The Blue Angel, by Paul Magrs and Jeremy Hoad

I have been dreading writing a review of this novel. It's a really sprawling mess of a book.

The Blue Angel gives us a number of sub-plots, without bringing them altogether in a way that actually makes sense. We get a starship crew that are essentially a Star Trek parody, a group of old ladies who get whisked away to another world and are attacked by giant owls and a complex space opera about the various races living in a pocket universe. We also get a strange, dream-like sub-plot about the Doctor living in a Georgina house with Fitz and Conpassion and going for tea with a friend called Sally. It's never explained how this subplot relates to the rest of the book. In the centre of it all, we get Paul Magrs best known creation, Iris Wildthyme. Furthermore, the novel has no resolution. At the book's climax, Iris whisks the Doctor away before he can bring the story to the sort of conclusion that we would expect in a Doctor Who novel. This is a really clever idea, but it does leave one feeling a bit unbsatisfied. However much we might admire literary experimentation, one does tend to like some kind of resolution at the end of a novel as a reward for reading, even if it is a Virgin novel ending, with nearly everybody dead and Ace and Bennie absolutely furious with the Doctor.

Magrs and Hoad decentralize the Doctor from the narrative. He runs around trying to solver every problem that arises, but ends up looking useless and incompetent. Phil Sandifer suggested a while ago that in this, Magrs and Hoad were reacting to the Virgin books and the 'Time's Champion' idea. However, the Virgin books occasionally pulled off this trick, with the Doctor's plans frequently falling apart. The Blue Angel is basically an Iris Wildthyme novel with the Doctor making an appearance. This incarnation of Iris, resembling Jane Fonda's Barbarella, is undoubtedly the strongest version of the character. This Iris is not a dithering old lady, but a powerful and dangerous figure.

The Blue Angel is of course the second appearance of Copassion, after her debut in Interference. I like Compassion, but I don't think Magrs and Hoad handle her all that well. She is harsh and cold, which sets her apart from other companions, but in this novel her coldness ends up coming across as annoying. Fans have often compared Compassion to Seven-of-Nine in Star Trek: Voyager, yet that program utilised the ex-Borg very well. For all Seven's coldness, the viewer was able to like her and warm to her. Magrs and Hoad do nothing to make us warm to Compassion and everything to make us resent her presence. That the novel fails to follow the lead of Voyager is ironic, given the Star Trek parody going on here.

There is plenty of humour here, but it is not the kind of laugh-out-loud humour that Magrs achieves in Mad Dogs and Englishmen. I didn't find the Star Trek parody all that funny; Bang-Bang-a-Boom does a better job of that. I did like the attept at world-building, with all the various distinctive alien races. It is just unforunate that with all the various sub-plots and ideas in this book, nothing really gets enough attention. I'm afraid to say that on the whole, I found this novel rather disappointing.

The Crooked World, by Steve Lyons (BBC novel)

How could you not want to read a book with such a remarkable cover?

In Crooked World, the 8th Doctor, Fitz and Anji arrive in a strange world with different physical laws. The inhabitants are indestructible, observe oddly repetitive illogical behaviour patterns and nobody has sex; babies are delivered by a stork. The inhabitants also resemble the characters of classic cartoon shows. We have stand-ins for Porky Pig, the gang from Scooby Doo, Penelope Pittstop and quite a few others.

On the surface, Crooked World appears quite similar to Steve Lyons New Adventure novel, Conundrum. In both stories, the TARDIS crew entered a world of fictional tropes. Yet Conundrum experimented with a very different style of narrative technique. Crooked World is very much a conventional Doctor Who story in its structure. The TARDIS crew arrive on a strange alien world, they get split up and have to learn the rules of how this world works. In exploring fictional tropes, Conundrum felt quite original back in the Nineties. This story feels a lot less groundbreaking. I can imagine a postmodern enthusiast like Phil Sandifer dismissing it, as he does Conundrum and its sequel, Head Games. However, like most of Steve Lyons' novels, it is very well written and very enjoyable.

While there is plenty of humour in this, Lyons makes it all remarkably straight, perhaps sensibly. The cartoon characters are all very serious and seem surprisingly angsty once they start reflecting on their trope-driven lives. The story leads into a big discussion of the topic of free-will. This does not get beyond a very shallow covering of the topic, but indirectly one can take from this the sense that in a world where it was impossible to harm others, there would be little room for moral growth. One could certainly develop that into a theodicy.

The Doctor is as enthusiastic as ever about this world. Fitz makes an ill-fated attempt to get Angel Falls (stand-in for Penelope Pittstop) into bed. Anji, cool and rational as she is, finds this surreal world utterly bewildering. The 8-Fitz-Anji teams was one of the strongest ever TARDIS teams, being so different from other companions and this is a story that suits them really well.

Thankfully we are spared an inane scientific explanation of the cartoon world. It is left quite mysterious. It is perhaps a little odd that the TARDIS crew don't comment on the similarity of the inhabitants to cartoon shows. Do those not exist in the Doctor Who universe (I've heard Anji had referred to Scooby Doo in a previous novel).

Like the best of the 8th Doctor novels, Crooked World tells an interesting and creative story.

The Night of the Doctor

I was in two minds about whether to review The Night of the Doctor. After all, at just over seven minutes, it is essentially an extended trailer for the anniversary special. It's rather hard to review something this short.

Visually, it has lots of special effects, indicating that the BBC is spending lots of money on the anniversary episode. It would be nice to hope that the same effort goes into the writing, but I very much doubt it given what we have seen in the last couple of years.

This mini-episode is clearly geared toward appealing to fans. Not only do we get the return of Paul McGann, but also the Sisterhood of Karn. Nevertheless, despite the fantastic visual affects, I' very disappointed by the dull costumes worn by the sisters, They have nothing on the exotic outfits they wore in The Brain of Morbius. What is the point of putting loads of effort into CGI when something basic like costumes ends up looking shoddy in comparison with a Seventies serial?

I'm not altogether happy with the decision to show the Time War. I think some things within Doctor Who are best left to the imagination. The Time War shown on television will just end up being a lot of spaceships and explosions, when it should be something much more complex and difficult to visualize. Remember that great line from The End of Time?

You weren't there. In the final days of the war. You never saw what was born. But if the time lock's broken then everything is coming through. Not just the Daleks, but the Star of Degradations. The Horde of Travesties. The Nightmare Child. The Could-Have-Been King with his army of Meanwhiles and Neverweres. The war turned into hell! And that's what you’ve opened. Right above the Earth. Hell is descending.

How do you portray something as surreal and intriguing as all that?

Trading Futures, by Lance Parkin

The Troughton serial Enemy of the World is set in the early years of the Twenty-first century and is possibly the Doctor Who story most heavily influenced by the James Bond movies. Lance Parkin's Trading Futures is also set in the early Twenty-first century, just years before Enemy of the World. Appropriately, Trading Futures is from cover to back a homage to James Bond in all its glory. This novel has some of the key ingredients of James Bond, non-stop action, multiple locations, a sexy female spy (with the amusing name Malady), a girl in a bikini (in this case Dr. Who's companion Anji Kapoor) and lots of devious scheming. There is also a British agent called Jonah Cosgrove, who is clearly intended as an elderly version of James Bond.

This story is very much focused on Anji. She takes on an almost Doctorish role, effortlessly gliding through the adventure, improvising at every problem. She seems completely at home and at ease in this environment; only decades away from her own time and guided by the assumptions of markets and capitalism. I love Anji. Being a Tory and a right-winger, I'm inevitably going to like a character who is a capitalist who supports the establishment. It's remarkable how much Anji stands out in Doctor Who because of her contrasting values. This is especially striking in this novel when she defends the arms trade. I can't imagine any other companion expressing such sentiments. Even if the Brigadier probably would agree with her, writers would never have a beloved character like him defending the arms industry. Anji offered a right-wing diversion in a franchise that was consciously left-leaning. Of course, it would be awful to have a character like Anji in Moffat-Who. Doctor Who has turned into a show that is essentially conservative due to the unreservedly middle-class nature of its characters and assumptions. It has nothing to offer in the way of challenging society. As much as I am a Conservative, I prefer Doctor Who being left-wing, rather than having absolutely nothing to say except middle-class sentiments.

Both the Doctor and Fitz take a back seat in this story. Despite his secondary role, the Doctor is portrayed here as an unstoppable, seemingly indestructible whirlwind of energy. Fitz gets a really memorable role in this novel when he is mistaken by aliens as the Doctor. He does an absolutely fantastic job of improvising as a Doctor-stand in, attempting to say Doctorish things. It is remarkable that no other companion (that I'm aware of) ever got to do this.

Lance Parkin had me in fits of laughter with this book's warlike alien race, the Onihr. The Rhinoceros-like Onihr are deliberately portrayed as a bogstandard naff Doctor Who alien species. In a really Monty Pythonesque scene, they torture Fitz with a rubbish torture device called a 'Pain Inducer.' They even change into scarlet cardinal-like robes before operating it.

Despite my enjoying Trading Futures immensely, I did feel it had two problems. The first was the excessive number of factions at work. I don't think the two minions of Sabbath contributed anything useful to the plot. They could easily have been dispensed with, but seemed to have been brought in to keep up with the story arc about the villainous Sabbath. Secondly, speaking of villains, I think a story that emulates James Bond needs a much stronger villain. Baskerville is not particularly memorable and never captures the glamour and style of a Bond villain.

Interference, by Lawrence Miles (BBC novel)

Do you remember the Nirvana song In Bloom? In that song, Kurt Cobain sneered at the listener who:

likes all our pretty songs
And he likes to sing along and he likes to shoot his gun
But he knows not what it means
Knows not what it means

I imagine I'm probably the equivalent reader of Lawrence Miles' books. I love Lawrence Miles books and count myself a fan, but I suspect I haven't really understood what they are about. I also suspect, in the unlikely instance of Lawrence Miles ever reading this blog, that he would hate the fact that a Tory like me, who stands for everything he is against, is a fan of his work. So I'm an odd fan for Lawrence Miles, and possibly not the best person qualified to review his work.


Interference is uniquely for a Doctor Who novel, published in two volumes, Shock Tactic and The Hour of the Geek. It seems very surprising that BBC books were willing to do this. This is certainly a novel written on a grand epic and cosmic scale, but it has to be said that it is overly long. The first volume is very slow moving, with the plot unfolding at a snail's pace. The Doctor in particular, spends a good deal of the first volume imprisoned in a jail cell, contributing little to events. The second volume is faster paced, but the whole novel is in much need of trimming down a bit.

While Interference is overly long and poorly paced, it is undeniably well written and of a much higher standard than a lot of Doctor Who novels. Miles switches between different genres; diary entries, movie scripts, television documentary dialogue as well as more standard novelistic prose. A couple of scenes are cleverly turned into film and television drama, with one character described as being played by Nicole Kidman and another by Wesley Snipes. In a particularly glorious chapter, the Dark Times of Gallifrey are retold as a BBC costume drama with Rassilon played by Brian Blessed!

Interference does all the things that I love about Lawrence Miles books. There is the cosmic sense of scale, the playful use of continuity and the grappling with big intellectual ideas. I think Miles does better with these things in his other novels, but I enjoyed them no less in this work.

Interference is very political. It deals with the issue of the arms trade and how British companies were selling electro-shock batons in the late nineties. While I am not against the arms trade in general (it does play a pretty big part in our economy and every country needs an air force), I think everyone ought to agree that this country should not be exporting torture equipment. Lawrence Miles deserves credit for spotlighting the issue.


The novel has generated a lot of controversy for the way it re-writes Doctor Who continuity. As a result of the intervention of Faction Paradox, the Third Doctor regenerates before his encounter with the Great One on Metebelis 3 and as a result of a gunshot wound. This is a really interesting trick, even if it falls foul of my own dislike of 'timey-wimey' (I hate that word) stuff. Whatever one's opinions of Miles subversive retcon, he does a beautiful job of portraying the Pertwee Doctor. His classic regeneration line, A tear, Sarah Jane? is made even more poignant when he follows it with This is wrong. In a typically postmodern touch, Miles has the Third Doctor observing that the story he is in does not feel like one of his typical adventures.

Miles' portrayal of the Eighth Doctor is a little more problematic. He does next to nothing in the story. He spends a major part of the first volume suffering brutal torture in a Saudi Arabian prison. I'm not quite convinced by the idea that the Doctor would be completely helpless in the situation in which he is placed. In all his adventures, has he never experienced the kind of random brutality that overwhelms him here? That sort of thing is pretty common on Earth, so I don't see why other worlds have not cottoned on to the idea of random brutality.

The Doctor's prison cell discussion is very interesting. He admits to his cellmate that he interferes on future colonies, but he never interferes on Earth without being able to give any rational reason why. I don't buy this. In my opinion, the reason the Doctor does not interfere on Earth is because he knows he can't change history, not one line. When the Doctor interferes in the future, he is not changing history, but participating in it. His knowledge of the future is not exhaustive, so he has no reason to worry about failure on his part. If he tried to overthrow Hitler in 1938, he would know his failure was inevitable. He has no idea of the fate of Terra Alpha, so he can try to overthrow Helen A without worrying about the consequences.

Sam is handled very well in this book. She is given real depth of personality. The only problem is that she ends up looking a bit stupid. Compassion suggests to Sam that if she is against electro-shock batons, she should also be against matchsticks, as they can also be used to torture people. I can't believe any intelligent person would be unable to see a logical flaw in this proposition. Strangely, Sam does a lot of running around in high heels for somebody who is not used to wearing them. I loved the use of the older Sarah Jane Smith in this story. She is given a personal life and an identity beyond her travels with the Doctor. She also interacts nicely with Sam. I am not a K9 fan, but he was great in this too.


Interference is an overly-ambitious work that has some problems, but I enjoyed it as much as any of Lawrence Miles' books. The cameo appearance of Iris Wildthyme is a nice treat too.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen, by Paul Magrs (BBC novel)

Mad Dogs and Englishmen is not just a funny novel, it is laugh-out loud funny. I don't think any Doctor Who novel has made me laugh as much as this one.

This novel is mostly about poking fun at popular science fiction and fantasy. There is a character who is clearly based on J.R. Tolkien, a humourless academic who has written a vast epic about elves and goblins. The central premise of the plot is that the timeline has been altered so that the epic is now about talking poodles (who are in fact real). We also get a good deal of Star Wars parody. There is an hilarious moment when the poodle princess sends a message proclaiming "you are my only hope." George Lucas also has his stand-in as a film director who loves playing with toys and who regards all the boys and girls who watch his films as his friends. He earns the enmity of a character who stands in for Ray Harryhausen by replacing the animatronic effects in his films with CGI. Yet we also have a character from the real world; Noel Coward, who has been obtained the power to travel in time with a pair of magic pinking shears.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen is wonderfully written; it so light and easy to read. The plot is remarkably complex and does not make a lot of sense, but I didn't find myself caring. This book is gloriously bonkers and revels in its own silliness.

We get a return appearance from Iris Wildthyme, who is never actually named. This time she is in an incarnation that is clearly modeled on Shirley Bassey. Perhaps her appearance in this story is a surprise given that the previous novel, Adventuress of Henrietta Street had featured the Master. At this point, the BBC novels were wanting to jettison existing continuity as a source of stories. There is a degree of inconsistency at work here, because the Doctor has no memory of Iris or other Time Lords, despite his previous encounter with the Master.

The regulars are done really well here. The Doctor comes across as knowing what is going on all the time, but keeping quiet just because he enjoys the fun of investigating. Anji is really smart, sassy and very likable here. Fitz seems determined to enjoy himself regardless of how bizarre the adventure turns out to be. There is a wonderfully insane moment when the talking poodles force the Doctor, Anji and Fitz to strip naked, wear collars and walk on all fours. When they protest they are told "Bad people!" It's a delightfully camp scene.

As with other BBC novels set after Ancestor Cell, the presence of magic is very pronounced. There is no explanation for how Noel Coward's magic pinking shears work or how the animatronic monsters are able to come to life. These things are written so well that you don't really stop to think about them or question them.

There is a little bit of excessive violence towards the end and a surprising reference to bestiality, but none of this detracts from the light-hearted tone. This is a novel that I enjoyed immensely.

Vanishing Point, by Stephen Cole (BBC novel)

Did Stephen Cole really co-write the underwhelming Ancestor Cell? This book is so much better!

This is not a light-hearted book. It deals with serious themes, most notably that of religious belief. It is also very violent (though some of the Virgin NAs are more graphic). All of the characters are continuously put in physical danger and they have to be ruthless and violent just to survive. This actually led me to feel really involved in the book, reading each page with worry about how the characters were going to get through. I seldom find Doctor Who novels as engaging as this.

The society depicted in Vanishing Point feels so much more real than societies in other Doctor Who stories. This is a world in which there are hospitals and police, where people get into trouble for being late for work, where low-paid women have to prostitute themselves to pay the bills, where people have affairs and where there are mentally and physically disabled people. The last point being of particular significance. We have an whole group of people with learning disabilities in this story. How often do we find disabled people in Doctor Who other than a crippled or deformed villain? The writer even departs from convention and has Fitz having sex with one of the disabled girls.

Not only does the planet in Vanishing Point feel like a real place, but the characters feel so convincing and believable. You really feel for Etty with her tragic background and fearfulness, for Nathaniel with his doubts and confusion and for Vettul with her loneliness and frustration. These are characters the reader can understand and identify with. The two companions also come across very well; with Anji contemplating belief in God and Fitz getting involved with Vettul. Whatever one thinks of his going to bed with Vettul, it is done believably.

We see the 8th Doctor in this story as we have never seen him before. Right at the start of the book, he jumps right into the action. He is hardly ever portrayed as so decisive, determined and strong. He is a Doctor who protects the vulnerable and stands for justice. He is also prepared to use violence when he has to. This is a Doctor that evildoers really would fear. One thing that is interesting is that in this novel the Doctor defends the status quo and works with the authorities, even though they are clearly quite flawed. While in stories like Happiness Patrol and The Sunmakers, the Doctor overthrows the Powers-that-be, here he attempts to uphold society.

Where the book does not do so well is in its handling of the big themes. While the discussion about faith in God is interesting, it makes the common error of thinking that faith is incompatible with proof or certainty. The Greek word for faith (pistis) means the same thing as belief. All of us believe lots of things that can be proved and which we are certain about. The New Testament would use the same word faith to refer to those beliefs. The hard science stuff about genetics comes across as rather incomprehensible. I understand the concept of 'junk DNA' is actually quite inaccurate.

Placebo Effect, by Gary Russell (BBC novel)

Placebo Effect has Kleptons in it. Those aliens from the first ever Doctor Who comic strip; the ones that look like Greedo the Rodian. You know what that means? If Placebo Effect is canon, then so are the TV Comic strips. The Doctor really did have two grandchildren called John and Gillian, really did meet Santa Claus and really did call himself Dr. Who. That Gary Russell references the TV Comic without trying to exclude it from the canon (as Steve Lyons did in Conundrum and Head Games) makes me quite favourably disposed towards this novel.

Although this novel is not highly regarded among fans, I mostly enjoyed it. It's very light-hearted and packed with continuity references. Russell brings back Stacy and Ssard, who appeared in an 8th Doctor comic strip in the Radio Times not that long after the TV Movie. This novel offers some explanation as to how that strip fits into continuity.

Russell claims he originally proposed to write a novel about Nimons vs Macra, but what he gives us here is a novel about Foamasi and Wirrn. Russell does rather a better job with the Foamasi than he does with the Wirrn. His Wirrn lack sufficient body horror to be really disturbing. He does make his Fomasi quite interesting, however. He gives them plenty of character and explains how their disguises work. In a quite disturbing moment, a human realises that the woman he has been sleeping with was really a Foamasi in disguise.

The Doctor is very well characterised. He is dreadfully nice; always remembering the needs of his companions and doing his utmost to look after them. This is perhaps a little strange given that this is the same person who never went back for Sarah and seemed to forget about his own granddaughter. I suppose he has matured, but it makes it even stranger that he has still refrained from paying Sarah a visit. Russell is perhaps a little less successful with Sam, but then it is difficult to avoid having a teenage character coming off as anything other than mouthy and irritating.

Sam gets involved in an interesting debate between creation and evolution. This is not resolved, which makes a nice contrast with the materialistic tendency of the show. I am no longer a Six-Day Creationist, but I am not completely convinced by the theory of evolution. The actual arguments used against evolution are not all that impressive, but at least there is some acknowledgment that the not everybody is convinced by Darwin.

I really liked the Duchess of Auckland. She was a really fun character, even if a parody of the royal family. I thought it was a bit of a shame that Russell killed her off. Why do writers have to kill characters so easily?

Despite its reputation, Placebo Effect is a reasonably decent novel. The cover is good too; especially with its subtle reference to the V series.

The Gallifrey Chronicles, by Lance Parkin (BBC novel)

"My dear, one of the things you'll learn is that it's all real. Every word of every novel is real, every frame of every movie, every panel of every comic strip."

This novel was the last in the series of BBC Eighth Doctor novels. Lance Parkin was given the Herculean task of providing a conclusion to the various mind-boggling story arcs of this series. How Parkin did this is quite surprising. Rather than giving us a big epic event novel as one might have expected, he wrote a light and slightly fluffy novel with a very easy-going plot.

The result of the lighter tone means that the BBC novel series is able to end on an upbeat celebratory note. In every way, The Gallifrey Chronicles celebrates Doctor Who. There is a real sense of magic in the way that the Doctor appears to bring the dead back to life and reunite families with their apparently deceased loved ones. Likewise, the cliffhangar ending, with the Doctor leaping into action to deal with the monsters, for all its uncertainty is a celebration of just what the show is about.

There is a good deal of meta-textuality going on in this story, with the reference to John Peel's goof about Ace being in Paradise Towers, the Doctor being sent to sleep by reading about Gallifrey and the glorious line about every spin-off being true. This very much fits with the agenda of the book being about celebrating Doctor Who. There are also hints in the book of Parkin's frustration at the complexities and problems of continuity. If he it is true that 'every panel in every comic strip' is real, it would have been nice of Parkin to include the TV Comic stories in his majestic AHistory. It seemed a bit mean to me to include the DWM comics but leave out all those wonderful Sixties adventures with John and Gillian.

In Marnal, Parkin offers a really interesting character. Like the Doctor, he has been exiled to earth. Yet unlike the Doctor he feels only contempt for humanity and is obsessed with returning to Gallifrey. There is a strong touch of William Hartnell's Doctor about him and in his attitude and methods he does resemble the Doctor in An Unearthly Child. Marnal is the Doctor as he could have been. He ends up being paired with an human companion, his nurse Rachel. Rachel is well characterised and it was surprising that she did not become a new companion at the end.

The BBC range had already given us the disastrous Ancestor Cell and Parkin had to tie up the loose ends created by that book. The Gallifrey Chronicles provides a flashback to the Doctor destroying Gallifrey. This flashback is a much stronger scene than anything that occurred in The Ancestor Cell. The Gallifrey Chronicles offers the possibility of Gallifrey and its inhabitants being restored (only to be destroyed in the Time War, if you believe the BBC Wales series).

The alien menace, the Vore are oddly incidental to the plot, despite appearing to wipe out much of the Earth's population. They are rather scary and what they do is quite disturbing, but their main role is simply to show the Doctor shine at what he does best. As I said above, the way the Doctor appears to bring back the dead is just magical.

We are also treated to a scene on Gallifrey which features the Doctor's parents. Yes, the Doctor's parents. Those who had read The Infinity Doctors will be already aware of Ulysses and Penelope, the Doctor's mother and father. I'm not at all happy with the idea of the Doctor having a human mother, but as the idea has been done, I feel I might as well accept this admittedly rather intriguing couple as the Doctor's parents.

The Doctor's companions Fitz and Trix form a relationship in this story. This is quite believably done, if a little sudden. There is, however, a note of sadness to this as revealed by Fitz's song 'Contains Spoilers.' The Gallifrey Chronicles does not give any answers to Trix's past. We know she is wanted for murder, but did she do it? This is just a small fault I have with the novel.

The Gallifrey Chronicles is a lovely upbeat conclusion to the 8th Doctor novels.

The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, by Lawrence Miles (BBC novel)

The book in which the Doctor gets married, but not to River Song or the TARDIS!

The same day I began reading The Adventuress of Henrietta Street I re-watched Spearhead from Space, a story I first saw when I was eleven. It's strange to think that 19 years after that innocent Doctor Who experience I would be reading a Doctor Who novel partially set in a brothel which makes Tantric Sex a major theme.

Miles departs from all convention by writing this novel as a biographical account. All of the speech is reported, leaving very little dialogue. The identity of the narrator and biographer is never given and as with Dead Romance, there is the suggestion that he is not altogether reliable. This peculiar choice of style makes for a very distinctive experience of reading a Doctor Who novel, but it does make the whole story a lot more difficult. The reader has to work a lot harder to understand what is going on.

As surprising as it might seem, we see hints of the Moffat era in The Adventuress of Henrietta Street. In The Wedding of River Song, we had the Doctor getting married, a marriage that had cosmic significance in that it repaired a breach in space and time. In The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, we have the Doctor getting married in order to establish a cosmic connection with Earth and it's fate. Scarlette, the woman that the Doctor marries has been compared to Iris Wildthyme, but she actually reminds me of River Song much more. Sadly, her character fails in exactly the same way that River Song fails. Both characters are portrayed as strong and intelligent, with a very blazen sexuality. Both characters seem to be created to appear an equal match for the Doctor. Yet in the end neither character quite lives up to the promise. We expect them to be amazing, but they end up just joining a list of strong, intelligent female characters. In fairness to Lawrence Miles, Scarlette does not fail nearly as badly as River Song because she is just a one-off character in a novel. Moffat made disaster inevitable by deciding to centre the last season around the character of River Song. Miles also wisely keeps Scarlette fairly mysterious. Moffat on the other hand, kept dangling hints about the identity of River and then deliver a big revelation that most of the viewers had already guessed. If you want to find out where Moffat got his ideas, you really need to read this book, along with Alien Bodies. Then you will see just what a mess he made of his influences.

The other main character introduced in the novel, Sabbath also has a similar problem to Scarlette. Miles seems to want to present him as this really amazing interesting character, but with the limitations of the biographical narrative, he never quite succeeds in showing this.I can't help thinking that making Sabbath so much like a James Bond villain renders him a little silly. His only outstanding moment is when he steals the Doctor's second heart, something no villain has ever done before. This development bothered a lot of fans, as it renders the Doctor a good deal more human.

The Adventuress of Henrietta Street is set after the destruction of Gallifrey in The Ancestor Cell. Miles presents the notion that the Time Lords have not simply been destroyed, but removed from history altogether, a notion that seems rather problematic to me. Despite their loss, a good deal of the book is spent presenting Miles' brilliant conception of the Time Lords as cosmic forces or elemental beings. The Doctor and his two companions are continually described by the other characters as 'elementals.' It's a quite fascinating idea and you do see hints of this in the new series. As with other Lawrence Miles books the removal of the Time Lords to an higher plane of existence and their remoteness from the action makes them a far more impressive force, as they had been in The War Games. The Doctor provides a wonderful description of the Time Lords as being like a steady rock in the middle of a river, around which the rest of the universe flows; the consequence of the removal of this 'rock' being complete chaos.

This novel takes Doctor Who about as far away from science fiction as it can go. Like Survival, it is all about the mysticism of female sexuality and menstrual cycles, hence the suggestion that the Doctor's success in 'summoning' his companions resulted from the fact that the prostitutes in the brothel were in their period. The Doctor had initially planned to marry a teenager called Juliette as there was power tied up in her virginity. His plans of course changed and he eventually marries Scarlette. It seems to be the case that the loss of the Time Lords has resulted in the universe becoming more chaotic, allowing magical and irrational forces to take root. In this world, the Doctor is a force of good and order, yet at the same time a sort of god and his companions spiritual beings themselves. Miles does an absolutely fantastic job of portraying the Doctor in this way. In this story he must turn his back on the old order of Time Lord dominance and unite his elemental power with humanity through marriage to a human woman.

The magical arrival of Fitz and Anji is the most enjoyable moment of the book. They just appear out of nowhere and are at once taken by the inhabitants of the brothel to be elemental spirits. Like the Terminator, they arrive stark naked which adds to the amusement of this scene. Despite their glorious arrival, Fitz and Anji get almost nothing to do in the book. Fitz offers some welcome comic relief and Anji gets to do some sulking and complaining. Miles is on record for his dislike of the character of Anji, but he does alright writing for her in this book.

The monstrous apes are really disturbing. They are summoned through Tantric rituals, which seems to connect them to the sensual side of human nature. The way they appear everywhere is very similar to the Sphinxes in Dead Romance. The Kingdom of the Beasts to which they belong is a really creepy place. There is a very Lovecraftian feel to this side of the book.

The Master appears in this book, in the form of the Man with the Rosette. He makes a very clever comment about how the universe has changed so that his struggle to the death against the Doctor is no longer significant at all. On the subject of rosettes, one minor quibble I have is with the politics of the period. The Whigs are identified in this book as defenders of democracy. While the Whigs were closer to this than the Tories, I don't think they would have seen their ideology in exactly those terms. They would probably have seen themselves as the defenders of Parliament and Protestantism, but not democracy as such.

This is a novel that does some really radical things. As with other Lawrence Miles books, it is not so much interesting for the story itself as it is for the way it presents and develops the Doctor Who cosmos. Like every other book by this author (except perhaps This Town Will Never Let Us Go) it is about grand cosmic themes. It's not his best written or most enjoyable novel, but it is one the most daring.

The Space Age, by Steve Lyons (BBC novel)

This is the city: a technological paradise built by an advanced race. Its glittering towers reach proudly for the stars, and its spires are looped by elevated roadways.

The people that lived here were enlightened and contented. They travelled in bubble-topped saucer cars, along moving pavements or in anti-gravity tubes. Obedient robots tended to their every whim. Disease, war, famine and pollution had been eradicated. Food machines synthesised all essential nutrients into pill form, and personal rocket ships brought the solar system within reach. The people of the city befriended Venusians and Martians alike.

The city is self-cleansing. Its systems harness solar power and static electricity. Its buildings are constructed from a metal that will never rust or tarnish. It will stand forever as a monument to the achievements of the human race.

This is Earth. The year is 2000 AD. This is your future.

Welcome to the Space Age.

That was the cover blurb on the back of The Space Age. I think it is safe to say that this is the most amazing and mind-blowing cover blurb in the history of Doctor Who books. The big problem is that no novel could possibly live up to the expectations generated by such an amazing summary. One ends up feeling rather cheated by it.

Steve Lyons is in my opinion, one of the best Doctor Who novelists ever. I can't imagine him writing a bad novel, but this one certainly does not quite live up to what I had hoped of it. The Space Age is not as bad as some readers claim. It is a fairly interesting and very readable novel.

While the cover blurb would lead us to expect a story about alternate timelines or parallel realities, what we get is a sort of sci-fi version of Lord of the Flies. A group of teenage Mods and Rockers from the Sixties were transported to an alien world and have been fighting their old battles (interlaced with family feuds) for decades. We don't get much explanation of exactly how this rather select group of people ended up stranded in this alien environment, other than the three main characters. The characters in The Space Age are not terribly likable. I imagine if you have been stranded in a strange place most of your life, you might feel a bit grim, but its hard to identify with them, especially the way they have continued their pointless battles. It seemed odd that there was absolutely no mention of sex. One might imagine that sexual politics amongst this group might be rather important, especially given the significance of a wedding in the background of the characters. I thought the Doctor Who novels were adult territory where sex was allowed to be mentioned. The setting in the futuristic city is very while described and portrayed at least.

Fitz was pretty good in this story, with his tall tales. I think more could have been made of his background as somebody from the Sixties himself. Here he is with a group of people from his own time; we might expect him to have more affinity with them than some of the other people he has met in other books. Compassion is unfortunately written out of most of the novel. She is used well, but it is annoying to see Lyons having the same problem with Compassion as other novelists. The Doctor is okay.

There is a distinct lack of humour in this book. In places, it has a slightly preachy tone. The theme of the futility of conflict does feel just a little bit old.

The Space Age is alright in my judgement, but disappointing and nowhere nearly as good as some of Lyons' other books.

The Ancestor Cell, by Stephen Cole and Peter Anghelides (BBC Novel)

"Romana gave an apologetic little cough, and dangled her shoes on the tips of her outstretched toes. She was studying the tattoo on her bare ankle as though it were the most fascinating thing in the whole room."

As this book concludes a story arc begun by Lawrence Miles, I recommend reading his review of this novel before reading mine. Be warned, he does use some strong language.

As an individual novel, I have read many that are much poorer in style and which are much less interesting to read. Nevertheless, The Ancestor Cell cannot simply be treated as an individual novel. Not only does it conclude a story arc, but it introduces a massive change to the Doctor Who universe within the BBC novel line, namely the apparent destruction of Gallifrey.

It has been suggested by some fans that the War in Heaven was such a big whopping story arc that any resolution to it would have been disappointing. My question to those fans would be whether the War arc really needed resolving at all. Obviously, the character arc of Compassion needed to be resolved, but ironically, The Ancestor Cell actually fails to do that. Given that the war between the Time Lords and the unknown Enemy takes place in the Doctor's future, why not just leave the whole thing hanging in the air? If we go back to the Seventh Doctor era, one of the great things about the "Cartmel Masterplan" was that it was not actually a masterplan at all, but just a lot of hints and ideas that were never developed fully enough to cause any massive continuity problems. That all changed when Virgin allowed Marc Platt to turn the "Masterplan" into a real live story arc in Lungbarrow and come up with a disappointing and uninteresting backstory for the Doctor. To my mind, the real mistake of BBC editors was to take the delightfully imaginative elements in Alien Bodies and turn them into a big narrative arc. What would have worked far better would have been to follow the lead of Cartmel and occasionally drop in some hints about what was going to happen in the future war of the Time Lords.

The clumsy solution to the whole War arc is simple. The Doctor pulls a lever and blows up Gallifrey. No Gallifrey, no future war. It seems hard to imagine the Doctor actually doing this, however troubled he may be about the war. Of course, by altering future history this way, he is in fact creating a temporal paradox. Given all the trouble he has had with Faction Paradox re-writing his past, it seems bonkers that he would do this.

Faction Paradox are murdered by this story. In Alien Bodies, they were a seductive cult with a real sense of fun. In Ancestor Cell, they are turned into a bunch of shambling grotesques who nobody would dream of joining. Moving away from cultish or criminal activities, they become a standard set of Doctor Who bad guys and carry out a military invasion of Gallifrey.

The book offers us a half-hearted attempt to reveal the identity of the Enemy. It is suggested in a massive info-dump, that the Enemy are some of weird life form that would have come to dominate the universe had it not been for the Time Lords. This is a massively disappointing idea. Of course, this is not necessarily gospel, as it is a bad guy who claims all this and he could just be wrong. Lawrence Miles tells us this is definitely not his idea of who they are.

The Ancestor Cell gives us a glimpse of a Time Lord society that is utterly corrupt and devious. We already knew the Time Lords were like that. Lawrence Miles moved us on from that idea by combining the Holmsian model of the Time Lords as Machiavellian schemers with the original idea of the Time Lords as gods or elemental forces. The Ancestor Cell ends up making the Time Lords mundane again by populating Gallifrey with bored rich kids and starving homeless people. One thing that really damages the believability of this book is the idea that Castellan Vorzati would suffer prejudice because of a youthful looking regeneration. The Time Lords must have seen countless examples of regeneration to a more youthful body. It is absurd that they should so take appearances into account.

As I said, the one part of the arc that needed resolution was Compassion. At the end of this novel, she makes her escape, taking a Gallifreyan technician as captive. For most of the book, however, she is written out of the action. This is one of the most disappointing things in the BBC books. They gave us a really interesting character and then allowed lame, unimaginative writers to just ignore her.

Romana III, introduced in Shadows of Avalon, is one of the few entertaining elements in this story. She is the campest and bitchiest of camp bitchy characters. Her approach to carpet care is odd though. She complains about characters shuffling about on her carpet, but she walks about on it with high heels. If she really wanted to look after her carpet, she would take off the stiletto heels and ask everybody to remove their shoes. But then science fiction writers never think about that sort of thing.

The Banquo Legacy, by Andy Lane and Justin Richards (BBC Novel)

Fleeing the Time Lords on board Compassion, the human TARDIS, the Doctor and Fitz come to a Victorian house in which a number of grisly events occur.

The influence of Wilkie Collins 'Woman in White' is very pronounced in this novel, though the horror element takes that influence in rather a different direction. The style of narration has an experimental feel, with different characters narrating slightly out of sequence. These narrators are quite well characterised which aids the impact of the novel. The Banquo Legacy generally makes for an exciting read.

The elements of the story that relate to the War of Heaven story arc are very much sidelined, though the Time Lord agent is well portrayed. Compassion's interfacing with Susan is an interesting idea, but it does leave Compassion being written out of the action, as she was in too many novels. Fitz is pretty amusing in this story and the Doctor comes across as very Doctorish.

All praises aside, there is something of a lack of interesting ideas in this novel. With some of the massive developments seen since in the BBC range since Lawrence Miles penned Alien Bodies, The Banquo Legacy does come across as just a plain old horror story, as well written as it is. I also feel that we have perhaps seen a few too many Victorian era stories in Doctor Who. This novel does seem to want to flirt with the Steampunk genre, that I rather detest for its self-conscious coolness.

The Shadows of Avalon, by Paul Cornell (BBC novel)

"Behind them came the Lady President, the War Queen, Mistress of the Nine Gallifreys. She was dressed, utterly typically, in scarlet chinoise pyjamas with a high square collar. The usual lengths of pearls were the only accessory, save for the bangles at her left wrist. She wore, Cavis noted, oriental clogs, and her toenails were painted in the swirling colours of the vortex. She'd had a tiny Prydonian Seal tattoed on her left ankle, or perhaps it had appeared there when she'd regenerated."

Don't you just love Romana's varied outfits?


Paul Cornell received almost universal praise for his first two NA novels, Timewyrm: Revelation and Love and War. Opinions were a bit more divided by No Future, which was very much the climax of the controversial character arc with Ace. Cornell continued to receive praise for Human Nature, both as a novel and for its adaptation as a Tenth Doctor television story. The Shadows of Avalon, in the BBC range of novels follows No Future, not only in dividing fan opinion, but in its bleak and gritty portrayal of a well-loved character. Personally, I loved this novel. I adore Cornell's writing and I admire his contribution to the radical Virgin New Adventure novels. The Shadows of Avalon very much had the feel of a New Adventure, rather than a BBC book.

The bulk of this book is set in a magical otherworld in which there are dragons and 'fairies.' This world is very vividly portrayed. It turns out that this is not the world of Morgaine; apparently there are many worlds that resemble Celtic mythology. Although Battlefield is referred to (thankfully no reference to Morgaine's fate is made, thus protecting the continuity of my post-Battlefield fanfic), it does seem as though Cornell is trying to write a better version of Battlefield. The Shadows of Avalon has the Brigadier, Celts, an alternate universe and nuclear missiles.

Although this novel occupies a pivotal role in the War in Heaven story arc, it is all about the Brigadier. The Brigadier is a relatively young man again, due to the events of Happy Endings (Cornell does not give a stuff about Lawrence Miles' hints that the NAs take place in a different universe). He is consumed by grief over the death of Doris. He is remarkably similar to the embittered, brutal and bullying Brigadier that we see in Jim Morimore's Blood Heat. This angsty portrayal is the kind of thing that turns off fans who don't like the New Adventures. Despite all the angst, it is clear that he still has a deeply warm friendship with the Doctor. Through much of the novel, the Brigadier plays a very Star Trek game of "Kiss me, stupid!" with the Celtic warrior queen, Mab. Mab interestingly identifies his title with the goddess Brigida and sees her attributes in him.

The Shadows of Avalon features the destruction of the TARDIS. Unfortunately, we have all seen Frontios, so we can't quite believe it has really been destroyed. This means that although the regulars don't leave in THE TARDIS at the end, throughout the novel we are expecting the TARDIS too turn up again undamaged. I suppose the destruction of the TARDIS is such a mythos-shaking event that it is impossible to get right.

Although The Shadows of Avalon is a strong enough novel in itself, it also plays a pivotal role in the War of Heaven arc. The War elements introduced by Lawrence Miles take place in the background, unlike The Taking of Planet 5. We discover here that Compassion is in fact a TARDIS! The newly regenerated Lady President Romana has sent her two agents to capture the first sentient TARDIS to mate her with other TARDISEs produce the new breed of War TARDISes. Nevertheless, the Doctor and Fritz escape on board Compassion and spend the next few stories on the run. The transformation of Compassion is well handled by Cornell and the description of her interior is well described.

I love the new Romana! There are few things I love more than camp, super-bitch villainesses. I found myself imagining her looking like Vivien Fay in The Stones of Blood (as I said, I love my camp villainesses). Unfortunately, we only get Romana III at the beginning and the end, but thankfully she is back in The Ancestor Cell (the only enjoyable feature of that novel).

A lot of fans hated the two Celestial Intervention Agents, Cavis and Gandar. I found them hilarious! They are badass, Blaxploitation Time Lords, who hero worship the Doctor and the Master. That is the great thing about Time Lords; you can do almost anything with them. You can turn Romana from a female Doctor to a bitchy, glamourpuss ice queen and you can create CIA agents who belong in a Quentin Tarantino movie. I suppose many fans found them just too pantomime. I actually quite like silly pantomime villains, provided that they really are evil and the story is serious enough. As I said with regards to Invaders from Mars, putting comical villains in a light-hearted story is a bad idea; you need a serious villain to present some menace. On the other hand, in a more serious story, having comical villains can work quite well. Paul Cornell evidently takes the view that Time Lords only get a second heart after regeneration, as he describes the never regenerated Cavis as 'Cavis the One-hearted.' I see a bit of a problem here in that we are told that the Doctor knew Cavis when he was still on Gallifrey. This means that she is older than the First Doctor, while appearing young. Why has she not aged as the First Doctor did?

The Doctor is extremely well portrayed. He comes across as having real depth. Cornell makes the 8th Doctor such a charming character. Fitz, that other likable character of the BBC range is also handled well. Cornell has such a genius for bringing characters to life and taking them through situations that shake them to the core.

The fairies in the book turn out to be Eocenes, as seen in Dr. Who and the Silurians. This is an idea that certainly feels right. The problem is that so little attention is given to it. One might imagine that with all the Brigadier and the Doctor's shared history with the Eocenes, the fact might be worthy of a bit more comment.

For a Cornell novel, there are surprisingly few references to rock music or popular culture. I suppose there is less room for them in a novel about a pre-modern culture in an alternate world.

The Shadows of Avalon is remarkably different from the previous books in the War in Heaven arc, nevertheless it is a really solid contribution to one of the most exciting developments ever seen in Doctor Who (a development which was sadly all retro-erased by unimaginative BBC editors).

Invaders from Mars, by Mark Gatiss (Big Finish Audio)

Having heard some good reports about this audio drama, I did wonder if it would change my opinion of Mark Gatiss. It did not. I still consider Mark Gatiss to be one of the worst Doctor Who writers out there.

The premise of a story set around the broadcast of Orson Welles' War of the Worlds radio adaptation is a good idea. The idea was not used terribly well. Orson Welles himself plays little role in his plot and the real alien invaders who turn up never actually hear the real broadcast of War of the Worlds, instead they get the Doctor's version. Invaders from Mars is not a terribly imaginative or original story; it has an alien invasion, plus different factions trying to get their hands on alien technology.

Mark Gatiss made the same mistake in Invaders from Mars that he made in Victory of the Daleks; that of throwing in everything except the bathroom sink. Gatiss has thrown in far too many characters and subplots. The Soviet spy was completely unnecessary to the development of the plot.

Invaders from Mars is very much a comedy story. Comedy in Doctor Who can have mixed results. Sometimes it works, as it does in Delta and the Bannermen, sometimes it falls flat, as with The Creature from the Pit. The comedy in Invaders from Mars left me rather cold. American mobsters are too much of an excuse for dull cliches. Invaders from Mars would have worked better had Gatiss made the aliens a little less silly. You can have laughs in Doctor Who, but the nature of the program is such that you have to have a real threat. Delta and the Bannermen worked incredibly well because it had Gavrok, an humourless black-clad villain played without any irony or parody. The silly aliens of Invaders from Mars fail to generate that kind of menace.

There are plenty of fans who will offer a contrary opinion, but in my judgment, Invaders from Mars is one of the poorer Big Finish audios. So far I have yet to encounter anything of real quality from Mark Gatiss.

The Taking of Planet 5, by Simon Bucher-Jones and Mark Clapham (BBC Novel)

The creature was unlike everything. It required an effort of will to even look at it. It was a void, a chasm, an absence made visible, it was everything made nothing. Faced with it, the brain rushed to fill it with detail, any detail, a black world-devouring octopus, a spider with eyes the size of Mars, a crooked cube unfolding, a ruined city cluttered with insane memorabilia, a cartoon character with eye sockets crammed with worms. Phantom images projected by the tottering brain into the yawning absence of the creature.

To say that The Taking of Planet 5 looks to Lawrence Miles' Alien Bodies for inspiration is a serious understatement. Not only does it use the concepts introduced in Alien Bodies, but it also has such a similar style that it might almost have been written by the same author. Of course, Simon Bucher-Jones and Mark Clapham have not outdone the master of cosmic madness. The Taking of Planet 5 is not such a good novel as Alien Bodies, but it is still a worthy successor to it.

Like Lawrence Miles, the authors of this book place world-building before the story. While the novel is an important landmark in the development of the story arcs relating to the regular characters, the novel is less interesting for the story itself and more for the glimpse it offers into the depth and scope of the Doctor Who macrocosmos. As with Alien Bodies, there is an unsettling sense that weird and unexpected things are being done with the Doctor Who mythos.

This novel is remarkably similar to the much more traditionalist Quantum Archangel, by Craig Hinton. Both books are sequels to Seventies stories, but they also share the common interest of grounding their vast cosmologies in hard science. Simon Bucher-Jones and Mark Clapham take their science seriously (just like Lawrence Miles takes his British Cultural Studies seriously). The novel even has an appendix explaining its cosmology in scientific terms with references to real sources (as an Evangelical Christian I was pleased to spot a book by William Lane Craig among them).

The Taking of Planet 5 continues the War in Heaven story arc first introduced in Alien Bodies. This time we get to see a little more of it and a glimpse of just how much the future society of Gallifrey has been changed by the War. We also get the fascinating revelation that the Time Lords have perfected regeneration to such a level that they can take a non-hominid form; in this case Lovecraft's Elder Things, as described in At the Mountains of Madness. Faction Paradox only get a mention this time. The Celestis and their hellish realm o Mictalan apparently meet their end here. It is cool, but it is perhaps a sign that the BBC editors were wanting to eliminate the various concepts introduced by Miles. It is great to see the Time Lord, Homunculette again (why couldn't he make some more appearances?), though it would have been nice to see more of his Companion/ TARDIS Marie.

When I first read about the plot of this story, I was a bit disappointed. Having read the references to the various Great Old Ones in the New Adventures, I had hoped that nearly all the Lovecraft stuff could be true within the Doctor Who mythos. Here we find out that the Doctor is a personal friend of H.P. Lovecraft, both men sharing a mutual love of ice cream, and he knows full well that At the Mountains of Madness and its primordial entities are fictional. Nevertheless, the Doctor discovers that somehow they have become real. The Taking of Planet 5 is something of a tribute to Lovecraft. Like any Lovecraft story, there is a strong sense of lingering atmosphere and cosmic unease. I will confess I punched the air when Compassion came under the psychic influence of the fictional reality and spontaneously quoted Lovecraft:

"They were the mankind of their epoch. Scientists to the last. Radiates, vegetables, monstrosities, star-spawn- whatever they had been, they were men!"

The connection drawn between the Elder Things enslaving the Shoggoths and the Time Lords enslaving the TARDISes is an extremely clever and thoughtful use of the source material.

Appropriately, given the Lovecraftian theme, The Taking of Planet 5 is a sort of sequel to Image of the Fendahl. This is rather obvious from the cover picture. The Fendahl creature does not actually appear in the story. Instead, we get the Fendahl Predator, an even more horrifying eldritch entity. I can't help wondering if there is a slight pastiche intended in the idea of a being that feeds on a being that feeds on all life. The Fendahl Predator is a Memovore, a being from outside the universe that eats concepts. Simon Bucher-Jones contributed to Lawrence Miles' The Book of the War, in which Memovores were also featured. The Book of the War seemed to take a very Platonic metaphysic, with concepts having a very actual existence.

In my judgment, this is one of the best portrayals of the Eighth Doctor. Fitz is a simply glorious character; he is so down to earth. In The Taking of Planet 5, we also get a rare glimpse of Compassion's personality. Most of the BBC writers had no idea how to write Compassion, so they got into the bad habit of writing her out. Like Seven-Of-9 in Star Trek Voyager, it is her coldness and matter of factness that is so appealing. In this story we get some major clues about her identity. The scene where the three regulars discuss the identity of the Enemy is particularly fun. The Doctor concludes that in the end they will probably turn out to be just "Yartek, leader of the alien Voord with a big stick." His reference to Transformers and Saturday morning television is nice.

The Taking of Planet 5 is not especially well written. The plot is dense and a little hard to follow. A lot of the human characters are utterly uninteresting. Nevertheless, it is deeply enjoyable for its fascinating concepts and vivid cosmological themes.


Recommended soundtrack for reading: Preemptive Strike 0.1 'Extinction Reprogrammed'

Seasons of Fear, by Paul Cornell and Caroline Symcox (Big Finish Audio)

I’m the original discriminating buffalo man
And I’ll do what’s wrong as long as I can

You can't go wrong with Paul Cornell, and Mrs. Cornell also proves to be a pretty fine writer (just listen to her brilliant historical The Council of Nicaea).

Seasons of Fear has been described as a 'road story' in the model of The Keys of Marinus and The Chase. The episodes move from one historical location to another, yet are united by a single plot. This works reasonably well. We also get a touch of The Space Museum thrown in, with the revelation that the Doctor will be killed in the future by the villain.

Sebastien Grayle is one of the best conceived Doctor Who villains ever. He has been granted near immortality and so we are able to see him at different stages of his prolonged existence. This echoes the common theme of Doctor Who, that 'immortality is a curse. not a blessing.' Over the centuries, Grayle descends into increasing madness and depravity. The real tragedy of his character is that this course of villainy began simply with bitterness over a simple matter of land inheritance. Paul McGann's Doctor reacts in abject horror at the idea of this long and bitter existence over a course of life apparently longer than his own.

This story offers us the return of a sadly neglected monster. They don't appear until they end, but they fit the story very well, especially with their catchphrase about a certain journey. I can't help laughing when I hear their voices.

I don't think it was really necessary to imply that Edward the Confessor was an homosexual. I also think the two Georgian characters were not very believable, but these are minor complaints.

India Fisher's Charley comes across well, though this was the first audio I hear with her. This is an audio that is definitely worth getting hold of.

Alien Bodies, by Lawrence Miles (BBC novel)

"That mask shouldn't exist in this timeline. You see how dangerous they are? Even their headgear breaks the Laws of Time. Even their headgear."

Alien Bodies was the first Lawrence Miles novel I read and, aside from the About Time guides, it was this book that made me the Lawrence Miles devotee that I am.

There is a really unsettling vibe about Alien Bodies. It does not feel like reading a typical Doctor Who novel. There is an overwhelming sense that the book is shaking up the whole mythos of Doctor Who. Just as the New Adventure novels Timewyrm: Revelation and Cat's Cradle: Warhead completely altered the paradigm of Doctor Who in the Virgin range, Alien Bodies completely alters the horizon of Doctor Who within the BBC books.

The Big Idea that Lawrence Miles introduces here is to consider the future of the Time Lords. We occasionally see them in the present and we know a fair bit about their history, but what is going to happen to them in the future? Hence, we get this new story arc about a massive war with some unknown enemy. Keeping the identity of the Enemy secret was a great idea. The whole war reminds me quite a bit of the Mysterons' war of nerves against Earth in Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. Lawrence Miles shows his talent at world-building by offering us glimpses of a future Time Lord society, as well as new ideas like the Celestis, Mictalan, Faction Paradox and the sentient, humanoid TARDIS. While I am more interested in the War than in Faction Paradox, I think the way Faction Paradox are presented is brilliant. They are so playful and seductive. I was horrified by the way Stephen Cole and Peter Angheliades ruined Faction Paradox in The Ancestor Cell, turning them into a grotesque bunch of walking corpses that nobody in their right mind would want to join. In fact, pretty much everything which Miles introduced in Alien Bodies was retro-erased out of the BBC books in The Ancestor Cell. No wonder the chap has a bit of a grudge.

Lawrence Miles has never been great at coming up with tightly written plots. Not a huge amount happens in this book. A group of people from various factions arrives at an auction to obtain a mysterious artifact. None of them have a big evil plan that needs to be thwarted. That does not matter, however, it is the way that Miles presents the characters that is interesting. Homunculette the Time Lord and his TARDIS/ Companion, Marie is simply glorious. It is such a shame that he only made one brief re-appearance in The Taking of Planet 5. Alien Bodies has something of a resemblance to Canterbury Tales in the way that it offers an interesting backstory for each of the main characters. Miles gives a great portrayal of the Eighth Doctor. He also makes Sam quite an interesting character, though all the stuff about the two alternate Sams is a bit confusing.

Alien Bodies teases us by letting us think that the Daleks are going to get involved in proceedings. Instead, we are left disturbed by the description of Daleks slaughtered by Krotons. If ever their was a Doctor Who monster in need of rehabilitation, it was the Krotons. Miles gives some brilliant descriptions of the Kroton race, both of their background and modus operandi. Although the characters in the book regard them as a bit silly, they are shown to be very sinister and disturbing creatures.

One significant difference from other Lawrence Miles novels is the lack of intellectual discourse about culture, philosophy or politics. This is a novel that is all about the Doctor and the universe in which he operates. Miles does not allow himself to be distracted by his intellectual interests. Alien Bodies is not the best Doctor Who novel ever written and to my mind, Dead Romance is the better Lawrence Miles novel, nevertheless, it is a major landmark in the Doctor Who canon.

War of the Daleks, by John Peel (BBC novel)

A novel for kids who love Daleks.

One thing that strikes me about War of the Daleks is how easy it is to read. I think a child of 10-12 would have only a little difficulty reading this novel. I am pretty sure I would have loved it at that age. John Peel definitely stuck with the style he had followed when writing Target novels. Peel's prose is not well developed and his characters constantly make bluntly moralistic speeches at each other, but the simple readability of this book is a relief after all the heavy NAs I have read. I love the Virgin New Adventures, but some of them could be a chore to read. Peel is much better than most NA authors in his ability to describe combat and make it exciting. The battle between Thals and Daleks in the first chapter owes an awful lot to the influence of Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

War of the Daleks is not simply a Dr. Who novel with lots of continuity references; it is a novel about continuity. It has become rather notorious for it's complete revision of Dalek history. According to this revision, the Daleks occupying earth in the 21st century discovered documents that revealed the events of Remembrance of the Daleks. Realising the futility of changing the course of history, the Daleks planned to prevent Skaro's destruction by manipulating the timeline. The planet Antalides was cleared of life and made up as a fake Skaro. Davros' body was retrieved and left on Antalides. The Dakeks then created the robot race of Movellans and used them to create a fake war, justifying the Dalek's desire to restore Davros to their circle. Davros was then allowed to get tangled up in the quest for the Hand of Omega and to destroy the fake Skaro.

As a big fan of the manipulative Seventh Doctor and Remembrance of the Daleks in particular, I am not happy with the denial of the destruction of Skaro. It cheapens that story and makes the Seventh Doctor look like an idiot. There is some hint in the story that the revised Dalek history might be unreliable and propaganda from the Dalek prime. The problem with that is that the Thals seem pretty sure that Skaro is still around. I have no idea if the mention in an interlude of an aquatic planet also called Antalides is supposed to be a clue or just a stupid error.

What I do like about this retcon is the way it offers new light on the relationship between the Daleks and Davros. I personally think the creation of Davros was a mistake and it was criminal to include him in a succession of five Dalek stories. The presence of Davros had a tendency to undermine the potential of the Daleks, reducing them to just metallic heavies. War of the Daleks turns the tables and presents Davros as an unstable moron who is easily manipulated by the Daleks. The Daleks reject the notion that he is there creator, pointing out that the Kaleds were already on a course of evolution into a mutant race because of the war with the Thals. I love the way that the Dalek Prime concludes that Davros is an unstable menace:

'So you elected to risk destroying the Dalek species instead of exercising reasonable caution, the Dalek prime pointed out. 'You aimed for the position of ultimate power and failed. In the same way you tried to take over control of the Dalek empire- and failed. If you had achieved the power you desired, only the Daleks you created would have shared in it. None of the Daleks here on Skaro would have been a part of your plan. You would have utilised your power to annihilate us.'

For all the faults fans have found in War of the Daleks, it's great contribution lies in making the Daleks a formidable and cunning opponent. The intelligence and foresight in the Dalek strategy is incredible. These seems like the sort of thing that the Time Lords and the 'Enemy' get up to in Lawrence Miles' Faction Paradox universe. It certainly shows far more intelligence than the silly sledgehammer tactic of wiping out the Daleks at their creation in Genesis of the Daleks (I suspect the Time Lords were actually just playing a dirty trick on the Doctor for a laugh).

John Peel spends an awful lot of time explaining the plots of the various Dalek stories. Some of this is necessary in expounding the revised Dalek history, but it also reinforces my opinion that this novel is aimed at very young fans who have not seen many Dalek serials. The reference to Rachel Jenson in Remembrance of the Daleks is viewed by some as a gratuitous continuity reference. I don't mind because I think she was one of the best non-regular characters to appear in the show (delightfully played by Pamela Salem). Interestingly, he describes her as being in her mid-thirties. I had assumed that she was rather older, as she was talking about retirement. Having her in her mid-thirties fits in with Craig Hinton's novel Millennial Rites, in which we learn that Jenson was scientific advisor to the Cabinet until Anne Travers took over in the 1980s (Millennial Rites is one of the few Doctor Who novels that takes a 1980s view of UNIT dating). Remarkably, Rachel Jenson is actually more crucial to this plot than you might think. It is through her that the Daleks know about the Hand of Omega and Davros' destruction of Skaro. This does not quite fit what we see on screen; Jenson actually appears to be completely baffled about what is going on between the Daleks and the Doctor. Similarly, Peel had forgotten about the events of The Daleks. He wrongly implies that the Doctor was selfless in helping the Thals, when in fact he was trying to recover the fluid link.

The interludes offer some great Dalek action and are very fun. Despite the obsession with continuity, this is very much a book for kids. I would highly recommend this book to younger Doctor Who fans. A second-hand copy of War of the Daleks would make a lovely present for a boy or girl who loves the Daleks.

Wirrn Dawn, by Nicholas Briggs (Big Finish Audio)

In the grim darkness of the far future, humanity is at war with the Wirrn. The Eighth Doctor and Lucie sort of get involved...

This is the first Eighth Doctor audio that I have listened to, unless you count Paul McGann's appearance in Survival of the Fittest. I thought he gave a reasonable performance, even if not the most inspiring Doctoral performance I have heard.

Deep down every Doctor Who fan wants to see old monsters return and so a story like this has an obvious appeal. Being on audio, we are freed from the disadvantage of seeing unconvincing monster props.

The CD booklet contains some really good artwork. This is thankfully not the only good thing about this drama. It does a great job of capturing the horror and destruction of a space war and has plenty of menace and visceral horror (without the realistic violence and gore of Project: Twilight). Starship Troopers is an obvious influence, but this is rather more serious. There is wonderful dramatic tension created when the female military officer harvested by Wirrn begs for death.

Call me a bit gung ho, but would a battle between giant bugs and humans last so long? I mean, the Wirrn can't manufacture bombs or bazookas can they?

This story is far from perfect. It is absurd that the Doctor should be puzzled by what an 'Indig' is. The characters are rather one-dimensional. Worst of all, the Doctor does very little in this story. I think most listeners, even those who like a darker side to the Doctor, will be troubled by the Doctor's too easy acceptance of the idea of humans being sacrificed to the Wirrn. Surely he has always hated the idea of individuals being sacrificed for the good of the many? It seems higly likely that the sacrificial system would be abused, with the disabled and those who are unpopular (for whatever reason) being given up to the Wirrn.

Sheridan Smith is not at all bad as Lucie, but her character is not terribly interesting in this drama. I have never heard any of her other stories, so I know little of her character in general.