We Will Feed You to the Trees

"Usually I have to at least know what's going on before I end up in chains."

Writer: Dave Sudden

Format: Short Story

Released: October 2020

Printed in: The Wintertime Paradox 06

Featuring: Seventh Doctor

Synopsis 

Did you Davros and the Doctor met for three Christmases, on different planets, across time and space? Have you heard the one about the time the Plasmavores came to pay a festive visit? Or when Madame Vastra fought a cyborg?

The perfect collection of the bleakest – and sometimes brightest – time of the year, these are the tales to get you halfway out of the dark...

Verdict

We Will Feed You to the Trees was a good little story to continue my reading of The Wintertime Paradox collection! This one felt a little different from other adventures in the volume and there were a number of reasons for that. Firstly, it was really nice to delve into the Classic era for the first time in the book as this was a solo outing for the Seventh Doctor which was ever so clearly established by the description of his attire. I thought the author probably went a little overboard in the reiteration of the question marks adorning his vest and the inclusion of the umbrella with question mark handle to compliment was done on a too frequent basis. For whatever reason, I just got the feeling that even the author wasn’t wholly familiar with this incarnation of the Doctor. There were even a couple of references to how small he was which just didn’t feel right when describing our heroic lead character, no matter how true it may be of this particular regeneration. Now, that may have something to do with the second way in which this story felt different from others in the collection with it being told in the first person. I’m really not a fan of that format and every time I see a story starting that way I groan or sigh for what’s ahead. It’s purely personal preference but I particularly don’t enjoy it when it’s from the perspective of an unfamiliar character. I think it would work fine if it was the Doctor or a companion in that almost narrator role, but here when it was a nameless woman I just couldn’t get emotionally invested. It’s a good job that the story being told was great to go some way in making up for that. I thought the forest setting worked very well and I liked that the Doctor was in chains almost immediately upon his arrival. The Doctor being in chains is nothing new but as my quote suggests it usually takes him to actually do something other than arrive for that to be the case. The woman as a guard was decent and I liked that she was set in the ways of her faith. The Doctor would fall victim of that as every year a sacrifice was made to the forest to ensure the life of everyone else could go on. The fact that policy dictated any strangers would be that sacrifice so nobody else had to die was chilling, but pretty logical in a heartless thinking society! When lives are at stake, it’s not a massive surprise to find that the people of this forest were selfish and looking out for themselves. The Doctor was always talking and eventually did get his guard to loosen her grip on him and open up, finally having her ask questions rather than just accept what was deemed tradition or necessary in faith. That was really good and it genuinely seemed that the Doctor’s curiosity rubbed off on her. He knew it wasn’t right that sacrifices held the forest back during the Siege season, so he set out to find the scientific resolution to the situation. I thought it was slightly predictable that it was all just a malfunction, but the misconception about what service the forest required being lost through generations over time was terrific. It didn’t need a sacrifice, it just needed some technology fixed! It was good to learn that all of those sacrificed hadn’t actually died, but the woman realising that they had to go on believing because if they didn’t then their loved ones had been sacrificed in vain. That was a powerful moment. I thought the imagery of the heart of the forest with the biggest tree of all was good and the woman seeing how the Doctor was infused with it was great. She’d seen sacrifice before though and it had hit home because her own wife was one that had been given to ensure everyone else survived. The Doctor knowing that because the grief and mourning was still written on her face was excellent. That’s the Doctor at his best. He had of course applied his scientific knowledge to fix the terraforming systems that had gone wrong on this colony, but someone would still need to serve for a year to ensure everything would move smoothly. But that’s a small sacrifice to pay when the previous price was death! The woman narrator taking on that burden was a nice touch and a fine end to what was a really solid read. A little shorter than the others that came before it, but that was not a problem at all! 

Rating: 7/10