'The Wintertime Paradox' by Dave Rudden

Twelve stunning Doctor Who stories for the long winter nights

Christmas can mean anything...

For Missy, it's solving Murders in 1909

For a little girl in Dublin, it's Plasmavores knocking at the door.

For Davros, it's a summons from the Doctor, who needs the mad inventor's help.

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

This thrilling anthology presents a fantastic collection of adventures through time and space, featuring the best-loved characters and places from the 'Doctor Who' world.

Written by popular children's author, and lifelong 'Doctor Who' fan, Dave Rudden, author of 'Twelve Angels Weeping'.

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'He's Behind You'

The Doctor takes Rose to the Masque Magestrix, to see an alien Christmas pantomime entitled ‘The Saga of the Time Lords’. Separated from the Doctor by a faulty teleport, Rose meets aging star Shara Betomax, and then comes under attack from other members of the cast and crew - actually disguised Autons with a death wish against the Doctor. Just as the pursuing Autons melt into a giant glob poised to strike, they are teleported away to a stationary cupboard by the Doctor. Realising that the Auton actors will have their lines ingrained in their memories, the Doctor encourages Rose to join in with the panto; amazingly, she gives a sterling performance, which overloads the Auton actors. As the Doctor and Rose depart, they wonder if Shara was a benign Auton all along...

After: a mysterious masked man and child consider the Auton-attack at the Masque Magestrix…

Notes:
*Featuring the Tenth Doctor and Rose

*Time-placing: The Doctor has only recently regenerated, so I’m placing this just after 'New Earth'

*Bad Wolf sighting: The Doctor’s psychic paper identifies 'Doctor Rose Tyler' as an expert in time vortexes and lupine morality

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'Father of the Daleks'

In-between battles with the Daleks, the Doctor invites their creator, Davros, to a Christmas meal on a different planet; each time he tries talking his old enemy into removing the Daleks’ desire for evil, and each time he fails. After a particularly sour defeat at the hands of the Doctor, Davros lays a trap, and succeeds in capturing his old foe by surrounding him with invisibility-cloaked Daleks. But the Doctor is undaunted, telling the Daleks that to kill him they must also kill their creator – and to Davros’ dismay, half the Daleks turn on him. However, when the Daleks open fire they trigger a secret self-destruct mechanism, leaving Davros and the Doctor the only ones alive. Having taught Davros an important lesson about his children’s loyalty, the Doctor vows never to meet for another Christmas. But despite this humiliating defeat, Davros still accepts when his Daleks later ask him for help at the start of the Time War…

Notes:
*Featuring the Eleventh Doctor

*Time-placing: The Doctor is travelling alone, and dressed in a long coat, so I am placing this between 'The Great Detective' and 'The Snowmen'

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'Inflicting Christmas'

The Doctor and Bill attend the 'We Create Futures' event in Dublin, 2045, where innovator Adeyami Lawal has just demonstrated her telepathic hard light holographic system by conjuring up a representation of her old flat at Christmas. After the demonstration, Lawal’s adolescent son Ebi sneaks in and activates the projector, creating monstrous versions of his mother’s corporate logo that capture Bill and imprison her in a fake artic wasteland. Inside a nearby tower, Bill meets Ebi, sitting on a throne formed from a giant ice-creation of his mother. The boy resents his mother’s treatment of him, continually prioritising her work over him, but Bill is able to talk Ebi into appreciating that, unlike her, he is lucky to still have a mother; Ebi deactivates their holographic surroundings, returning them to a room in the convention site. Having overheard the conversation from outside the room, Adeyami makes up with her son, who then destroys the holographic control circlet.

Notes:
*Featuring the Twelfth Doctor and Bill

*Time-placing: This takes place after 'Empress of Mars'

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'For the Girl Who Has Everything'

Under the Tower of London, inside UNIT’s Section 314, is the Grey Archive – a spatially-enfolded vault where scientists test extraterrestrial artefacts for their potential use, value and danger. While her colleagues leave for the Christmas holiday, Petronella Osgood stays behind to steal a present for her father; but unfortunately for Osgood, a salvaged Sontaran cloning pod is far from inactive, and she soon finds herself under attack from four malformed Sontaran monstrosities, one of which looks like former traitor Luke Rattigan. Using the alien equipment in the archive, Osgood manages to dispose of three of the clones, and is saved from the last by the timely arrival of two armed soldiers and UNIT’s Chief Scientific Office Kate Stuart. After suspending operation of the Grey Archive, Kate gives Osgood a job working directly to her instead…

Notes:
*Featuring Petronella Osgood

*Time-placing: After 'The Sontaran Stratagem', when Osgood has been working for UNIT for just one month

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'Visiting Hours'

Every Christmas, Amy and Rory visit their daughter, River Song, in her 52nd Century prison, the Stormcage. One year, when Amy’s mother is ill, Rory makes the journey alone; laden with pre-cooked Christmas dinner, he meets Chief Psychiatrist Henrik Chyll, and rebuffs his attempt to bribe Rory into securing an interview with River. Just as they arrive at River’s cage, the lights go out and all the cell doors open, releasing the prisoners inside. After Chyll discovers that inmate and mad scientist Isolde Rubel has taken over the facility’s control room, the trio make their way through the ensuing chaos until they finally reach the control room; by this stage River and Rory have fallen out, and Rory tells Chyll he will reveal all his daughter’s secrets. But to Chyll’s dismay and disappointment, instead of killing Rubel, River destroys the main computer bank; she and her dad have seen through Chyll’s attempt to drive a wedge between them, and they disable the synaptic controllers manipulating the prisoners in the fake break-out. His plan thwarted, Chyll slinks off, leaving River and Rory to enjoy their Christmas dinner…

After: the mysterious masked boy and girl pay Chyll a visit, to find out all he knows about River Song…

Notes:
*Featuring Rory and River, with the Eleventh Doctor

*Time-placing: Prior to River’s pardon, and after Rory discovers River’s true identity, so I’m placing this between 'Let’s Kill Hitler' and 'The Wedding of River Song'; the flashback with the Doctor takes place not long after 'The Big Bang'’

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'We Will Feed You to the Trees'

The TARDIS crashes on an Earth colony planet, where the Doctor is captured by the villagers of Outsmawe and sentenced to die by being fed to the encroaching black forest; the moving trees genetically-engineered to grow quickly now lay siege to the village, and it seems that only a life can appease them. A villager leads the Doctor to his doom, but after he is taken away by giant creatures made of branches and black vines, she becomes affected by his words, and decides to rescue him. Cutting her way through the forest, the villager finds a clearing surrounded by trees and the remains of spaceships, where the Doctor is being fed to the roots of a massive tree. At his orders she attacks the mass of pipes entering the tree; her actions activate the forest’s terraforming systems, allowing the Doctor to reset it to factory settings: the forest will now grow naturally, but will need tending by the villagers. To the woman’s amazement, the giant wooden creatures - actually gardening life suits - disintegrate to reveal the villagers held within – including her own wife…

Notes:
*Featuring the Seventh Doctor

*Time-placing: This could be any time the Seventh Doctor travels alone; I am choosing to align it with recent Big Finish releases

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'Christmas With the Plasmavores'

On Christmas Eve, nine-year-old Catherine Sullivan and her father Maurice receive a visit from three strangers whose car has allegedly broken down. Maurice invites Henri and Madeline Plasmavore, and their daughter Amélie, in from of the rain to stay the night, until the car repair man arrives in the morning. Catherine’s suspicions of her creepy guests quickly prove correct: Amélie reveals that she is a blood-sucking alien, then makes her ‘parents’ - mind-controlled Slabs - tie-up their hosts, before drinking some of Catherine’s blood. Amélie intends to take on Catherine’s form, but while she changes Henri into a copy of Maurice, she needs a picture of his late wife in order to change her Madeline Slab. By revealing where Catherine has hidden pictures of her mother, Maurice tricks Amélie into opening a high kitchen cupboard, spilling the Sullivans’ salt supplies all over herself - the salt instantly kills the vampire, which in turn deactivates her Slabs. As Catherine and her father struggle with their bonds, a strange man arrives and frees them…

Notes:
*Featuring the Eleventh Doctor

*Time-placing: from the description this is the Eleventh Doctor, who seems his usual excitable self, so likely prior to 'The Snowmen'

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'A Girl Called Doubt'

After the Cybermen invade Agrippina, they leave the planet a shattered wreck. A resistance team patrols the ruins of the capital city, Agrippina Primus, finding many damaged Cybermen left behind by the departed invaders, now aimlessly roaming the streets, along with hundreds of swarming Cybermites, self-perpetuating mechanical insects. One of the team, Doubt, is somehow able to follow the metal creatures, and she leads the patrol through a snowstorm to the Cathedral Majoris; its exterior is covered in Cybermites, and inside the insects are repairing more of the damaged Cybermen, as they search for one that can become a new Cyber-Leader. Then a big blue box crashes through the stained-glass window, and from it falls a man called the Doctor; he helps Doubt realise the truth: she is a Cyberman, repurposed to lead the rebels to the source of the Cybermite swarm. The patrol leader shoots Doubt, but she is saved by the Cybermites; as they connect to Doubt and begin repairs, Doubt uses them to change the programming of all the damaged Cybermen: to plant crocuses…

Notes:
*Featuring the Fifth Doctor

*Time-placing: The Doctor is travelling alone, so I am placing this between 'Time Alone' and 'Thin Time'

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'A Perfect Christmas'

The Paternoster Gang’s preparations for celebrating Christmas in 1885 are rudely interrupted by an encounter with a young pick-pocket called Madge, who has in her possession an intriguing ruby pendant. After rescuing her from an attack by a huge cyborg Sacristan - an assassin sent by the Papal Mainframe - Vastra, Jenny and Strax wonder how a TARDIS key belonging to the Doctor got inside the pendant. Realising that it was a gift belonging to the late Mother Superior Tasha Lem from the Fiftieth Century, Vastra deduces that whoever Madge stole it from was a time traveller. Fearing that more Sacristans will be on their way to retrieve the key, Vastra decides to leave London and find Alexander Bell and use his prototype telephone to contact the Doctor. However, Jenny and Strax refuse to let Vastra go it alone, and when they come under fire from two more Sacristans, the Great Detective realises that they are being used in a plot to find the Doctor - so she just gives the pendant back to the cyborgs, who return it to the Papal Mainframe. Back at 13 Paternoster Row, the gang discover that Madge has taken all their Christmas food; but Vastra doesn’t mind, having everything she needs with her wife Jenny and her friend Strax.

After: Watching from a nearby rooftop, the alien disguised as Madge replaces her mask; she and her brother must resort to other means to find the Doctor…

Notes:
*Featuring the Paternoster Gang

*Time-placing: a year after the events of 'Heritage'

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'Missing Habitas Frond'

On Christmas Eve 1909, Habitas Frond returns home to his family with the news that he has been fired from the police force for incompetency. On the train he meets a woman called Missy, who coerces him into all manner of unlikely behaviour: firstly, he explains how he lost his job after failing to stop the theft of Scottish Crown Jewels; then he gets off at the wrong stop to catch a thief, leaving his luggage behind on the departing train. Encouraged by Missy to investigate the murdered victim, Frond discovers clues implicating the stabbed man with the jewel theft; together they follow the trail to the Crown Jewels thieves, but somehow their suspects keep ending up dead. When the trail leads to Frond’s former boss, Superintendent Horrinthal, he finally starts to realise that he has been manipulated my Missy – she has led him on a false trail just to keep herself amused. The spineless Frond finds himself talked into killing Horrinthal and reclaiming the stolen jewels from Missy; but when his gunshot easily misses his ex-boss, the disappointed Missy gives up kills the pair of them herself.

Notes:
*Featuring Missy

*Time-placing: While the Doctor is on Darillium with River Song

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'A Day to Yourselves'

The Doctor arrives in the reception area of Moveomax Holiday cards, on the planet Eirene, only to learn that the crisis he was expecting has already been averted by his future self, who has left him a Christmas card. He tries saving the universe from the Cult of the Breaking Sunset, but another of his future selves has already seen them off, leaving behind another Christmas card. The Doctor visits other infamous incidents at the Ark of the Gammazed and the X-Particle Mines, but each time finds them fixed, along with another card waiting for him – and each time, the Doctor hides the Christmas card under a certain door inside the TARDIS. Finally, the Doctor tries to pre-empt an incident at the Chibolg Mega-Stamps Convention on Ghent, only to be out-pre-empted by another of his incarnations. Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor opens the door of the room where he posted his cards: the wardrobe, full of mirrors that he broke in anger after being forced to destroy his home world of Gallifrey. Sweeping up the mess shattered glass, the Doctor finds a card from his earlier self, a ‘Wish You Were Here’ card from Earth; cheering up, the Doctor decides to pay his surrogate home a visit…

Notes:
*Featuring the Ninth Doctor

*Time-placing: not long after the Time War, and prior to meeting Rose

*Doctors referred to, but not actually seen, are the Tenth, Eleventh, Twelfth and Thirteenth

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'The Paradox Moon'

Responding to a mysterious distress call, the Doctor finds the Shadow Proclamation in disarray, its systems disrupted by the appearance of a rogue moon. The Doctor investigates and finds an abandoned house containing a jury-rigged version of a TARDIS; she then encounters two children wearing masks of skulls, Sibling Same and Sibling Different, who want revenge on the Doctor for their anomalous existence, caused when the Time War ended, leaving them in a state of neither dead nor alive. The siblings have used their own paradox energy to hunt through alternate timelines where the Doctors died, stealing components from their abandoned TARDISes to create their own time, so they can undo the Time War and save themselves. The siblings activate their TARDIS, but it immediately starts tearing itself apart, its destructing threatening the stability of the universe. Realising the distress call was from this patchwork TARDIS, the Doctor tries to shut it down, just as her own TARDIS comes to rescue her. His eyes opened to the repercussions of his actions, Sibling Same withdraws his body’s energy, returning the Paradox TARDIS’ components to their dead timelines and sending his lifeforce into his sister. As the Paradox TARDIS and Sibling Same dissipate, Sibling Different stabilises inside the Doctor’s TARDIS. When the Doctor offers Different the chance to use her second chance at life to make a difference, by tracking down other agents of paradox, Different - now calling herself Mae – agrees to help…

Notes:
*Featuring the Thirteenth Doctor

*Time-placing: prior to 'Can You Hear Me?'

*The Doctor is referring to the Faction Paradox, a time-voodoo cult that appears in the Virgin New Adventures and BBC Eighth Doctor novels

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Publication Date:
15th October 2020

Notes:
*A BBC Books publication