annuals. This one though saw a rare short story for the Twelfth Doctor which I really liked and it was a lot of fun to have him travelling alone. He wouldn’t be telling Clara anything about this little outing here though! His arrival to the planet was very funny and was the perfect way to capture the characterisation of the Twelfth Doctor. He was just the perfect incarnation for a planet like this one and it allowed for Peter Capaldi’s likeness to be so clear on the page. That’s always an important element of prose in my eyes. A planet where each raindrop was like a cup full of water didn’t exactly sound pleasant, but with the description of what happened to his umbrella it didn’t sound too dissimilar to the current situation in South Wales with Storm Ciara! I think it’s fair to say that it’s been a blustery week with umbrellas rendered pretty much useless. I did love the image of the Twelfth Doctor going back into the TARDIS to retrieve the trusty question mark handled umbrella so synonymous with his seventh incarnation. I’m always a fan of merging some eras and costume designs like that. I couldn’t believe he just threw it away though! I’m sure he must have at least one spare. I certainly hope that’s the case anyway. His misery with the weather on Planet Wet was quite sad to see in the end because he was getting so incredibly frustrated by events. Just when he’d decided to leave the shiny building in the distance and not give in to his curiosity, the TARDIS decided to get eaten up by the ground with a nice little squelch to go with it. Poor Doctor. That wasn’t really fair. I felt an enormous amount of sympathy which was a little strange but made for really good writing. The GalMart arrived somewhat unexpectedly into the story which was fine and seemed to take things into a completely different direction than I was expecting. That was absolutely fine and it continued to be fun with a futuristic eBay that had now listed the TARDIS for sale! One of those buyers interested not hiding the fact that it was a Blathereen was good and I’d love to have an adventure between those and the Twelfth Doctor. That could be a great deal of fun. I think he’d ridicule them to nonsense. The idea of adopting Dalek time was just bananas but incredibly interesting. Was this perhaps the first time ever that a rel has been defined as lasting between 1 and 1.5 seconds? I can’t recall it ever being confirmed before. The conversation between the bidders was good and I liked how they were all salivating over the prospect of buying a TARDIS with the Doctor right there demanding that it was not for sale! He couldn’t believe what was going on in front of him. But salvage rights had been claimed by virtue of the TARDIS landing unregistered and there was just no arguing with that. Of course, the Doctor would soon get involved in the bidding himself and would be quite smug when the question regarding the TARDIS key was put forward. The panicked reaction of all the bidders and now most of them dropped out was excellent. However, I really wish it was the Doctor who raised the issue. That would have been better. It was still good though and the Doctor was loving his new found position of power. His username being JohnSmith12 was a thing of beauty as well. He’d let WinnerBoi win the auction because he knew that he’d still be the only with access and it was a fine lesson in reading the fine print. The Doctor would go further than just escaping after his ship was released for despatch and injected the GalMart host with a trojan virus of Ancient High Gallifreyan origin. I loved how he leveraged a sale of the anti-trojan whilst managing to reimburse WinnerBoi’s account. A fun end. Overall, this was a really good and enjoyable little read!

Rating: 8/10