Cuddlesome

The short story Cuddlesome, barely qualifies as short, clocking in at an hour in length.  It was originally released as a free CD with Doctor Who Magazine, and subsequently made available as a free download and Subscriber Short Trip on the Big Finish website.

This is a story with the 5th Doctor, encountering an alien intelligence that has enabled the creation of a cuddly toy called Cuddlesome which an emotionally unstable man has engineered to wipe out people who lose their sense of child-likeness as adults.  In short, these Cuddlesomes will attack and infect (kill) anyone who abandons them for too long.  Unfortunately for this man, and fortunately for the three million people across the world who ended up buying one back in the 1980’s, he was imprisoned for tax fraud and put on a drug regime that inhibited his contact with the alien intelligence and thus put his entire plan on hold for decades.

In 2008 he is free, and the intelligence is now mostly free from its dependency upon him, and has launched a second generation of Cuddlesomes.  The Doctor arrives on this scene just in time to save one man from his Cuddlesome’s infection, though according to the news there are others dying from this mysterious illness.  H1N1 (the Bird Flu) is blamed… what a time to re-listen to this story, eh?

On the whole, as this partial plot recollection indicates, this is a story of comic relief.  It is intentionally kind of over the top, almost farcical at times, yet just serious enough about its science fiction elements to preserve that sense of classic Doctor Who in a modern setting.  And of course the issues of bullying, childhood attachments, and growing up, are serious enough issues to give due consideration in story form.

So while I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this story as one you should go out of your way to track down and listen to, I must say it is an enjoyable hour of entertainment if you do.