‘THE TERROR OF THE UMPTY UMS’

Please feel free to comment on my review.

David Karpagnon meets the Thirteenth Doctor

Like ‘Things She Thought While Falling’, ‘The Terror of the Umpty Ums’ was first published on the ‘Doctor Who’ website and is by former ‘Doctor Who’ showrunner Steven Moffat. This was interesting as this is Steven Moffat’s take on the Thirteenth Doctor, which I was pretty fascinated by.

You may have picked up from previous reviews that I’m not kind on the ‘Doctor Who’ stories penned by Steven Moffat over the years. Yet somehow, from reading ‘The Terror of the Umpty Ums’, I found the story quite enjoyable. It didn’t feel like a ‘mind-melt’ like ‘The Day of the Doctor’ novelization. 😀

I also feel Steven Moffat executed the idea of the story quite well since the Doctor who appears in this is merely a figment of the main character, David Kapragnon’s, imagination. It also makes you wonder whether the Thirteenth Doctor acting in-universe behaves the same way as out-of-universe.

It’s also amusing how Steven Moffat makes the ‘Umpty Ums’ in the ‘Doctor Who’ theme tune’s opening bassline as the main enemy before the Doctor comes in with the “Woo-hoo!” to scare them off. It’s also very fascinating how David Karpagnon is unravelled when the Doctor interacts with him.

In some respects, there are echoes of ‘Remembrance of the Daleks’ where the TV show ‘Doctor Who’ was about to be shown on BBC TV at the same time during the events of the story. I’d like to think that the Thirteenth Doctor is real in David’s head and she isn’t just a figment of his imagination.

‘The Terror of the Umpty Ums’ rating – 8/10