‘PRESS PLAY’

Please feel free to comment on my review.

The Thirteenth Doctor Receives a Message from Susan

‘Press Play’ by Pete McTighe features the Thirteenth Doctor in the TARDIS. The story was originally published on the ‘Doctor Who’ website in April 2020. In the story, the Doctor has the TARDIS on recharge. She’s feeling quite lonely without her friends Graham, Ryan and Yaz to keep her company.

Eventually, the Doctor receives a holographic message from her granddaughter Susan, who gives her a gift which is an archive of all the adventures they’ve had in their travels in space and time – past, present and future. It’s intriguing how the Thirteenth Doctor reacts to Susan’s holographic message.

The stories themselves in Susan’s archive include the Crisis on Poosh, the ‘Genesis of the Daleks’, the Attack of the Postman (which is a reference to ‘Kerblam!’) the ‘Timelash’, and 100,000 BC (which is, of course, the stone age story in ‘An Unearthly Child’). I liked the nostalgic nods to those stories here.

A point made mentioned is that some of the ‘early’ adventures in Susan’s archive are said to have ‘gaps’, which is alluding to still-missing episodes of ‘Doctor Who’ from the show’s first few seasons. I liked it when the Doctor was eating her custard creams and we need more of those in Thirteen’s era.

There is a sense of the story alluding to the ‘self-isolation’ faced by everybody during the Covid-19 pandemic in the months of March and April 2020 at the time of this story’s release. The Doctor herself has to ‘self-isolate’ and it’s very nice how Pete McTighe reflects that in the writing of this story. 🙂

‘Press Play’ rating – 8/10