Image Credit: BBC Books (Fair Use)
Image Description: The cover of The Wintertime Paradox
By John Salway
Name: Canaries
Type: Short Story
Price: Free
Current TLV investment: £192.50
This is a free short story available on the Doctor Who website, but unlike previous tale The Dawn of the Kotturuh, thankfully this time there’s no mucking about with codes or emails or other such nonsense to access it.
It’s a simple, but very moody and atmospheric tale of a small museum that collects artefacts from discarded timelines. Writer Dave Rudden takes his time to patiently introduce its owner, Anke, and each of its exhibits, which tie into various Doctor Who tales. This is, however, as far as the Time Lord Victorious connection reaches, with the Dark Times simply the source of one of the story’s props. As such, this is certainly not an essential part of the saga!
As Anke adds a sinister pair of new items to her collection, the story builds up the excitement and tension… and then stops on a massive cliffhanger, leaving me desperate for more! For it turns out this isn’t really a complete short story at all, but a clever way to market Dave Rudden’s new anthology book, The Wintertime Paradox. Will Anke’s fate be resolved in the pages of that volume? I don’t know, and now I’m desperate to find out!
It’s really quite infuriating how good this story is, for now I’m tempted to go out and add another Doctor Who product to this year’s fairly expansive supply. You need only check the running total above to see I’ve spent plenty already, thank you very much! So on the one hand, I really recommend this story for the slow, well measured way it brews a sinister atmosphere. On the other hand, stay far away from this story, it’s an ingenious money-making trap! You could almost call it some kind of… paradox.
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