This story is part of the first act of this story. This is where the story really starts.
The Knight, The Fool and The Dead
Novel
We live forever, barring accidents. Just like everyone else in the universe.
The Doctor travels back to the Ancient Days, an era where life flourishes and death is barely known…
Then come the Kotturuh – creatures who spread through the cosmos dispensing mortality. They judge each and every species and decree its allotted time to live. For the first time, living things know the fear of ending. And they will go to any lengths to escape this grim new spectre, death.
The Doctor is an old hand at cheating death. Now, at last, he can stop it at source. He is coming for the Kotturuh, ready to change everything so that Life wins from the start.
Not just the last of the Time Lords. The Time Lord Victorious.
I have been rereading this and I really enjoy it. I think it is a natural progression from “Waters on Mars” where the Doctor gets more and more confident as the story goes on. Even if he falls on the wrong side of what is right, I don’t think he ever loses his character. I think the Dark Times are explained well, and I feel like the story has just the perfect amount of bonkers. The cliffhanger at the end is also great, even if it is semi-spoiled by the order I have been choosing. What do you guys think? Should “What the TARDIS Thought” be moved until after the book? The books are really the heart of the event, and this is a great start to it!
This is easily one of the bettter parts of the event wiith interesting themes and strong characters, especially my beloved Brian the Ood.
The Knight, The Fool and the Dead is a strong opening to the Time Lord Victorious saga. Steve Cole delivers an imaginative Dark Times adventure packed with fascinating world-building, memorable new characters, clever interludes and a genuinely unsettling exploration of death. Most importantly, it convincingly charts the Tenth Doctor’s transformation into the increasingly dangerous Time Lord Victorious, setting the stage perfectly for the stories that follow.
I think the current order makes sense to keep it in chronological order for 10. It’d be hard to go into the event and have the ending of this book be a genuine surprise.
I really wasn’t expecting it to end the way it did. (Although I was suspicious when they kept saying “all flesh is grass” and I knew that was the title of the book that arrived yesterday )
I loved how we kept cutting back to previous doctors, with him often telling the same story about Grandfather Death: the first doctor in the cave of skulls, Rose in the TARDIS, (there were others, I’m sure, but it’s slipping my mind)
I never in a million years would’ve checked out this book has it not been for TLV club, so I’m super thankful to Tian for organising it!
(And if I did check it out, I would have been so annoyed that it ended on a cliffhanger. But knowing it’s part of a bigger arc, I’m hyped for it.)
Really excited to see how 8 starts working with the Daleks, and how he meets Brian!
I really enjoyed the two books! There is a lot happening. I enjoy that this is basically the start of Ten’s villain arc. A lot of this is him wallowing post Waters Of Mars which really works. I always feel that TLV is really just these two books with everything else building to or leading off them. They are really the only two essential pieces of the whole thing. Everything else is pretty much a bonus.
Edit: My answer to this got replaced by the quote. Oops! I am just glad that more people are discovering this event. I think that it is great but a little messy and hard to get into. I am glad that you are enjoying it.
Yeah, the books are definitely the only parts that you can’t skip if you want to do the event.
My comments are pretty along the same with the rest. I like how @Tian pointed out, the Doctor gets more confident as the story goes, getting more sure of what he wants to do as things happen, and the ending got me really excited for the next installment.
I thought this book was fine. Unfortunately I didn’t really care about the Lifeshroud portion of the story. It simply never interested me. But I do like the character journey the Doctor goes on in this to get where he is at the start to where he is by the end.
It’s also a shame this is the most we get of Kotturuh culture and so much of it is left a mystery since the Daleks completely usurp the story in the next book. Like I also didn’t care about the zombie like creatures either. Lol They seemed to sort of just exist because that portion of the story required some kind of antagonistic force.
I always love Brian though. Wonderful addition him.
Oh! If I remember correctly this book ends with the Eighth and Ninth Doctor’s showing up and even though I knew that was going to happen it was still really, really exciting. Those scenes with them up against Ten were great.
I’m only halfway through (I really need to stop reading just before bed when I inevitably fall asleep) but I’ve enjoyed it so far. I took a bit to get into the rhythm of the book because it jumps around quite a lot at the start and there’s quite a few characters to get a handle on. Also we’re in ‘really weird looking alien’ territory which occasionally stalls me as I try to visualise an armoured mantis or a many tentacled thing.
But after being pretty indifferent to the whole TLV event before now, I’m am actually getting into the whole concept of the Kotturuh and these Dark Times and I’m definitely interested on seeing how this plays out across the other novel, the comics and the audios. And I bet the T-Shirt is going to be banging!
Hopefully I’ll finish this in the next couple of days, sleepy head allowing so I’ll return with more thoughts but, yeah, I’m really glad we’re doing this club! So well done @Tian.
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from me 
