There is something fun about reading a bunch of Doctor Who stories by the same author. You can delve into (and perhaps get lost in) auteurship. What themes does the author return to? Does their writing style change over time or maybe for each Doctor? And so on and so forth.
Gary Merchant seems to have only ever had 1 Doctor Who story published through "official" outlets - "Undercurrents" in the Big Finish Short Trips collection A Day in the Life - though it seems that he has written some fan fiction. I know nothing about him and have nothing else written by him for comparison.
In the middle of the night, Zoe notices that the racket the Doctor is making in his laboratory ceases and she is sent into a panic when she goes into the lab and finds that the Time Lord is MIA. She immediately wakes Jamie up who finds it impossible that their friend has simply vanished.
Their confusion only increases when they hear a knocking sound from outside the TARDIS. Confusion turns into incredulity when they hear a voice pleading, "Help. Please, please help me!" Not wanting to suffer the same fate as Ramón Salamander, Jamie gets Zoe to enable the force field around the TARDIS so that they can open the doors and find out what's going on.
They do so and Jamie reels in a fellow named Vorac, a Time Rider. His people ride the time winds which blow parallel to the Vortex. Apparently, an undercurrent took the pack he was in by surprise and he was thrown off course into the path of the TARDIS so he grabbed on for dear life.
Zoe is fascinated by Vorac. She ignores Jamie which causes him to go green with envy. Already distrustful of the stranger and now possessed by the Green Monster, Jamie attacks Vorac and seemingly kills him. But he had merely rendered him unconscious. However, Vorac is in bad shape being out of his element and needs to return to the time winds. Jamie comes up with a scheme to do just that.
Zoe pilots the TARDIS while Jamie dangles from a rope tied around the blue box with Vorac waiting for a rent in the Vortex to appear that Vorac can escape through. One emerges and Vorac is saved.
Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor reappears. The Time Riders have an even-steven policy and snagged the Doctor after Vorac was swept away to the TARDIS. When Vorac was returned, so was the Time Lord.
It was funny how Jamie and Zoe didn't mention their little adventure when the Doctor reappeared. However, the Doctor notices that the rope Jamie used is still tied around the TARDIS. "Would anyone care to explain this?" he asks.
A fun tale with the companions in the limelight showing just how capable they are. I wasn't aware that scribes had populated the Vortex with anything more than Vortisaurs but these Time Riders are intriguing. I pictured Vorac as being like Yagharek from Perdido Street Station who, in turn, I always thought looked a bit like Torch on the cover of Marillion's Live at Loreley video.
I wonder if another author ever utilized the Time Riders for their own story.
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