The Dreaming

"The mind is a powerful thing."

Writer: Mark Morris
Format: Short Story
Released: February 2014
Printed in: Tales of Trenzalore 04

Featuring: Eleventh Doctor

Synopsis

Christmas has a great shame dating back before the Doctor arrived. Even before the Truth Field. The skeleton behind this shame is incredibly important to a returning enemy hoping to cause chaos and devastation by manipulating children and adults alike to get the Doctor to say his name. The Mara wants to manifest...

Verdict

The Dreaming was an excellent end to the Tales of Trenzalore book! I have really enjoyed this collection of adventures set during the events told in The Time of the Doctor and would absolutely love to read a second volume or even hear an audio set! I'm sure that once Matt Smith becomes available it won't take long for them to put out a Trenzalore set. With the array of familiar foes that featured during the aforementioned television story, I think it was a great move for the book to feature another four returning enemies. This time around it was the Mara and as irony would have it, this was the monster I was least excited to see return but it has ended up being my favourite story in the book! The storytelling was just marvellously and paced so well over the sixty odd pages. I was really impressed with that aspect. The elderly Eleventh Doctor was captured very well in print with the characterisation spot on for the most part. The way the Mara hoped to utilise his age against the Doctor was very good indeed, especially when it tried to convince Aliganza that the fact the Doctor called him Barnable the 43rd was simply because he forgot and didn't care what his real name was. That was quite something, but of course that was not the Doctor. The mentions of Amelia and Clara as the Doctor later struggled with names was intriguing though but even Time Lords must suffer from amnesia due to old age. The slow and then sudden the way the Mara gained control of some of the inhabitants of Christmas was fantastic and I really liked how it intended to use the schoolchildren against the Doctor. However, he clearly felt that he was getting somewhere close to the end of his life, as foreseen in The Name of the Doctor, so what did he have left to fear? He couldn't let the Time Lords into this universe. The story behind the skeleton with Vida, the town's oldest resident other than the Doctor, was lovely and I really liked how she didn't want to reveal the shame associated with it. It being the remains of Jalen Fellwood, a man buried in an unmarked grave sealed with salt, was very interesting and the role that salt had to play was superb. The Mara obviously pried on the mind of humanity which is a good concept but that coming back to bite it was fantastic. I really liked the Doctor's reference to Kinda but I was surprised that Tegan didn't get a mention! The reaction of the people of Christmas when the Doctor told them his plan involved bombs was hilarious and the way he got a young girl to ask him the right question was wonderful, just like his reaction. They were of course sleep bombs! They didn't quite work on the Mara, but a new addition to the snow farm of salt sure did and the Mara was no more, all because Jalen Fellwood believed in the power of the salt! I really loved that element and thought it was really fitting for the Mara. Overall, a splendid end to what has been a very positive collection of stories. I have very much enjoyed my time reading about Trenzalore.

Rating: 9/10