A Journey Of A Thousand Eons...: 36.3 Rise and Fall (Short Trips Volume One, Big Finish, 2010)

This is the very dawn of the Short Trips range over at Big Finish, the first story in a collection of eight short stories, each one focusing on one of the eight doctors the company had licenses to produce stuff for (a little later, the BBC will extend the Who license to all NuWho material through Peter Capaldi).  The intent at that time was that Short Trips would be audio chapbooks, with each story designed to be listened to during a typical commute--this is the only story in this anthology that's over twenty minutes--and would be read by an actor associated with that Doctor.

...which brings us to this story by George Mann, read by William Russell.  It tells of how the Doctor and Ian stop for a brief respite and end up influencing the rise of an entire civilization...for, you see, said civilization is living in an accelerated pocket of time, which means a few minutes to our heroes means eons for them.

It's a wonderful, simple little story that shows what can be done with the Short Trips format--focusing not on the TARDIS crew but on how they influence those around them.  I felt a real sense of delightful awe at how this story played out.  Some of the best Short Trips I've experienced are like this (wait until we get to the Pertwee era and I get to talk about a little gem called 'Damascus'), little tales about people and how they are impacted by the Doctor's presence. Mann does not let the story outstay its welcome, and leaves the listener satisfied.

Later, when the Short Trips line becomes a monthly line, the stories stretch to sometimes as much as forty-five minutes, and I think a lot of them lose sight of the original remit.  But right now at the beginning, this (and many of the stories in this collection, which we will get to as we reach the other Doctors) is a satisfying, bite-sized little bit of science fiction.