The Mercy Seats

"This isn't a church. It's a spaceship!"

Writer: David Llewellyn 

Format: Short Story

Released: June 2015

Printed in: The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who 14

Featuring: Twelfth Doctor

Synopsis

The Twelfth Doctor is alone and suspicious of a church that just popped up out of nowhere. But that was twenty years ago, what could it still be doing all this time later? The Black Death is eradicated, so what beholds the Mercy Seats?

Verdict

The Mercy Seats was another somewhat average little story to continue along my reading of The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who. This one didn’t quite seem to get going which was a bit of a shame. The premise had potential but I don’t really think it ever lived up to it if I’m being honest. It was far from being bad but it was just lacking in some elements and in parts was rather boring. The setting of the fourteenth century really excited me as it isn’t a period in history that the Doctor visits much at all, if ever. So that was a tick in my box, but that’s about as far it got for me not having criticisms. I liked the idea of a church just popping up out of nowhere and I really thought that it was going to turn out to be a TARDIS just blending in with its surroundings. Would it really be beyond the realms of possibility for the Master to just hang around for twenty years to surprise the Doctor by revealing one of his wonderful disguises? I thought that would have worked well so I was a bit disappointed when it turned out we just had another alien race. Their disguise, or just physical state, as skeletons was interesting but surely they should have been a bit more scary given what they were? The only thing that invoked fear in this adventure was the mention of the plague. The Black Death had been gone for twenty years, but people were still scared of it and remained very sceptical of foreigners. That was a good element of the story and I felt that ought to have been the focus. However, it appears that wouldn’t have quite fitted with the scientific chapter that accompanied this story concerning entropy and death. I still haven’t read any of those educational chapters because I’m just hear for stories, but I’m sure they’re quite interesting. I just haven’t the time at the moment to read them. I always prefer an adventure where the Doctor has a companion as there usually seems to be something missing without him having someone familiar to show off to about his knowledge. He’d have been in his element here with Clara or Bill and being able to showcase that he knew there would be aliens inside the church, that the church was actually their spaceship, and that they would be frightened of babies. Mathilda giving birth was amusing because I liked how the Doctor was expected to help, but surprisingly he was keen! I was a bit surprised by that. I thought the characterisation of the Twelfth Doctor was mostly okay throughout, but some of the descriptive nature for the incarnation was overdone with the reminders of his eyebrows (seriously, how many more times!) and his Scottish accent. That got a bit tiresome. Geoffrey Chaucer telling this adventure and it being fully from his perspective didn’t work for me and that’s probably just a personal thing as I’m not a fan in the slightest of the first person. I just don’t like it because it seems too limited and this was also trying to incorporate the third person in parts which meant it was all over the place in how it was being told. The little fourteenth century gang the Doctor found himself a part of was intriguing and seemed like it would be quite the image. That was very good. The Doctor wanting to help the skeletal monsters escape the planet was good and I liked that they’d come to Earth to feast on plague victims. It wasn’t like they’d brought it with them or were the cause! The Doctor used the idea of a vegetarian to justify some of their actions, but now they’d had engine failure and been stuck on the planet for twenty years. The Doctor saw to that of course, but I wasn’t at all a fan of using a newborn baby to defeat these skeletons. It seemed awfully strange to me and I just didn’t quite buy into the idea of newborn life getting the better of them by crying because it was the opposite of death. What about any other person who wasn’t dying? Aren’t they the same? I didn’t like it much at all. One thing I did enjoy a lot was the opening poem and the idea of it being found in the British Library in the late-22nd century. That set the tone nicely. The Doctor being annoyed to finally meet Chaucer but have it be on his gap year was also wonderful. I liked that a lot. I loved how Chaucer continuously referred to the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver as a stylus as that seemed to be a good description and fitted in well with the era. The moment the Doctor suggested everyone hide behind Matilda was also excellent and the shocked reactions of bravado and puffed chests was terrific. As a whole, this adventure definitely had some high points but it just wasn’t consistent or engaging enough for my liking. 

Rating: 6/10