The Big Store

"Put me in your police box and take me into custody!"

Writer: Steve Cole

Format: Short Story

Released: October 2023

Printed in: Ten Days of Christmas 08

Featuring: Tenth Doctor 

Synopsis

Return to the incredible days of Ten this Christmas...

For the Tenth Doctor, the festive season always brought adventure.

In fact, he's saved Christmas across space and time more times than we ever knew...

Join the Doctor (and Donna and Martha and Rose, and other friends old and new) for incredible tales of daring and danger. From Daleks plotting to save humanity to Sycorax working to exploit it... from star-narwhals massing on the Moon to a toy factory in space.

Because even in the jolliest of seasons there's a world or two to save.

Verdict

The Big Store was another great adventure to continue my way through the Ten Days of Christmas short story collection! I reach the penultimate story for the Tenth Doctor in the set and it was about time we came face to face with an old enemy. The Kraals may not seem the most obvious choice for a Christmas battle in prose, but when you consider the nature of toy production in space and the potential of a festive invasion through unwrapping unintended presents it's not that much of a surprise. I maintain that the story probably would have made more sense if this was a Nestene Consciousness and Auton outing, but making more sense doesn't necessarily mean it would be better. The Kraals provided a lot of humour without doing an awful lot which meant it wasn't easy to take them seriously, but I think that was kind of the point and is in part what made this a fun little read. I liked that a timeline was established for the Tenth Doctor's travels with this encounter coming soon after the events of Voyage of the Damned in his chronology. Talk about keeping up with the festive theme! He was still pondering on the death of Astrid which was nice to include and this is a gap that isn't explored enough. It always seems that if the Tenth Doctor is travelling solo it's during the period of the 2009 Specials, so to go here was a nice change. He had hoped for a new companion and we know he'll get one soon in the form of Donna, but at this moment he was alone and somewhat feeling it. I thought the toy factory in space idea was terrific and Midwinter as the head of the Gal Galaxy action figures was a really strong character. He was enthusiastic as you would hope for when it came to sales and his introduction of Gal as the prototype action figure was terrific. She was a fun character as essentially a toy filling the companion role, but she was much more than that as an android. Unfortunately, once that was revealed it was clear that the Kraals would be showing up as their appearance was spoiled in the DWM preview for this book. That is a bit of a shame but then I was also anticipating their arrival. And boy did it come with a chuckle! Skensal and Tayaka were pretty useless in all honesty as the Doctor basically eviscerated their plan and told them exactly what it was. They peered in small intervals to claim he didn't know the whole plan, but his spiel wasn't over and by the end he'd worked it all out. The mysterious ship that had ignored the red light being a police one was fun and the whole factory being a fake was perfectly Kraal. The story certainly steals from Kerblam! which is actually good as it's not on your normal everyday delivery service but rather a Christmas craze so that's a strong differentiation. It definitely does just work well and the emergence of the Super Galactic Gal to wipe out the Kraal software from the androids that would be presents and send them packing was nicely done. Midwinter's attempts to sell off the stock actually helped here with the super variants intended to go to the lucky buyers who may now be able to get to the real ship instead of being stuck. The Doctor getting to save in excess of twenty planets from invasion and everybody living certainly was a fine Christmas present for him! Overall, a great little read.  

Skensal and Tayaka

Rating: 8/10