‘THE MERCY SEATS’

Please feel free to comment on my review.

Wooden Aliens and Geoffrey Chaucer with the Twelfth Doctor

This story is by David Llewellyn and it features the Twelfth Doctor. David Llewellyn has written a number of ‘Doctor Who’ stories for BBC Books and Big Finish over the years. The recent ones he’s done for Big Finish include ‘Serpent In The Silver Mask’ and ‘Tartarus’, both starring the Fifth Doctor.

‘The Mercy Seats’ features the Twelfth Doctor travelling alone here. I suppose this is one of those occasions where Clara is teaching at Coal Hill School. In this adventure, the Doctor meets Geoffrey Chaucer. I’m not very familiar with Geoffrey Chaucer as an English author as I haven’t read his work.

Chaucer has been in ‘Doctor Who’ before via the audio story ‘The Doctor’s Tale’ which I’ve yet to hear at this point. It’s interesting how Twelve meets Chaucer as he joins him and some friends on a pilgrimage. In this tale, Chaucer and his pilgrimage get accused for spreading the plague by villagers.

Once locked up in a church, they get attacked by wooden alien creatures that come out of the church walls. They manage to get defeated when the new born baby of Matilda wails out loudly. It was intriguing how the Doctor worked it out to defeat the wooden aliens and wasn’t surprised by it.

In fact, the Doctor seemed to pre-know everything that was going to happen in this tale with the church appearing since it hadn’t been there the day before. The Doctor’s relationship with Chaucer is interesting. Chaucer becomes annoyed by the Twelfth Doctor’s behaviour before he respects him. 🙂

‘The Mercy Seats’ is accompanied by the chapter called ‘Entropy and Death’.

‘The Mercy Seats’ rating – 7/10