DOCTOR WHO: TALES OF TRENZALORE: The Eleventh Doctor's Last Stand

This book, with its four stories, seeks to fill in the gaps in "The Time of the Doctor" - the years of the Doctor's time defending Trenzalore and the town of Christmas that we didn't see, or which were glossed over in Tasha Lem's narration. Spread over different points in The Doctor's 900-year vigil as "saviour of Christmas," these stories detail attacks by the Autons, the Krynoids, the Mara, and the Ice Warriors respectively.I thought these stories were very well-written. You get to see a nice range of the Eleventh Doctor's character - from the young, confident man of the Ice Warriors story to the old man of the Mara story, who knows his end is coming soon and is "twice as dangerous" cause he has nothing to lose.Children are also a large part of these stories, playing major roles in all four. I thought that was rather appropriate - Eleven has been associated with kids from day one (with young Amelia Pond), is the Doctor who can't help but interfere if he hears a child cry, and is in many ways the most childish Doctor so far. And we see him continue to care for the kids here, from fixing toys to telling them stories to making them a skating rink using nothing but a hose and Trenzalore's naturally subzero weather.This is definitely worth a read! It fills in lots of details about Trenzalore and Christmas, and for me personally, it gave me a lot more perspective on what Eleven was doing all that time to protect the town.

I often find myself in a minority when it comes to my affection for the Eleventh Doctor, but nonetheless I do still love and miss him, so this was a little present to myself. The stories in Tales of Trenzalore were certainly quick reads, but the authors here did a splendid job of capturing all of Matt Smith's passion and energy. The Doctor's voice is well done in each of the tales, and each author does a good job of expanding on the town of Christmas, which we only caught a glimpse of in Time of the Doctor.I think, though, the authors were working from an early script, as I'm pretty sure no one told Matt Smith that the elderly Doctor was working on a wooden leg! More than one of the tales describes the Doctor's wooden leg, although none tell how it happened (most likely it was originally scheduled to happen during the show).It's a great little collection of stories for us Doctor Eleven fans.

This book filled the gaps from Time of the Doctor where the doctor spent 1000 years defending the small town of Christmas on Trenzalore. It is 4 short stories bringing up Villains who have become tier II villains on the TV show. The book captures Matt Smith's characterization well and you can picture an aging 11th doctor using much of the dialogue in the book. One point that I kind of disagreed with is of the 4 stories the book tells, it never tells the story of how the Doctor lost his leg which is alluded to in 3 of the 4 stories. This book is an excellent way to spend an afternoon and revisit with the 11th doctor.

Absolutely wonderful. It was nice to see the Doctor in his defense of Trenzalore as the centuries progressed. You get to see him when he was much older and not quite as nimble. This is a great companion to "The Time of the Doctor." I loved seeing him go up against some of the classic Who villains who have not really had the limelight in the current show like they did in the original run. That's right you've seen some of these villains in the revived series but nothing like the havoc they get to cause now. So if you are a fan of Matt Smith's Doctor or just want to know what happened on that snowy little planet and the town called Christmas, then this is a book for you.

This book is for the Whovians who have seen The Time of The Doctor, who are like me and wondered what happened during the Doctor's time on Trenzalore. This book contains four short stories of the Doctor fighting four unique monsters intent on killing him. I'd like to review each story individually, but I don't want to give away the plots as part of the book is discovering what will happen when the town of Christmas faces the alien threats.Written brilliantly, each author bringing depth to the Doctor and the people around him. I was not disappointed by this book in the least. My only tribulation is in the second story. THE DOCTOR DOES NOT EAT APPLES!I highly recommend this book for all Doctor Who fans who have seen The Time of The Doctor!

I must admit that I didn't like the episode "Time of The Doctor" when I first saw it but on future viewings, it has grown on me. The Doctor's stay on Trenzalore was the stuff of legends. There are perhaps hundreds and hundreds of such tales....but this book only covers four such adventures. Each adventure deals with a classic DW monster; Ice Warriors, Krynoid, the Autons and the Mara. Though each story is short, they're well-written and moves at a brisk pace. I would highly recommend this to any Doctor Who fan.

This anthology has four stories from the seige of  Trenzalore and they range from an attack by the Ice Warriors to a foe that uses bones from a dead man to make his move on the small town of Christmas. The Doctor fights all four and wins but at a price each time because the people of Christmas don't always tell him what is going on on the outskirts of the town. This anthology is a must for any Doctor Who fan who want's to read what happened during the events of the episode the Time of the Doctor.

I was glad that Tales of Trenzalore became available the moment it hit midnight and I read it right away. I always wanted to know what the Doctor was doing at the time he sent Clara away for the second time and it satisfied me. Although it was only four adventures, it explained some parts of The Time of the Doctor. The villains they picked for these stories were well picked and each had a unique way to kill the Doctor. I hate that the book cover spoils who the villains are instead of reading them in the book but overall, I love the Tales of Trenzalore.

(Review by my 15-Year-Old son)This book was released earlier in the year, previously only an e-book exclusive. At the time, this saddened me because I'm not a fan of e-books and really wanted to see a paperback of hardcover release. A few months later, and thankfully, a paperback version was released. I bought it the day it was released and have just got around to reading it. Now that I've finished, I'm not sure what to think ...Firstly, I did have high expectations of this book as I thought it was a nice finishing touch to Matt Smith's Doctor and a good idea in general. Technically, there are limitless plots that you could have for the 900 years that the Doctor spent on Trenzalore. However, these four short-stories prove that they might not all make a good read. The first two stories involve the Ice Warriors followed by the Krynoids. These first two stories were actually really great reads and quite enjoyable. If you think about it, the Ice Warriors would be right at home in the cold environment of Trenzalore. It would also be interesting to see how the Krynoids cope, considering they need a warm environment to survive.However, things start going sour in the third and fourth stories. The third and fourth stories feature the Autons and Mara. While both of these are great villains, they don't make the best of villains for the advenutres on Trenzalore. Frankly, I felt a bit bored by both of these stories in comparison to the first two. I might have felt better about them if they were the first two stories instead. However, I think the problem is that the Doctor's universe should always be vast and wide, but being confined to one planet, stories can grate very quickly.Overall, none of these four stories are particularly bad, but they can get a bit dull if read all in one go. As I said, this might be because the Doctor is stuck on one planet.

Over the last year or so there have been several ebooks released which have been related to recent television episodes. It therefore comes as no surprise that the Eleventh Doctor’s last outing should receive the same treatment. The vast period of time that ‘The Time of the Doctor’ stretches over gives it a lot of potential to fit in extra stories. Hence this ebook being a collection of four stories and hence almost four times the size of the usual Doctor Who ebook releases. However, the disadvantage of this large gap of time to feature stories in is that the Doctor is basically in situ the whole time waiting for the enemies to come to him rather than wandering space and time encountering them. This takes away some of the essence of Doctor Who and drastically limits the variety, type and content of the tales.All four books in this collection feature the more aged Doctor towards the latter end of his time on Trenzalore. They are all orientated around various aliens/monsters finding some way around the Papal Mainframe’s ‘force field’ that prevents ‘technology’ reaching the planet so that they can invade the town of Christmas. And each see the Doctor defeat these foes with the help of the townspeople, often with one of the children of Christmas fulfilling the role of sidekick/companion. Even though this inevitably makes these stories somewhat similar the authors do a reasonable job of diversifying them as much as possible through their choice of aliens.The first short story focuses on the Ice Warriors. They have got to be the most obvious choice for the snowy landscape of Trenzalore and a village called Christmas. It is written by Justin Richards who runs the Doctor novels and wrote several of last year’s ebooks. His characterisation of the Ice Warriors is pretty strong, exhibiting influence from across their previous appearances. All three Ice Warriors to appear are individualised as characters rather than being generic lumbering monsters and they plan and orchestrate their assault. They also sem to be much more like the traditional Ice Warriors rather than being modelled on that more recently seen in ‘Cold War’. Thankfully there are no spindly creatures crawling out of them. However, there is finally the return of and Ice Lord. With their individual names and roles in the mission they are probably most similar to their first appearance. They are also practically relying on the same plan – using a sonic cannon. How exactly the parts for this are smuggled through the shield is a little dubious but for the pruposes of the story that doesn’t matter too much. The focus is on how the Doctor thwarts them with cunning and trickery. The Doctor’s ploy, although basic and predictable, is a good use for the Doctor in a collection which risks his usage being a bit similar.Next to be featured are the Krynoids. Even though it is great to see these quite under used monsters being featured it is a little puzzling as to what they would be doing at Trenzlore. From what we have previously learnt about them they seem to travel through the depths of space in a state of suspended animation/hibernation until they arrive on a planet by chance, They then germinate and by what seems to be little more than a voracious, instinctive reaction consume all non-vegetable life on the planet. This raises questions about why and how they would have any interest in Trenzalore. Their presence aside, this is a well written and enjoyable story. The Krynoid does exactly what it does best and the Doctor and his child companion for this story work well together with a credible relationship. This is possibly the best story of the four.The essence of the Auton story is perhaps the most predictable but the Autons lebnd themselves quite well to the Trenzalore set up. Their spheres getting through the Mainframe’s shield makes reasonable sense, even though it is a similar infiltration technique to that used by the Ice Warriors in this collection. The story tails off into a bit of a tedious run around but it has a reasonably tense and action based finale. Annoyingly it doesn’t really explain why the Autons appear as facsimiles of the Doctor as not much deception is used by them. More could probably have been made of this.The Mara probably have the most imaginative way of reaching the surface of Trenzalore and it is somewhat in keeping with their previous appearances. Their actual presence at Trenzalore is a bit dubious though. Their involvement doesn’t really seem to fit in with what we know about them. The use of dreams and possession does make the story stand out a bit from the other three more straight forward invasions.The four stories on offer do succeed in fitting in well to the ideas and plot of ‘The Time of the Doctor’. They enable the episode to be elaborated in a way the programme never had the airspace to do. They also establish the precedent for further collections of stories from the last days of the Eleventh Doctor.

Four entertaining stories from the wintery world of Trenzalore featuring the aging Eleventh Doctor facing classic foes including two that haven't returned to the TV screen yet. The quality of the stories varies but that might be due to the different writers. I'm trying not to give spoilers but to briefly sum them up one tends to be a bit slow, one is really fast paced, one feels like a longer story then it is (in a bigger on the inside sense) and one I'm pretty sure has a big but brief Sherlock reference in it.

A fun high quality collection of short stories set during the 11th Doctors time on Trenzalore. Where as the TV episode had a lot to do this collection allows us a look into the Doctors life on Trenzalore and a handful of tales on how he defended Christmas from the mass hordes of villains kept at bay by the technology barrier. The stories themselves are quite different from each other, have differing protagonists and supporting casts and more importantly the Doctor changes as we get to see him quite young and as the aged protector we saw during Time of the Doctor.

This is an "OK" book. All the writers do a decent job of capturing this incarnation of The Doctor, some better than others, but the stories are unremarkable. As you know the eventual fate of The Doctor the sense of peril is never there, which wouldn't be a problem if the way that the enemies was defeated was particularly clever or intriguing. Sadly what we get is a bunch of monsters getting defeated very quickly and easily.The writing is OK, but there are some very clumsy pieces of description.