Most Beautiful Music

"It's the same child. All these years. Centuries. The poor man. He must be so old."

Writer: Justin Richards 

Format: Short Story

Released: September 2008

Printed in: Doctor Who Annual 2009

Featuring: Tenth Doctor, Donna

Synopsis 

The Doctor takes Donna to see a show that only occurs once in a decade. It's the performance of the most beautiful music in the universe. But something isn't right...

Verdict 

Most Beautiful Music was a very good and poignant short story and I must say that the 2009 Doctor Who Annual must be up there as being one of the best when it comes to story quality! This story itself was very good but we were also given Once Upon a Time and the outstanding The Time Sickness! I'm usually critical of the Annuals and their stories, more so the revived ones anyway, but the year of 2009 seems to be the exception! It wasn't quite the perfect full marks story I was looking for to continue my run of Annual stories increasing but I can't say that I was complaining! Amy's Escapade, Rory's Adventure and the aforementioned short story all garnered ratings of 7,8 and 9/10 respectively so I was hoping the improvements would continue but that wasn't to be. That's not to say that what we got wasn't good! I thought it was very good actually. The humour between the Tenth Doctor and Donna was ever present which was nice to see and I loved the moment where Donna repeated what the Doctor said as a question and he just replied saying he knew and he just said it. Brilliant. The performance of the most beautiful music in the cosmos was lovely and upon his appearance I thought the old man, ironically known as the Child of Music, was a little old and frail to be performing a once in a decade quality and rare showpiece. Donna feeling the pain of the performance was great to see and I liked how during the interval, the Doctor had found out a lot more about the Child of Music, and it wasn't good. He was the same child that gave the first performance some 320 years ago. That's quite a life. Once the Doctor and Donna caught up with the Child of Music backstage, they learned that he just wanted to die. How could someone so talented want to give it all up. But we learned that he was being kept alive, seemingly inadvertently, by the creature inside the instrument. After breaking back in, the Doctor managed to set the creature free allowing the Child of Music to finally rest in peace. He'd been granted his wish. The performances of the most beautiful music were over. Overall, a very emotional and poignant little story with good characterisation of the Doctor and Donna! It just started off a tad slow which proves costly in a story of this length. 

Rating: 8/10