The Mist of Sorrow

"You're completely surrounded by Weeping Angels."

Writer: Craig Donaghy

Format: Short Story

Released: September 2017

Printed in: Tales of Terror 11

Featuring: Eleventh Doctor

Synopsis

When the Martin family are on their travels home from a miserable and rain-sodden camping trip, they don't expect their diversion to lead them into a mist full of angelic statues. Statues that seem to be moving as the mist thickens. Only a strange voice through the radio can help them escape...

Verdict

The Mist of Sorrow was a fantastic story to continue my way through the Tales of Terror collection of adventures! This outing serves as the penultimate short story in the book and it was certainly one of the best so far. I really enjoyed this one from the start and it was a perfect way of writing for the Doctor being on his lonesome. Of course, the Eleventh Doctor has considerable history with the Weeping Angels and judging from the way Mrs Martin heard the pain in his voice when it came to these enemies, we can safely assume this adventure was set post-The Angels Take Manhattan. That was an incredibly emotional episode so the Doctor definitely had old scores to settle when it came to the Weeping Angels. His immediate comment of thinking that they deserved their quantum locked status was quite telling and very moving. Even for his greatest enemies, it's not common for the Doctor to talk ill of them in such an emphatic way. I thought the Martin family served as a fantastic basis for the story to develop and the dynamic of the five of them was really quite fun. The typical mother and father having a little bickering along with the three kids in the back seat with the older sister was written very well. It was good and having their relationships develop and just show how much they all loved each other by the story's conclusion was delightful. That was definitely a highlight because it did just highlight how important family can be. They had just come off a camping trip that didn't go too terribly well and they weren't exactly on the best of terms with each other, but the threat of the Weeping Angels and the realisation that they may be split apart or even killed brought them together in a really wonderful way. The way the Weeping Angels were introduced to the adventure was done tremendously well and their use of the Mist of Sorrow was brilliant. I was a big fan of that and I like the idea of Weeping Angels trying to engineer ways to overcome their quantum lock. It must be beyond frustrating for them to only move when they aren't observed! One little thing that did let the story down slightly was the illustration. The scene was nice enough, but the actual depiction of the Weeping Angels was pretty poor as they looked far more like elderly woman rather than angelic statues. And that was despite the wings! That has been a semi-common theme in the book as a whole though to be fair. The Doctor's arrival into the story through the radio was great and I loved how Evan initially saw the TARDIS flying through the sky before finding out that it was hovering above their car the whole time. I loved how quickly and without questioning that the Martin children put their trust in the strange voice in the radio as he talked them through to safety. The way the Angels were actually defeated was exactly like in Blink with them all in a circle facing each other, albeit on a bigger scale. It works well. The pace was very good as they all had to exit the car once the Angels went on top of it and there was certainly a lot of tension which was very good! The Doctor then introducing himself to the family so they could all see him and that flying blue box was a nice touch as I was almost half expecting him to stay in contact solely through the radio. It was a nice way to end things and the idea of him wanting the family to become the opposite of scattered through time as might have been the case, and have the camping trip become a tradition was a very good touch. Overall, an excellent story!

Rating: 9/10