April Books 28) Short Trips [17]: The Centenarian, edited by Ian Farrington
I guess I've read half a dozen of Big Finish's Short Trips anthologies by now, and found them a bit of a mixed bag; sometimes a decent linking concept makes the whole better than the sum of its parts, sometimes one or two outstanding stories are all that can overcome the problems of a duff central idea. This is one of the better volumes I have read in the series. Edward Grainger, born in 1906, find himself bumping into the Doctor repeatedly over the following century. Poor chap, he often seems to be on the spot when alien invasion threatens Earth, but he is not the only character in the Whoniverse of whom this is true, and at least he spends part of his career as a spy so there is some excuse. The standount story for me was "The Church of Football", by Benjamin Adams, an account of the Fifth Doctor's visit to a Sheffield United v. Arsenal match in 1936 told in the first person by Peri Brown. I was a little disappointed that Grainger didn't pop up in the background of any of the Old Who stories with contemporary settings - the one reference to UNIT seemed anachronistic to me - but it's generally a good collection.
