A Letter from the Doctor (DWM 10 short story)
A Letter from the Doctor was a short story printed in DWM 10, and was the tenth in the A Letter from the Doctor series. It was structured as a letter "written" by the Fourth Doctor to the readers of Doctor Who Weekly.
The story was actually written by Dez Skinn, a fact he kept concealed for many years until he revealed it on his website.[1]
Plot[[edit] | [edit source]]
The Fourth Doctor answers a question which keeps cropping up in readers' letters to him, that being why there is always a problem, war or conquest wherever or whenever the TARDIS lands. He explains the sad truth that just about everywhere you look, even on Earth, whether in history or the present day, there is always something going wrong somewhere and, being the inquisitive Time Lord he is, he can't resist getting involved in the hope he can help sort out the problem.
The Doctor then broaches the question of why the problem is always an alien invasion or something that goes bump in the night. He says this is actually a misconception as the ones readers see as TV stories or comic strips are only the most interesting problems he comes up against. As an example, he recalls the time he helped a Krontonian ambassador locate his missing seal of authority, eventually discovering that his son had swallowed it. The Doctor also notes that there are limitless adventures to choose from due to his travelling back and forth in time and space and that, if readers really want to know what happened on his visit to Benidorm, then they can imagine what it was like for themselves.
Characters[[edit] | [edit source]]
Worldbuilding[[edit] | [edit source]]
- The Doctor notes he seems to be getting pushed out of issues of his magazine by Cybermen, Silurians, Krynoids, "and everybody else".
- The Doctor states that in the full five thousand or so years of Earth's recorded history, the total peace time, when there hasn't been a war somewhere on the planet, is less than fifty years.
- The son of the Krontonian ambassador was 78 years old at the time of his encounter with the Doctor.
Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]
- Unlike many instalments of A Letter from the Doctor, the Doctor's letter in this story does not feature formatting revealing the date on which it was sent and from where.
Continuity[[edit] | [edit source]]
- The Doctor suggests that at some point he finally made it to Benidorm. He first decided to holiday there at the end of COMIC: Doctor Who and the Iron Legion [+]Loading...["Doctor Who and the Iron Legion (comic story)"] and was still trying in PROSE: A Letter from the Doctor 8 [+]Loading...["A Letter from the Doctor (DWM 8 short story)"] and COMIC: City of the Damned [+]Loading...["City of the Damned (comic story)"].
Footnotes[[edit] | [edit source]]
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