Anything You Can Do

"Hopeless was the Doctor's speciality."

Writer: Dave Rudden

Format: Short Story

Released: October 2018

Printed in: Twelve Angels Weeping 12

Featuring: The Doctor

Synopsis 

On every planet that has existed or will exist, there is a winter...

Many of the peoples of Old Earth celebrated a winter festival. A time to huddle together against the cold; a time to celebrate being half-way out of the dark.

But shadows are everywhere, and there are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things, lurking in the cold between the stars.

Here are twelve stories – one for each of the Twelve Days of Christmas – to remind you that to come out of the darkness we need to go into it in the first place.

We are not alone. We are not safe. And, whatever you do: don't blink.

Verdict 

Anything You Can Do was a great adventure to conclude my reading of the Twelve Angels Weeping collection! I’ve really enjoyed this volume of stories celebrating the villains of Doctor Who where we really have had quite the range of monsters! There have been returns for the likes of Zygons and Ice Warriors, new takes on the Daleks and Sontarans, and just outstanding stories with the Weeping Angels and Ice Warriors to name a few! And who else could we finish with but the Master? I thought the approach in this story was intriguing in that specific incarnations of the Doctor and Master were not referenced and with this being a short story at just over thirty pages, I think that was more than fine. A valuable source of mine in the Doctor Who world being TARDIS Wiki claims that the Fourth Doctor features here based on the illustration, but I’m not buying that. This is just the Doctor and the Master in their purest form and that was excellent. The idea of the Master trying to be the Doctor isn’t entirely new as we did see Missy have a go of being Doctor Who in World Enough and Time, but it was on a much larger scale here. The Master was going around with companions but wasn’t getting it quite right as those that would take that role either didn’t want to stay for long or not join up at all. That’s where it became difficult for the Master to accept and to keep the guise of the Doctor. He didn’t deal well with rejection so staying calm wasn’t entirely easy! He let through the fact he wasn’t the Doctor to the reader on more than one occasion and that was fun stuff. Of course, we knew from the subtitle that the Master featured here so it was clear right from Faye rejecting him that this was the Master in another scheme. The Doctor would accept that she had a life that she’d built and didn’t want to give it up. The mimicking of Rose was amusing there with the Master thinking he’d forgotten something in mentioning again that the TARDIS could travel in time and was bigger on the inside. From there the Master was off to do a half-arsed job of being the Doctor. The situation with Nu-Paris was fascinating and sparked an entire for the Cybermen that I thought was tremendous and definitely needs revising. There’s so much potential outside of a throwaway line to having them strip away the Earth’s atmosphere and harvesting humanity’s dead for conversion. I thought that was a brilliant basis for a Cyberman story! Instead we just saw that the Master watched on alongside Cassie as more ships blew up molecule by molecule. She was grateful to be saved and for the fact that Nu-Paris was also safe, but the rest of the planet’s atmosphere was gone! That was pretty un-Doctor like. One thing I really loved about the story was the Master’s appreciation for the Doctor having a companion. With all of his mad schemes and ideas, he enjoyed having someone to explain it all too. That was great stuff. The story with Ocelot in particular was striking and that seemed to go slightly longer than other pairings with the Master. She could see that the Master was slightly more tumultuous than he initially appeared. The moment with Cade was good too and it just felt like there was an air of defeat as soon as the Doctor communicated through. I really liked how disgusted the Doctor was at having the renegade Time Lord use his name and he had gone and put right all that the Master had done in the name of the Doctor. That horrified the Doctor the most. That’s a great idea and it’s certainly a strong way to attack the Doctor. By the end, it was clear the Doctor had the upper hand and had used unity from all those encounters and would-be companions the Master had treated badly. Hell, even the Sontarans and Rutans were part of an alliance which I wasn’t overly fond of until the General had to be told to stop firing on the Host! The ambiguous ending was a slight let down as were just told that the Doctor would think of something to defeat his old enemy, but as a whole this was a fine exploration of the Doctor and the Master. A very good way to finish what has been a terrific book!

Rating: 8/10