Following on from The Feast of Steven, the Doctor, Steven, and new companion Sara Kingdom, still on the run from the Daleks, find themselves visiting Christmas after Christmas. And in each Christmas, years apart, is the same mysterious young boy. It turns he is a time machine, with a cloaked exterior based on the mental image of its pilot - Robert. A young boy who found the damaged machine at the bottom of his garden, after the worst months of his young life. When he entered and plugged his mind into ship's systems, it took him to where he most wanted to be - Christmas, the last time he was happy, before his family fell apart forever. However, the damage to the machine meant the boy couldn't leave. The ship couldn't override him herself, and they were stuck bouncing from Christmas to Christmas, forever. Thus they had sent out a distress call, picked up and followed by the TARDIS without the Doctor realising.
In the end, the Doctor sends the ship home, and Robert takes the place of his brother, never to tell. As for his dying brother, the Doctor is unable to save him, but he makes sure the last moments of the boy's life is something no-one on Earth has seen.
Originally released in the 2nd Short Trips prose anthology (Short Trips: Companions), it was recorded for audio, performed by Beth Chalmers, and released for subscribers with The Demons of Red Lodge. In 2016, it was released generally as part of the Short Trips Rarities range.
"The Little Drummer Boy" contains examples of:
- Children Are Innocent: Little Robert describes his brother's death as "Being taken away by Luke Emia".
- Driven to Suicide: Robert's mother, after her son dies and her husband leaves her.
- Fountain of Youth: The Taranium Core somehow de-ages the future Robert from 40 to 8. Presumably this has to do with spending the intervening 32 years hooked up to a Time Machine.
- Immediate Sequel: The beginning follows directly on from The Feast of Steven, Episode 7 of The Daleks' Masterplan, as the traveller's escape the film set in the TARDIS.
- Littlest Cancer Patient: Robert's brother Christopher has leukaemia, and since it's 1965, it doesn't end well for him.
- Tricked Out Time: The Doctor uses the TARDIS's Fast Return Switch to take the TARDIS back to Christmas, 1965, so that the future Robert can take his brother's place. Steven points out this causes a paradox, but the Doctor seems to take it in his stride, claiming time was already messed up from the other Time Machine in the first place.
- World War I: The TARDIS crew visits the Christmas Day Armistice. Steven even plays football.
- Younger Than They Look: Robert's mental age, and thus the age the time ship camouflages itself as, is about 8. His physical body is 40, give or take.
