Trick or Treat

"You've broken into my TARDIS in the middle of the Time Vortex and have the audacity to ask me for a treat?"

Writer: Jacqueline Rayner

Format: Short Story

Released: September 2017

Printed in: Tales of Terror 06

Featuring: Sixth Doctor

Synopsis 

Travelling through the Time Vortex, the Doctor receives a knock on the TARDIS door. It should be impossible, but he's got trick or treaters. They look somewhat familiar, and his frustration leads him into a game against an old foe, and it's one that he's unknowingly been playing for quite some time...

Verdict

Trick or Treat was an outstanding short story to continue my way through the Tales of Terror collection! I think this was definitely the best of the bunch so far, even eclipsing Toil and Trouble which I didn't expect to get beaten and even though that was also a perfect rating, I thought that this was slightly superior. I'm a sucker for continuity and I got it in abundance here! I loved how the scene was set with a knock on the TARDIS door mid-flight in the Time Vortex as that is something that just shouldn't be possible. I mean, we would hear something similar in The Doctor's Wife, but the source of that was Time Lord with the cube. Here, it was anything but as we had four boys knocking from outside mid-flight! Their asking of trick or treat was great and I adored the line about the Doctor not even having a jelly baby to offer them. That was really well done. The moment that the four boys in the TARDIS mentioned having rules to follow as part of the trick or treat game, I knew that the Celestial Toymaker was back for vengeance before it was even confirmed. The use of the Doctor's sixth incarnation and the five regeneration significance was fantastic and the idea that the four boys were actually the incarnations of himself between his first and sixth incarnations was just magnificent. The images there! Fantastic description. As the Doctor arrived where the boys had taken the TARDIS, him seeing the departure of the First Doctor's TARDIS from the vantage point we read occur in Murder in the Dark was outstanding and a perfect use of a writer having two stories to play around with in a collection like this book. From there, the story just exceeded expectations with the concept of a TARDIS doll house being particularly fun. The idea of the Celestial Toymaker having dolls of the Doctor's previous companions was just tremendous with some fantastic descriptions of the likes of Leela, Jamie, Sarah Jane and Frobisher! I loved it. The Toymaker claiming that everything the Doctor had encountered since the events in this book's first story was sublime and the idea of the Toymaker having pitched a number of different foes against the Doctor during that time was just so much fun. The brilliant concepts just kept coming with the likes of suggesting that all of the Doctor's companions were those who had come close to winning his games whilst we also got marvellous references to The Savages and The War Machines as the Toymaker told of how he organised the departures of Steven and Dodo respectively. The illustration in this one was just perfection with the Toymaker describing the old rag box of different heads and bits of the Doctor. He couldn't believe that the Doctor thought everything was real and hadn't worked out the fabrication supposedly created by the Toymaker, with the special effects in the likes of Invasion of the Dinosaurs, The Talons of Weng-Chiang and Resurrection of the Daleks put forward as good examples. The Toymaker also detailing how when he got bored he just set up another meeting between the Doctor and his 'favourite' Daleks. How else could the implausibility of their constant meeting be explained? Just superb. The Doctor agreeing to yet another game against the Toymaker was good and I liked how his condition was him choosing the game. His choice of two truths one lie was perfection as he easily toyed with the Toymaker to admit that he hadn't been playing a game since the Halloween party, but also to ensure that the Toymaker was stuck as admitting the truth would be losing, but revealing the lie would end in defeat. The Toymaker was stuck in his game. Overall, a sensational short story!

Rating: 10/10