Frozen Beauty

"No one knows what lies in this forest."

Writer: Justin Richards

Format: Short Story

Released: August 2026

Printed in: Time Lord Fairy Tales 02

Featuring: Wirrn

Synopsis

We are all stories in the end...

Sixteen tales of ancient wonder and mystery, passed down through generations of Time Lords. 

Dark, beautiful and twisted, these stories are filled with nightmarish terrors and heroic triumphs from across all of time and space.

Verdict

Frozen Beauty was another great short story to continue my reading of the Time Lord Fairy Tales collection! This was a fascinating tale and certainly helps give credence to The Ark in Space as an impactful serial. It's one that I personally think is a tad overrated amongst fandom despite being an obviously strong adventure, but to have the Wirrn as a subject of a Time Lord fairytale surprised me a little. I don't mean that negatively it's just not a monster I would have expected to feature. I'm not entirely sure why that is and I was by no means disappointed when they were revealed as the source of the Stellar Fyre issues. I thought the whole concept surrounding that ship was really interesting and I must say the style of writing as well really did a good job in selling its importance. The rescue ship captain being in the employ of the original captain of the crashed ship's brother was good too and I really admired the efforts for sibling survival. Given the scale of the ship and where it went missing, it was unlikely there would be any survivors, but just a chance meant it was worth exploring. I admired that. I thought the original ship's mission was also fantastic in exploring the universe and I like how the Time Lords would romanticise that into a tale, but it was also just poignant for the captain's brother to have passed away and her memories and also those on the ship to be subjected to forgotten history almost. That was until after over a century that a scrap of potential was found regarding where the ship might have crashed. The search was on! I liked how the soldiers had utter devotion to the rescue ship captain even when it was admitted that their one hundred years in cryosleep might have been for nothing. They didn't know what they would find, but at least answers was likely. I thought the description of the ship as a wreckage was good and I should have guessed with the foliage tied within it that the Wirrn would be the culprit! Either them or the Krynoids was a safe bet but I am ashamed to say I didn't suspect either. I do like that though because it served as a neat little surprise. I'm going to put my lack of guessing correctly down to the fact I was reading before 8am on the weekend but here we are. I really enjoyed the pace of the story and even though the Wirrn was the only familiar character or element, I found myself enthralled with the characters. A couple of more identifiable characters rather than just different captains and actually naming them would have been nice to get even more of a connection, but that isn't a major thing. I thought the threat provided by the Wirrn was strong and I really liked that they had already caused damage before the crew got there. Some of those asleep had never had the chance to wake up and the captain having to basically resurrect herself with the state of the systems felt like a tense moment. The rescue captain giving the kiss of life was unexpected but it did the trick! I thought the brutality against the Wirrn in shooting them and their vegetation was really impactful, although I'm not sure what kind of fairytale this would be! Maybe the Time Lords see things slightly differently with that definition? Regardless, a really enjoyable read! 

Rating: 8/10