This is the first Paul Spragg Short Trip I’ve listened to as a fellow entrant, not just somebody bored. When it was announced that a story had been selected, I feverishly refreshed my email, imagining that I’d spend the summer coordinating with John Ainsworth, expanding my draft, watching the recording session on Zoom, and doing a bit for the BTS track. It was a little disappointing to have been passed over, but in hindsight, great call by BF. This is among those contest winners which prompts the response, “I get why I lost.”
Mindful of how my fanfic might be seen by others, and aware of how long it took him to get here, I don’t want to be harsh on Hollands. That said, “The Wednesday That Wasn’t” didn’t gel with me as much as “War Stories”, chosen in 2024. The conceit is an amazing one—perfectly Who, and obviously the product of the effort mentioned by Hollands—Thirteen is bang on,[1] the imagery is vivid, and Clare Corbett’s Yaz impression is excellent, but the plot loses steam towards the end, and Edna, our PoV character, takes a backseat for a lot of it. My writer brain was also going haywire, finding things to nitpick which only I care about. “‘Shush,’ the Doctor beside her admonished,”[2] and so on.