Tag Archives: Doctor Who

Call to Adventure

Leave a reply

winter_for_the_adept_wallpaper_by_hisi79-d5zdo7xI recently played the first session of the Ice adventure from the Eighth Doctor Sourcebook.

I’m not running this as a campaign, per the intentions of the supplement, but as a standalone. I felt that the adventure would work quite nicely that way.

I also used the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa as the characters at the centre of the adventure. The adventure slots into the continuity between Time-Flight and Arc of Infinity in the series (between Season 19 and 20), where several New Adventure novels and Big Finish audio dramas probably all dwell.

As it happens, this choice came down to the players. One loved the Nyssa character and wanted to play her, so it seemed to be just right. Ice involves rooting around in caves beneath a frozen planet and somehow that seemed perfectly Fifth Doctor as well.

All this isn’t really the point of this post. What I wanted to mention was the fact that I punctuated the session with music.

At the start of the adventure the TARDIS arrivals unexpectedly on a cold planet. Unexpectedly arrivals are not unusual in Who. In this case, the cold is the unusual part. The TARDIS feels cold. So, the Doctor’s curiosity gets the better of him, as how could a planet penetrate the TARDIS like that?

After finding suitable clothes in the Wardrobe, the two character ventured out and I described the desolate, glacial scenery. And the cold. They trudged a bit and casting around they realised that something lay beneath the ice, some relic of an alien city.

At that point, a snowmobile appeared in the distance. Nyssa hid while The Doctor bid a cheery hello to the newcomer. While conversation ensued, Nyssa became aware of an odd vibration in the ice. Or was it more of a tremor?

A moment later, mid-conversation, the guy on the snowmobile wheeled it around as the ice creaked, shuddered and then cracked. Sheets of grey-blue ice jabbed skyward while others dropped into the abyss. Both characters made a leap for safety, The Doctor fell, only for his fingers to catch an edge.

As The Doctor struggled to get up, aided by the stranger, Nyssa looked across the ice field. Jagged streaks patterned the surface, now covered with pits and holes. In the distance the TARDIS…

And then it dropped out of sight.

Queue the stab of the Who theme. POW.

If they hadn’t got in the mood up to that point, the theme made all the difference. We’re all suddenly bobbing about and squeal wee-woo.

It set the mood and also served as a way to cut to the next scene, as the snowmobile ground into the waiting camp beyond the mountains. No need to worry about the journey between or the uneasy silence from the stranger. The Doctor and Nyssa could worry about the TARDIS later – they had new people to meet and a mysterious city to uncover.

The theme worked really well. I can’t say that music works for everyone, and as a background noise it will be Marmite for some groups. But in that moment, the stab of the Theme worked wonderfully well, just as the outro version of the theme worked well at the end of the session, just as I revealed the cliffhanger revelation.

I recommend giving it a try, whatever the game. If you can find a theme tune, go for it. I can see it providing a valuable and rather entertaining framing motif. If you follow the TV serial approach to games, it doesn’t always have to happen at the same time. Some shows you can go five, ten, even fifteen minutes before they kick in the theme tune and the opening credits. In a longer drama or serial, they have a degree of leeway – as do you in running a gaming session.

Find a tune. Set the tone of the session. Hit the danger or reveal the cliffhanger from last session – and then play the theme.

—

Original art (cropped for this post) by deviantart contributor hisi79

Eleven Doctors, Eleven Stories

Leave a reply

eleven-doctors-eleven-storiesReading Eleven Doctors, Eleven Stories has been an interesting experience.

Over the course of last year, these short stories got released as e-books, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Doctor Who series. Here, they’re collected in a chunky volume, wrapped in a silvery cover.

Physically, it represents an imposing read. I have read more imposing books – books with 1,000+ pages that threaten to break your wrist while reading. Worse yet, they have the potential to break your nose if you read them in bed. I imagine some slimming might have been achieved with a slightly smaller typeface.

Anyway… content. I had intended to ruminate on the reading rather than the carrying.

It has been a mixed experience. It’s hard to tell whether the best stories come down to writers capable of capturing a character in print so effortlessly, or if some Doctors just had more distinctive personalities.

Take the Ninth Doctor, for example. Charlie Higson‘s “The Beast of Babylon” benefits no end from his getting the style, manner and speech patterns of the Doctor down pat.

While Derek Landy’s “The Mystery of the Haunted Cottage” could have done with more time and space to expand into a satisfying story, he manages a similar feat to Higson and David Tennant’s performance comes through, staccato-style and peppered with brilliant.

Less successful is Eoin Colfer‘s “A Big Hand For The Doctor“, a story of an injured first Doctor up against a gang of child-stealing pirate-aliens. Not only does he not get the feel of the Time Lord right, but he seems to struggle against the way we have come to perceive the Doctor.

Because the TV series has developed and the passage of time means that Who in the 60s or 70s comes across as very much of its time, it’s something you have to suspend disbelief for. The First Doctor doesn’t reference Harry Potter much in the original TV series because, well, he didn’t exist. Yes, The Doctor travels in time and so making reference to actual stuff of the present day makes perfect sense… but, reading it, little things like this just jar slightly. They feel wrong.

On top of that, the first story has a twist in the tale that just didn’t sit well with me. I saw it coming far too early and didn’t enjoy it much when confirmation struck home at the end.

To be fair – and so as not to warn you off – the good stories in this volume easily outweigh the less good. The Sixth Doctor’s story stands out as another one to avoid, but that’s just two out of eleven that made me wish I’d spent my time more wisely. We follow the Sixth Doctor’s adventure from Peri’s perspective – and it doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel very Peri, for a start – and something about the egotistical Sixth Doctor means a story told from another character’s perspective doesn’t sit well.

For anyone running Doctor Who roleplaying sessions, I can see several stories providing a basis for adventures. The Third Doctor’s “The Spear of Destiny” has all the potential for a rip-roaring gaming session, with frozen woods, rampaging Scandinavians, and warring almost gods. The Fourth Doctor’s “The Roots of Evil” takes place in the fascinating setting of a living tree space station… which sounds like a great place for a game – and warrant further consideration, as the story identifies the example herein as an unusual example of what would otherwise be an enormous terraforming construct.

Definitely worth reading, even if you just grab copies of the individual e-books. I’m almost finished with the final story – by Neil Gaiman – and then I’m off to find something new to read.

School Reunion: First Glance

Leave a reply

Sarah-Janes-and-the-Tenth-DoctorAnother superb episode of Who, with top notch effects and a fine cast. The Krillitanes made for a fine foe, fronted by the sneering Headmaster Lucas Finch (played by Anthony Head). A malevolent alien species that advance and evolve through their voracious hunger – that present all sorts of possibilities. I daresay they would make a great villain, fleshed out and beefed up, in a tabletop campaign of Doctor Who: Adventures in Time & Space.

Seeing Sarah Jane Smith and K-9 again obviously made this a stand-out episode for any fan… but, they didn’t appear simply for the novelty value. Telling the tale of a companion post-TARDIS filled out a little of the Who mythos, giving a very emotive view of how a suddenly very ordinary world can become a prison to one of the Doctor’s ex-associates.

Can The Doctor be entirely ignorant of the impact he has on those he travels with? Considering the continual wonder he seems to chase in his adventures across the universe, could the Last of the Time Lords really be so naive as to imagine his companion might feel a little of the same?

It’s a subject authors have touched upon in the books, notably with respect to the Eighth Doctor and his companion Sam, but never really in the TV series before. We’ve heard many companions begging for the Doctor to take them home, but none lamenting the grey ordinariness of the world upon their return.

Related articles