A Long Way Down

"The TARDIS won't behave."

Writer: Jenny T. Colgan

Format: Short Story

Released: March 2015

Series: Time Trips 09

Featuring: Twelfth Doctor, Clara

Synopsis

The Twelfth Doctor has turned off the TARDIS forcefield. It's a rookie mistake and he'll never learn. An asteroid crashes into the Time Lord's space and time machine and it's left to Clara to plead with the TARDIS itself to stop the Doctor from plummeting to a long fall.

Verdict

A Long Way Down was sadly not the greatest way to conclude my reading of the Time Trips series. I'm not so sure it counts as being part of the series, but the idea for a whole adventure to appear on the dust jacket of the series collection of every story is certainly an interesting one. Sadly, it was also a frustrating one for me given the nature of library books and how they're laminated and such. This meant I couldn't actually access the story on the original volume, but thankfully the adventure was reprinted in The Triple Knife and Other Stories collection featuring Jenny T. Colgan adventures, so I was quick to reserve a copy of that just for the final adventure in its pages. It was a very short one, considerably shorter than all of the other Time Trips, and sadly it was comfortably the worst. I thought the relationship between Clara and the Twelfth Doctor was probably the highlight and was actually really well done, and I also liked the continuing theme of the miscommunication between Clara and the TARDIS. It was an intriguing relationship and shown well here which was good. Something I felt was lacking from this story was clarity. I understand it was short but the whole premise of the story seemed dodgy to me. I didn't quite comprehend how the Doctor was falling to a twelve mile or so destination below, whilst also conversing with Clara who was trying to get the TARDIS to go down and catch him. I must have missed something, but I'm struggling to see where things were clarified as I flicked back through the pages. It was a very weird one to me and something I struggled to buy into because of that. It just didn't make sense! The Doctor was falling, so how was he talking with Clara like she was right next to him? The links to Alexandria were good and perhaps a little nod to the previous story of The Anti-Hero, and I did find the Doctor's reaction to Clara asking him if he could catch the scroll very humorous. There was that sudden moment of fury and comedy that was so common to the Twelfth Doctor and that moment worked well. We know he didn't really think Clara was asking him about it so he could read whilst he fell, but it was a good moment of comic value. The initial echo effect was clever and some good foreshadowing of events to come, but things got a little out of control with the multiple TARDISes, Doctors and so forth. There was a lot going on and it didn't all seem clear which was a big shame. Clara did get the job done in the end though with the TARDIS using other versions of itself from split seconds in the future to create a time  flow that eased the Doctor's flow. I wasn't so sure about that, but I did like that the TARDIS was doing its own thing to save the Doctor. Clara wasn't really needed in the end, and she acknowledged that which was intriguing, but the Doctor wanted her there and she'd always be there for him. Overall though, a story that could have been much improved. 

Rating: 5/10