Indeed. I see it as less of a trilogy and more of a single story--though framing the trilogy that way does technically spoil MR 133, which is very much designed to
feel like a typical, self-contained story.
Quote of the story: "I never name drop--Saint Augustin taught me that."
So anyway, this one... well, it's got some really interesting elements (love the ultimate explanation for what happened to Zoe) but ultimately I don't think it comes together very well. Rather than focusing my thoughts on my sort of general reactions to individual elements, I think I'd like to discuss just why that might be.
Ultimately I think it's down to a fundamental mishandling of the setting. This is the "world of fiction" -- so, presumably, like
Doctor Who, it's a setting with infinite potential. But, also not unlike
Doctor Who, that potential is stymied at every turn so that only a narrow set of possibilities is allowed. This is the land of fiction where
anything can happen: but only if it's very mundane and confined to the
public domain.
The latter, of course, being less of a problem than the former.
I think it's down to the premise: because the Cybermen and Doctor are "real," they cannot face anything
too outlandish, otherwise they wouldn't stand a chance. So the entire medium of comic book fiction is erased off-screen, as it were. Well, great. So the next best thing is... Alice? Dracula? Sherlock Holmes? Why not the Kwisatz Haderach? Why not Q? Right, right: public domain. Okay, then--but why not Jesus? Or Zeus? Or Thor? Or Anubis? Or Quetzalcoatl?
Of course, we all know why not--but that lack of imagination fundamentally hamstrings this setting. The land of fiction is a place where anything can happen, but usually doesn't.
So I'm sitting here, tapping away with my fingers, with a far-too-heavy dog snoring on my knees, imagining an alternate version of this story where
everyone is fictional, the Doctor included. Which could allow for some deliciously meta storytelling, yeah? Far better, I'd hope, than the bit of meta-commentary snuck into this story, where Zoe declares that the Doctor is just
too absurd to be fictitious--an assertion that feels simultaneously incredibly masturbatory and profoundly dismissive.
But, right, enough of that. If we're stuck using "real" Cybermen invading the land of fiction, why must the Cybermen use
conventional tactics? It's hard not to compare this to another Big Finish story with a very similar premise:
Oh No It Isn't! There, Bernice Summerfield is likewise trapped in a universe beholden to the laws of fiction, more or less--and to escape it, she must
obey those rules. So imagine a version of this story where the Doctor and Cybermen are jockeying for power, effectively
weaponizing narrative tropes. Crafting situations where narrative forces encourage favorable outcomes.
Y'all can we where I'm going with here, right? It's be a fun way to play with the "reality" of the setting in a manner very familiar to any Terry Pratchett fans--a world where 1,000,000:1 odds represent an absolutely certain sure thing, but 999,999:1 or 1,000,001:1 odds are effective impossibilities.s
In short this story simply frustrates me because I feel like it had the potential to be much more interesting. And, like, don't even get me started on the implications of Zoe creating fictional versions of real people--that's an
enormous can of worms. One that would've been a lot of fun to pry open had the Doctor been fictional.
That said (apologies for the length), I still quite enjoyed this story--Jamie finally getting his memories back made for some nice drama, and it was fun to see an older, more mature Zoe, too. I'm curious to see where Colin Baker's Doctor goes after this, because between these three mini-arcs, it almost feels like he's treading water. Like these tiny arcs are more like spin-offs than the "main" adventures. Maybe I'm alone in feeling this way? I'm not sure why. Maybe because these companions never feel like proper, "permanent" additions to the Tardis crew--like they've all got "temporary":written in parenthesis after their names.