This review is part of Melody’s Summer Reading: Diversity Spotlight. Enjoy!
Doctor Who: Tip Of The Tongue (Doctor Who 50th Anniversary E-Short)
By Patrick Ness
Narrated By: Nicholas Pegg
Release Date: May 23, 2013
Publisher: Penguin Books Limited
Genre: Science Fiction, Short Story
Running Time: Unabridged | 54 minutes
Source: Bought
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In 1945, a strange new craze for Truth Tellers is sweeping the kids of small-town America. The Fifth Doctor and Nyssa soon arrive to investigate the phenomenon, only to discover that the actual truth behind the Truth Tellers is far more sinister than anyone could have imagined …
Eleven Doctors, eleven months, eleven stories: a year-long celebration of Doctor Who! The most exciting names in children’s fiction each create their own unique adventure about the time-travelling Time Lord.
Having enjoyed Malorie Blackman’s Doctor Who short story so much, I decided to read one more from another diverse author, Patrick Ness and must say that I enjoyed the first one way more. I feel like in this short story, we got way more from the people of the town that this is set in than what we got from the Doctor and his companion. So. That was odd. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the setting and the diverse townspeople who really jumped off the page (Ness has a knack for creating such colorful characters) however there was an imbalance when it came to screen time so to speak.
Then there’s the story. I was actually more intrigued by the concept of this story (Truth Tellers) before reading this than the concept of the last short story but as it turns out, I think we were given just enough for this concept to be satisfied and not much more. So, this short story fell short in more ways than one… Not enough screen time for the main characters and not as much complexity with the concept as I wanted.
I did love the attention to detail and imagery though, it was very easy to imagine everything and insert myself into this world. I only wish we got to dig deeper with this. I listened to the audiobook of this short story and enjoyed the narration. That aside, this audiobook being about an hour long, I wish that this had actually been an episode of the show with a longtime Doctor Who writer on board to really take this to the level that I was expecting it to be at. So overall, this was a solid story but the lack of the Doctor and knowing that this had potential to be so much more doesn’t exactly make this a title I’ll be running out to recommend. There are eleven Doctor Who 50th Anniversary short stories in all though and they all can’t be winners so I’ll keep reading the rest and see how all fairs out in the end!
Doctor Who: Tip Of The Tongue (Doctor Who 50th Anniversary E-Short) by Patrick Ness is available today.