Review: Doctor Who: Books: Time Trips

By Cecilia Ahern, Jake Arnott, Trudi Canavan, Jenny Colgan, Stella Duffy, Nick Harkaway, Joanne Harris and A.L. Kennedy

BBC Books, out now

The collected short stories – with an unusual bonus featuring the 12th Doctor…

The links to each of the authors in the list above will take you to our individual reviews of the stories contained in this collection, which are something of a mixed bunch, most evoking the periods they set in well, others not perhaps hitting the mark quite so clearly. As with Puffin’s short stories, though, it’s good to have them in a print edition, particularly as they’ve been enhanced by illustrations from Ben Morris that act as splash pages for the stories, including special treatments for the titles.

There’s one new story, courtesy of Jenny Colgan – A Long Way Down is presented in perhaps the most unusual way I’ve seen a Who print tale in some time. It’s a very clever mix of prose and design in which the way the story is communicated to readers is as important as the text they’re reading. You may end up having as much fun in the process of reading it as you do from the story itself.

The positives of this collection far outweigh the negatives: for personal reasons, Joanne Harris’ story of the third Doctor towards the end of his life hit home even harder this time around than the first, confirming its place as one of the best Who short stories of modern times, and you’ll get some interesting insights into how the Doctor is regarded by some of our top authors.

Verdict: Comedy, drama and conflict: a collection that encapsulates the appeal of Doctor Who. 9/10

Paul Simpson

Click here to order Doctor Who: Time Trips from Amazon.co.uk