Saviour

"No wonder we keep our skeletons hidden."

Writer: Steve Cole

Format: Short Story

Released: October 2023

Printed in: Ten Days of Christmas 02

Featuring: Tenth Doctor

Synopsis

Return to the incredible days of Ten this Christmas...

For the Tenth Doctor, the festive season always brought adventure.

In fact, he's saved Christmas across space and time more times than we ever knew...

Join the Doctor (and Donna and Martha and Rose, and other friends old and new) for incredible tales of daring and danger. From Daleks plotting to save humanity to Sycorax working to exploit it... from star-narwhals massing on the Moon to a toy factory in space.

Because even in the jolliest of seasons there's a world or two to save.

Verdict

Saviour was a really strong story to continue my reading of the Ten Days of Christmas collection! This didn’t have too much of a Christmas theme which I was a fan of which is quite ironic given the title and expected content of the book along with the time of year in which I am reading, but there really are so many Christmas adventures out there. This one touched upon ancient Gallifreyan conflict which I thought was tremendous and I loved the idea of the Doctor coming up against a Vampire. It was fun stuff to explore that history and whilst it wasn’t overbearing or the main focus, it was clear that the Vampires had a big part to play in the history of the Doctor’s people. The duration of their life was explored well and I really liked how the Vampires were simply shown to be adhering to their natural biology. Was it really wrong for them to obtain the sustenance they required to live? That’s quite the dilemma for the Doctor as even though they’re not exactly acting evil, they’re not being too pleasant either. But they needed blood to survive so if the Doctor prevented them from getting that, he’d be condemning them to death. Tackling with that is fun stuff. I liked the style of the story in being split between the narration and perspective of Alessandro and a Vampire. The former was very protective of Jess but she had been chosen as the lifeblood of Agon. Exploring the concept of a Vampire being linked to one human for their blood was a new and intriguing take on the Vampire species which I thoroughly enjoyed! It was different and the idea of Vampires making a human fall in love with them from that first blood feed was great stuff. It was chilling and somehow realistic. Vampires don’t quite feel like aliens or villains so the means to relate to them is surprisingly close. Maybe it’s the normalisation of Twilight? I’m not sure but there’s just something there. I liked how the Vampire was telling their part of the story to the Doctor and they didn’t hold back about their feelings or history. It was a strong account and didn’t hold back in mentioning any details. The Doctor was good at selling the threat of the Vampires but I also really enjoyed how he had a plan. He’d tracked the ship that wasn’t actually a shooting star and knew what it contained. So he’d stop them. I was a little less sure about the means of achieving that through talking and convincing, but alas I wasn’t overly against it. I’m not sure how feasible it is for one Vampire to accept that they didn’t have to be evil. By linking with the Doctor, which was never going to go well, they had been granted the gift of not needing to bond with just one human. They could feast on them all now, but the Doctor hoped they would actually use that differently and have all the other Vampires feed off them! That was strange and quite a bold attempt from the Doctor, but it seemed to work. It felt slightly anticlimactic in a way and a somewhat sombre ending, but that’s not a bad things I just think a bit more action could have turned this into a short story classic. Regardless, it was still a really strong read and a fine way to get the Tenth Doctor stories in the collection off to a start! Overall, a great little read. 

Rating: 8/10