Rewriting History

"The Doctor has his own museum?"

Writer: James Swallow

Format: Short Story

Released: June 2015

Printed in: The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who 06

Featuring: Tenth Doctor, Martha

Synopsis

The Tenth Doctor has an important mission for Martha Jones, but she will be deemed more important than anyone else in the Doctor's history. The Karadax intend on changing history to ensure that the Doctor doesn't defeat them again, and it's the end of the world if they succeed...

Verdict

Rewriting History was a magnificent continuation of The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who! This really is turning out to be quite the little gem of a short story collection and given just how short some of the adventures are, I really wasn’t expecting it to be that way. I loved the concept behind this one and I think as I venture into the second segment of the book with a focus on Time rather than Space now, I’m going to enjoy things even more. The concept of changing history has been played with so many times in Doctor Who and dates all the way back to The Aztecs with the Doctor proudly proclaiming to Barbara that you can’t even rewrite one line of history. However, he would go on to ever so slightly break that rule on a few occasions, but this time around it was actually the Karadax who were hoping to alter the past. They’d been defeated time and time again by the Doctor and so they proved deep into his timeline and found what they considered to be a weak point. They wanted to exploit that moment and eradicate their past defeats and apparently Martha Jones was the key. I was very intrigued when she got to meet a seemingly older version of herself and I was certainly not expecting the truth about her to be what it was! This older Martha wasn’t the norm of a future self or from a parallel universe, she was museum exhibit! The prospect of the Doctor having his own museum was just wonderful and I would certainly adore to take a visit there. Surely there’s a televised story that could come out of this setting? It seems almost too good of an idea not to proceed. Anyway, we weren’t actually at the Museum of the Doctor. The Martha artefact had been stolen by the Karadax to try and convince Martha that she needed to leave the Doctor and end her travels in the TARDIS. She needed to go home. Judging by some of the references to Smith and Jones, The Shakespeare Code and Gridlock, it seemed to be set pretty early on in the chronology of Series 3 which was interesting and definitely worked well. Already, Martha trusted the Doctor which was nice to see but she also really liked him in a like like kind of way. She could kid herself! That was just how it was and she seemed to be aware that her heart would be broken if she didn’t end her travels now. It was a decent plan by the Karadax to try and use Martha against herself to change history and get what they wanted, except there was a slip up as when appealing to the safety of Martha’s family, the exhibit slipped by referring to Tish as Letitia. That was far too posh for the liking of Martha’s sister which was quite amusing. The exhibit quickly advancing through clothes and showcasing Martha’s journey in the TARDIS was very good and I like the little insight into stories like The Lazarus Experiment, 42 and Human Nature. Martha didn’t want to know her future and she maintained her trust in the Doctor which really was quite admirable. This story was on course for full marks but then things took a detour south on the last page as the object Martha had been entrusted to guide with her life was revealed to be a sock and that it was deadly to the systems of the Karadax. We had an explanation, which I was grateful for, and it needed to be dry, but come on! A sock! Well, it’s just preposterous. Other than that, this was a hugely interesting little story and one I thoroughly enjoyed reading. Overall, a terrific little tale!

Rating: 9/10