Bing Bong

"The one where I battle the minor cashpoint fraudster..."

Writers: Gareth Roberts and Clayton Hickman
Format: Short Story
Released: August 2008
Printed in: Doctor Who Storybook 2009

Featuring: Tenth Doctor, Donna

Synopsis

Donna wants to pick up some cash before returning aboard the TARDIS for more adventures with the Doctor. But she is shocked to discover that her life savings have been wiped clean. She's broke and the Doctor is reluctant to investigate. However, when pushed, he discovers that computers everywhere are suffering...

Verdict

Bing Bong was a pretty decent little short story that saw me read my first story from the 2009 Doctor Who Storybook in over four years! It has been an extremely long time since I read any of this collection and whilst I wasn't the biggest fan of the collection, I recently got it back out of the attic and have finally read the next story along and the title didn't fill me with a lot of hope to be honest. Thankfully, it wasn't what I expected it to be and it turned out to be quite an intriguing little tale. The Doctor's reaction to Donna losing all of her money was good and I thought the pair's relationship was portrayed very well here. There was a decent amount of humour as you would expect but I did think they maybe went a little overboard when it came to the conversation with Sonia from the other side of the door. It was just a little too much of Donna playing dumb and the Doctor telling her to just move out of the way was good. I thought the characterisation of David Tennant's Tenth Doctor was pretty good and whilst there was certainly room for improvement, it was nice to see it evident on the page. I do find this format to be difficult sometimes in terms of producing a good story but this effort was decent and I liked some of the references to the show's past that we got. The reference to The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky was excellent and humorous and I also loved that Sonia had been working for and got fired from the Pharos Institute. That was a nice little nod to the past. The artificial intelligence computer was an intriguing concept and I did enjoy the Doctor's comment about finally coming up against a socialist computer. The fact that it felt sorry for the poor and went all Robin Hood and redistributed wealth was good and I liked that it was incredibly apologetic for the train delays. Imagine the grief it would have if it knew how often trains were delayed up and down the country annually! I didn't like the fact that we just had to accept that the computer could electrocute the Doctor or Sonia if either of them tried to pass through. Donna being the one to solve the crisis was good as she appealed to make the computer guilty and with her speech she was able to return things to normal. The computer went a bit bonkers and returned everything to normal and things stopped being bizarre. Overall, a pretty decent little story.

Rating: 7/10