A Perfect Christmas

"We don't run to the Doctor before we talk to each other."

Writer: Dave Sudden

Format: Short Story

Released: October 2020

Printed in: The Wintertime Paradox 09

Featuring: Vastra, Jenny, Strax

Synopsis 

Did you Davros and the Doctor met for three Christmases, on different planets, across time and space? Have you heard the one about the time the Plasmavores came to pay a festive visit? Or when Madame Vastra fought a cyborg?

The perfect collection of the bleakest – and sometimes brightest – time of the year, these are the tales to get you halfway out of the dark...

Verdict 

A Perfect Christmas was a decent story to continue my reading of The Wintertime Paradox collection! I was really glad to get an adventure with the Paternoster Gang as they rank very highly on my favourite characters list. Their Big Finish spin-off range is brilliant and I do hope we haven’t heard the last of it, but getting an extra story here with the trio is just a delight. This one didn’t have much of an upbeat feel though which was a little strange given the Christmas theme and the usual joyful humour that comes from the Paternoster Gang. Strax was definitely on hand to inject some comedy where needed, as evidenced with him smashing a fifteen-year-old girl in the face with a frying pan as she tried to break and enter into their house, but there were serious undertones between Vastra and Jenny. The position of their relationship here was a little testy and it wasn’t a new thing. Vastra had been keeping a mental list of awkward and uncomfortable instances between the pair over the course of a year, ever since a previous Christmas where they nearly lost each other. That was intriguing stuff and it had led Vastra to no longer be reliable. She was visibly distracted and it cost her on more than one occasion in this story. Even for Victorian times, Christmas was a celebratory event and I loved that Vastra liked to dip in and out of the human holidays that she liked or disliked. She didn’t refer to them as alien because Vastra had walked the Earth long before they were a thing and this planet was hers, but they were hardly common for her. To make up for her previous actions last Christmas, Vastra was planning the perfect Christmas and it just couldn’t go wrong. She wouldn’t allow it up to the point of near obsession and just how much fun could be had on a list that was forty-eight pages long? She was running a tight ship to say the least! Jenny seemed less bothered by the circumstances of their relationship and just wanted her Vastra back to normal. That was nice and showed the human side of Jenny. She wasn’t bothered about a perfect Christmas, she just wanted to spend it with Vastra. She caught onto her lizard wife being completely distracted and that was nicely evidenced in her ability to sneak up on her. That just wouldn’t normally be possible. I thought Madge was a run character and her introduction to the story with Strax calmly providing a theory on the tattered coat was sublime. Vastra showed her intelligence though as she matched Madge’s claim that she wanted her coat back and that was all. Except Vastra had emptied the thieve’s pocket in the collar which had contained a special ruby. The significance of it was unexpected but I really liked how it contained a key to the TARDIS, and had been buried with Tasha Lem! That was fantastic continuity with The Time of the Doctor and a fine way to extend her background and importance. The Papal Mainframe was of course a church of the fiftieth century so having it play a part in a Victorian-era story was great. It seemed a little too convenient in parts for everything to tie back to the Doctor, and events certainly interfered in Vastra’s plans for a perfect Christmas. The fact she was tempted to just ignore it was a surprise, but of course that wouldn’t happen. Vastra was almost dismissive of Jenny in some instances when it came to dealing with the key, so it was nice for the human to appeal to the Silurian later in the story to explain that she just wanted her wife back. That seemed to light a fire in Vastra and from there she could take the context of Jenny’s words to realised that they had been played as pawns. The ending was what really irked me with this adventure and severely decreased the rating as I was thoroughly enjoying it up to that point. But then Vastra just handed the ruby back to the cyborg that had come for it, and that was that. Whoever had planted it was after the Doctor and nearly got him summoned. Except, surely if whoever it was in the mysterious After sequence that orchestrated these events could rob Tasha Lem’s grave and then plant it in the Victorian era, surely they could find an easier way to get the Doctor? I don’t know, it didn’t sit well with me which is a shame as it was a really strong adventure up to that point. Overall, still a good read. 

Rating: 7/10