The Witch Hunters, by Steve Lyons (BBC Novel)

The Witch Hunters was one of the original line of BBC Past Doctor novels, but was recently released in a series of reprints. Unlike the majority of Doctor Who novels, it is a pure historical; the only Sci-Fi elements being those relating to the regular cast.

This novel is about the famous witch trials that occurred in Salem in late 17th century America. It is open about its inspiration, referencing Arthur Miller's Crucible several times. While Steve Lyons has clearly put in a lot of research, as a theology graduate, I winced at some of his mistakes about Puritan theology. The characters refer quite frequently to Purgatory. The people of Salem would most definitely have abhorred the 'Popish' doctrine of Purgatory. He also has Rebecca Nurse believing she is damned as a result of her excommunication. That is not how the Puritans understood excommunication. While Rebecca Nurse would hardly have been happy at the disgrace of excommunication, she would not have believed that the minister had the infallible power to consign her to hell. I also thought it was a bit odd that the Ian and Barbara had not attended church meetings in Salem until the outbreak of the witch trials. There is no way that they would have been able to absent themselves for months in a community in which non-attendance was punishable by law.

The Witch Hunters is very heavy on high emotional drama, perhaps a little too much so. It does feel like Lyons is trying too hard to get an emotional reaction. The scene with Dr. Who taking Rebecca Nurse to see the future and her own memorial reminded me a lot of Vincent and the Doctor, a similarly emotion-heavy story. This novel is unusual for a Lyons story in its lack of humour (The Final Sanction being another exception); he is possibly better at working with a more comic tone.

I'm one of Susan's few fans, so I liked the attention given to her in this novel. It made good use of her developing telepathic abilities, as seen in The Sensorites. I also very much appreciated the chance to see Susan interacting with other young people, which she did not get to do very much on screen. However, I am unsure that she would have been so ready to try to change history and in her feeble efforts, she does come across as a little bit daft.

The First Doctor in this novel is very reminiscent of the Seventh Doctor in the New Adventures. The idea of him preventing Rebecca Nurse from being pardoned and returning her to be executed is a bit grim. I very much liked the fact that we have the Doctor making a solo voyage in the TARDIS following the events of The Five Doctors. This creates a gap in continuity which allows such stories as the First Doctor's solo travels in the World Distributor annuals, his TV Comic adventures with John and Gillian and his contest with Fenric and subsequent travels with Zeleekah.

This is certainly not the best Doctor Who novel, but it is an interesting work from one of the finest writers to work in the expanded universe of Doctor Who.

Genesis of the Cybermen (yes, you read the title right)

Genesis of the Cybermen was a script written by Gerry Davis, creator of the Cybermen and submitted to Eric Saward, script writer for Doctor Who. It was rejected, yet was included as a short story in David Banks' (clenching fist) excellent Cybermen book. It is regrettable that this short story is written more as an outline or an extended synopsis, featuring no actual dialogue.

Poor Gerry Davis seems to have been a bit confused by all the comings and goings among the TARDIS crew. Having lost track of exactly who Dr. Who was supposed to be travelling with, he has her accompanied by a pretty but light-headed blonde girl called Felicity.

Genesis of the Cybermen, as its title suggests, gives us a glimpse of the origin of the Mondasian Cybermen as Gerry Davis conceived it. As much as Eric Saward liked stories about Cybermen and lots of continuity, it is pretty easy to see why he rejected this. It is very much an old fashioned space adventure in a pseudo-Tolkienesque society in which everybody has a Latinized name. This sort of story would have looked dated if it had been done in the Pertwee era, let alone in the 80s with Peter Davison or Colin Baker. It is also structured like an over-padded Doctor Who story, with lots of capture and escape routines.

Yet this story would have fitted very neatly into the Hartnell era, despite the presence of the Cybermen. With his forgetfulness, the Doctor in this story comes across as very much more like Hartnell than Davison or Colin Baker. Genesis of the Cybermen has that fairy tale quality that is often found in First Doctor space adventures. It feels like it could have been a Wagnerian, particularly as it features a Valkyrie-like blonde queen who has been partially cybernised. Steven Moffat talks about wanting to give Doctor Who a 'fairy tale' quality, but I rather doubt he has ever read the Brothers Grimm or the Blue Fairy Book. His awareness of the fairy tale genre does not seem to stretch beyond Disney adaptations and I imagine he thinks Mary Poppins was in the Brothers Grimm. He really should read this story to find out how Doctor Who can have a fairy tale quality.

The story compounds its datedness by offering a nod to Von Daniken. We learn that some of the Mondasians fled to Earth after Mondas drifted from its orbit. They apparently left many artifacts for archaelogists to puzzle over. This naked Von Dankienism is certainly implied in The Tenth Planet, with the talk about Mondas being an ancient name for Earth.


Is Genesis of the Cybermen canon? We cannot treat every unmade story as canon, but certainly those reproduced by Big Finish are candidates. The Cybermen book was published by arrangement with the BBC, so it might be said to be a licensed product. True, it is difficult to harmonize some aspects of this story with Spare Parts, but no more so than the difficulties in harmonizing Spare Parts with The World Shapers.

So if this is a story that 'really happened,' when is it set? Although this was submitted to Eric Saward, I really don't think this is a Fifth or Sixth Doctor story. The Doctor seems to have little recollection about Mondas and the Cybermen, while those 80s Doctors had a pretty good grip on continuity. It seems likely therefore, that the Genesis of the Cybermen Doctor is the First Doctor. So when did he travel with Felicity? This must have been one of those mysterious gaps in the television stories during which the World Distributors annuals and TV Comic First Doctor stories are set. This could be in between The Dalek Masterplan and The Massacre, or it could be before the end of The War Machines, before Dr. Who returns for Dodo. We might well wonder whatever adventures Dr. Who might have had with Felicity.

"I've never seen such an incredible bunch" - The War Games

It is appropriate that in the last Second Doctor story, ending the black and white period of Doctor Who, Patrick Troughton gives an absolutely stellar performance. Whether pretending to be an official, manipulating the gullible alien scientist, fleeing in terror or acting the clown before the Time Lords, Troughton displays complete brilliance.

The War Games is a story that fans will always celebrate, after all it is the story in which we first learn of Dr. Who's people the Time Lords and his reasons for abandoning his kind. The fine scripting, the clever blending of historical with science fiction and the impressive acting within this serial are rightly praised. Yet The War Games is let down by the excessive length that was inflicted on it for production reasons. While the extra episodes does allow an interesting exploration of the tense and fractious relationships among the aliens and create a sense of constant peril and chaos for the TARDIS crew, the overall result is a repetitive and seemingly never-ending run of capture and escape routines. It would have worked so much better in six episodes, though this was sadly not an option at the time.

I know it is not the most important detail, but I do wonder if Lady Jennifer Buckingham's hair is authentic for the period. Her hairstyle does look a little modern for 1917. Of course, I could be wrong about that.

The unnamed aliens in The War Games look human, but they definitely have an alien quality to them. David Bree, who plays the Security Chief, gives his character a distinctive slow protracted form of speech. It was also a great decision to cast the Time Lord War Chief as somebody who looks physically distinct to the other alien characters. While the War Chief is handsome, suave and charismatic, the other aliens are pudgy, bald and pasty-faced. They are stereotypical bureaucrats. The best of them is of course Philip Madoc as the War Lord. He is absolutely fantastic. Instead of playing the character with bluster, he is cool and quiet, exhibiting a constant menace. He even smiles when he threatens people. With his scruffy beard, his spectacles and palour, he looks every inch a psychotic. Echoing the Nuremburg Trials, he remains defiant before the Time Lords, refusing even to acknowledge their authority. His terrified cry of 'No! No! No!' as he fades out of existence is a nice end for him.

The other alien who really stands out, even more so than General Smyth, is the fake German officer, Von Weich. He seems to take great delight in putting on different accents, switching from being a German officer, to a Confederate and then to a 19th century British officer. Von Weich must have been so disappointed that there was no Second World War zone and therefore no opportunity to play a Waffen SS officer or a Soviet commissar! This makes a really interesting point about the theatricality of military authority. After all military authority is largely about dressing up and speaking in a certain tone of voice. Also highly effective is the scene where Von Weich and Smyth move about their model soldiers and talk about how they will kill off each others troops. War truly is a game to these people.

The War Chief, the first character ever to be identified as a Time Lord, is very nicely developed. He is a much more complex and interesting character than the Master ever was. It might have been nice if he was an earlier incarnation of the Master, though this is clearly contradicted by the novels, which identify him as Magnus, yet another one of Borusa's errant pupils.


The Time Lords are pretty impressive here, with their incredible power. They are aloof and mysterious. It is unfortunate that they are less effectively used in other stories, though many of the later developments with the Time Lords were not without interest. It is amusing to watch the Doctor clowning around in the court room, dismissing all the faces he is offered, though it is hard not to be bothered by his lack of concern about the Time Lords erasing his companions' memories. It's hard not to laugh at the fact that when attempting to show his people the terrible things in some corners of the universe, he shows them the Quarks. Though admittedly, the Quarks proved themselves in the comics to be resourceful opponents; taking control of domestic robots, making use of a giant wasp and stealing racing cars. Interestingly, he seems to expect the Time Lords to be relatively lenient with him. He predicts that as a punishment, the Time Lords will make him listen to a 'long boring speech.' There is no implication that he would face the same treatment as the War Lord. His terror at capture by his people must have been a terror of losing his freedom.

We know of course, that Dr. Who does not immediately change his appearance after this story. There is a gap between The War Games and Spearhead from Space, referred to by fans as Season 6B. This is shown by two stories, The Five Doctors, in which the Second Doctor is aware of Zoe's departure and The Two Doctors, in which he and Jamie are working for the Time Lords, despite his having no dealings with them during the Troughton era. It seems that after his trial, the Doctor was given limited freedom to travel in the TARDIS, in return for performing missions on the Time Lord's behalf. Season 6B was first revealed in the TV Comic, where the Second Doctor is exiled to Earth before the Time Lords can change his appearance. He takes up residence in the luxurious Carlton Grange Hotel, which remarkably makes it into the newspaper headlines. In a series of stories, the exiled time traveller tangles with criminals and alien invaders, as well as becoming a panelist on a television show. Finally, he is captured by the Time Lords' scarecrow servants, who force him to regenerate. It is logical to conclude that the other TV Comic Second Doctor stories take place in Season 6B, as they do not fit anywhere else in the Second Doctor era. It would seem that some time during this period, Dr. Who was reunited with his grandchildren, John and Gillian. It also seems that Jamie took a break from travelling with the Doctor and temporarily resided in a castle in modern day Scotland. It is possible that other adventures happened in this period, such as Dr. Who's first contest with Fenric and perhaps his first encounter with Lady Peinforte. We have no way of knowing how long Season 6B lasted. Given discrepancies in the Doctor's age, it may have lasted as long as a century.

The Comic Strip Companion, by Paul Scoones

The Doctor Who comics, particularly the early comics, have often tended to be a bit neglected by fandom. Yet they are an important part of the history of the franchise and were of great importance to young fans in the era before Doctor Who novels and audios. I have tried to argue on this blog that they should be treated as equal to other media in their canonical value and John and Gillian should not be excluded from lists of Doctor Who companions.

The Comic Strip Companion provides a useful reference tool for the first phase of Doctor Who comics, that is those before the Doctor Who Weekly. This volume includes entries for all the Doctor Who TV Comic strips, the Countdown and TV Action strips, the World Distributors annual strips up to 1979, as well as the TV Century 21 Dalek strips and other strips in Terry Nation's various Dalek spin-off material. Sadly, the book includes no reproductions of strips.

It follows the pattern of so many episode guides, giving a synopsis of each story, as well as continuity details and goofs as well as a critique. Information about these stories can be found online, however, Scoones offers much more detail than has previously been available. What particularly stands out is the wealth of historiographical materail that Scoones collects, providing a clear picture of the publication history of the comics. Regarding the critiques, it can be tedious reading the author's continual laments about the quality of the strips, particularly the Sixties TV Comic strips. I might have liked him to show a little more enthusiasm for his chosen subject matter. On the other hand, I would have liked to have seen some acknowledgement of the racial stereotyping that can be seen in the TV Century 21 Dalek strips (Power Play and Menance of the Monstrons).

The author makes the assumption that the comics are set in an alternate universe and therefore makes no attempt to reconcile them with Doctor Who television continuity. I was very dissappointed and consider the alternate universe view a rather lazy assumption. To my mind, a major appeal to the comics is the idea that the Doctor had more adventures than can be seen on television. It would have been so much more interesting had the author attempted to suggest ways to fit these stories in to the wider Doctor Who mythos.

This is definitely a useful book for fans to buy, but it is not the comic companion I would have liked to have read.

Doctor Who - The Complete Adventures

Doctor Who- The Complete Adventures


This is one of my favorite Doctor Who websites. It simply is fantastic!

Andrew Kearley provides a complete and exhaustive chronology of where each Doctor Who story takes place in the life of the Doctor. He does not limit himself to televised stories, but includes not only the novels and audios, but the comics, annuals and even such obscure spin-offs as the Give-A-Show Projector stories and the Sky Ray Ice Lolly cards! He makes a great defence of his canon inclusivism:

'My basic rule of thumb was to treat every story equally, regardless of its source. Why, I asked myself, should we regard an annual story as somehow less real than a Missing Adventure novel? The former, written by an hack author with little concern for the overall continuity of the show, just working to complete his commission and move on to his next project, is probably a damned sight more "traditional" Doctor Who than a novel written by a fan author and scrupulously cross-referenced to the series continuity. We should also remember that for the Doctor Who fan growing up in the sixties and seventies, before the continuity police took over, those comic strips and annual stories were just as much a part of the series as the television episodes - and indeed more accessible than a once-only tv broadcast - and just as eagerly devoured. So who are we to suddenly declare that they no longer exist?'

Andrew Kearley uses a lot of creativity in considering where to set stories. He places the Dr. Who and the Dalek sweet cigarette story early in the Doctor's life and offers some interesting speculation about that story:

'The notion of the Doctor serving as an ambassador has precedent in the series - it is presumably in this capacity that he first met Dastari. In the two missions presented here, the Tardis is nowhere to be seen - presumably the Doctor travels by Time Ring. In the first mission, he is dressed in some sort of spacesuit. The second assignment could be some considerable time later - the Doctor has now adopted an Edwardian costume. The fact that he encounters the Daleks here, and indeed makes peace with them, is forgotten later on.'

A number of stories in the annuals feature adventures with both Harry Sullivan and Sarah Jane Smith. Kearley sees no problem in setting these in between Robot and Ark in Space. While most fans assume that Robot is immediately followed by Ark in Space, he rightly concludes that there is no reason to think that the TARDIS departure at the end of Robot is any more than a short hop.

The First Doctor TV Comic stories featuring John and Gillian have always been difficult to place, though there are a number of possibilities. Kearley places these in a period in between The Dalek Masterplan and The Massacre. He argues that The Massacre suggests some passage of time, with no reference to the previous traumatic story. He makes no guesses as to where Steven was left during this period. A number of solo Hartnell stories are placed within this gap.

There are not many chronologies of the Doctor's life that don't include a Season 6B and this one is no exception. The simple truth is that if one takes continuity seriously, there is no alternative but to see the necessary of this gap. The Second Doctor TV Comic stories are placed in 6B, which is pretty much the only place they can go.

A huge number of comic stories are fitted in between The Green Death and The Time Warrior. This answers the ludicrous criticism of those who complain that the Third Doctor is still on Earth working with UNIT after Jo's departure. For all we know, Dr. Who might have been travelling for centuries in between those two stories.

Remarkably, both A Fix with Sontarans and Dimensions in Time included in this chronology. Kearley treats the former as an insidious attempt to turn the Doctor into a fictional character. He suggests that the appearances of the past Doctors in Dimensions in Time are probably manifestations of the Doctor's subconscious. I was also surprised by the inclusion of Death Comes to Time, which most fans consider to be apocryphal. I would have appreciated a note to address some of the difficulties of relating that story to Doctor Who continuity.

I was a little disappointed that The Infinity Doctors is treated as a genuinely apocryphal story. I consider that novel to be canon and would argue that it is an early First Doctor story. I was also disappointed that the author makes no attempt to place the Doctor's first contest against Fenric. I actually emailed him about that. He replied that as we don't know which Doctor was involved, any attempt to place it would be speculation. That is true, but it's not like he does not do a lot of speculation with other stories. It would have been interesting to see his guess on that.

What is wonderful about this chronology is to see the sheer volume of adventures that the Doctor has had. It is mind boggling. It is especially nice to see how many Fourth Doctor and 1st Romana stories there are. Mary Tamm's Romana was such a lovely companion that it would be awful to think the Doctor only travelled with her during the quest for the Key to Time.

TARDIS Eruditorum Volume 1: William Hartnell, by Phil Sandifer

You may have enjoyed reading TARDIS Eruditorum, the blog of Dr Phil Sandifer. The first two volumes of his blog archives are now available in print, covering the First Doctor and Second Doctor eras respectively. We may hope that the next volumes will soon find themselves in print.

TARDIS Eruditorum attempts to chart the development of Doctor Who as a cultural text from An Unearthly Child to the BBC Wales series. I did wonder at one time whether this project was really worthwhile after the very exhaustive About Time, by Tat Wood and Lawrence Miles. However, Sandifer offers analysis of the Doctor Who stories that is a good deal more thoughtful and rather less hurried than that of the About Time books.

Sandifer began his Doctor Who project after graduating with his PhD and finding that job opportunities in his chosen field were rather scarce. I can identify with Sandifer, as I also gained a PhD and then found it to have limited currency in the employment market. Thankfully, I found an alternative career working with drug users and alcoholics.

The blog is written in a somewhat intellectual style. Occasionally, Sandifer loses me, but this tends to be when he gets into discussion with fellow intellectuals in the comment section. He also writes from a strongly left of centre position. Sometimes his socialism can be irritating, but I'm happy to read writers who don't share my conservatism.

That you can read the TARDIS Eruditorum blog for free rather raises the question of why one would want to buy a printed copy. I have no regrets about buying the book and plan to buy future volumes. The book contains some great bonus material, including fascinating essays and some reviews of spin-off material not covered on the blog.


In dealing with the Hartnell material, Sandifer charts the appearance in the show of those things that make the series Doctor Who as we know it- the Doctor's need for companions and his discovery that there are monsters that must be fought. He has a lot to say about what he calls the 'Problem of Susan' (named from the interesting but problematic short story by Neil Gaiman). By this he means textual difficulties inherent in Susan's character which ultimately resulted in her complete disappearance from the show. This ties into wider difficulties connected to the sexuality of female companions in Doctor Who.

Sandifer makes a powerful case that there are no pre-Unearthly Child adventures. He argues that the character we see in that first serial is utterly unequipped to be the Doctor. It is only his interaction with Ian and Barbara that make him into the heroic figure we see in later stories. This was argued on the blog, but is given further exploration in an essay on the Doctor's travels before Totters Lane. I tend to agree with Sandifer on this, though this is problematic for me because I view The Infinity Doctors as a pre-Unearthly Child story (and not an Unbound story). I think Sandifer's thesis of an unheroic older Hartnell is not incompatible with him being a bit more adventurous in the days when he was the younger Hartnell Doctor that I believe we see in The Infinity Doctors. Sandifer has not yet covered The Infinity Doctors, so we shall have to wait to see his view of how that story fits into the Doctor Who mythos.

I very much enjoyed Sandifer's discussion of The Web Planet, seeing it not as a disaster, but as one of the high points of the show. He sees in that serial a delightful exploration of just how weird and unearthly Doctor Who can get. He also joins the chorus of those of us who love the much maligned The Gunfighters. He finds much value in the Dalek spin-off material of the Sixties, arguing that it enables us to imagine the grandeur of the Doctor Who universe beyond the confines of the screen.

In an interesting bonus essay, Sandifer considers the question of whether William Hartnell was a bigot. He condemns two stories in particular for their racial subtext, The Ark and The Celestial Toymaker. It's hard to argue with Sandifer's condemnation of the racism of The Celestial Toymaker. He is appalled that the Celestial Toymaker has been re-used several times by Big Finish. I understand his anger, but I also understand why the character has returned. There is a such a strong sense of nostalgia about Michael Gough's Toymaker. He also cuts a very striking visual image. Yes, it might be racist to have a baddie looking like a Chinese Mandarin, but it is an undeniably impressive costume choice.

Maybe it's because I'm a right-wing bastard, but The Ark is very dear to me. I do think that The Ark can be defended against Sandifer's Post-Colonialist criticisms. Sandifer's reading rests upon the assumption that the Monoid's negative qualities are inherent in their nature and are not a result of their treatment by the humans. I think the Monoid tyranny can be seen as generated by the intolerance and stupidity of the Guardians, an hypothesis that the Doctor seems to allude to in that story. Like it or not, The Ark seems to reflect reality to some degree, as colonialism was often replaced by hideously corrupt and brutal dictatorships. I have heard people who once condemned Ian Smith as a racist bigot admit that in hindsight his opposition to majority rule in Rhodesia made sense.

Sandifer feels so strongly about The Celestial Toymaker and The Ark that he wants to exclude them from the canon of Doctor Who stories. This is unsurprising, as he has argued on his blog against the idea of a 'Whoniverse,' that is, a single unified fictional universe in which all Doctor Who stories take place. He seems to favour instead a canon in the artistic sense of an anthology of recognised texts. This is not my philosophy. Seeing Doctor Who as a unified fictional universe is an important part of how I consume and enjoy Doctor Who. I prefer a canon that is inclusive of as many texts as possible, including more problematic material like that of the Sixties TV Comic. This raises the question of what I would do with Doctor Who stories that contain racism or sexism. For me the answer to that is to regard such texts as unrealiable narrations of the events. Every story is true, but the details may not be accurate. Racially problematic materials can be seen in the same way as zips on the Silurian costumes or Ace remembering Paradise Towers.

For me, the most welcome addition in the book was the essay on whether Doctor Who is the name of the titular character. Yet I was irritated by one statement. Sandifer says "The problem is that there are no dedicated fans advocating for his name being Doctor Who." I am a dedicated fan and I have argued on this blog that his name really is Doctor Who. Maybe I should start referring to the character as such, though this could cause confusion as to whether I am referring to the character or the show.

His glorious essay on The Chase has to be read to be believed. Who could imagine that this silly story was about deconstructing the narrative essence of Doctor Who? That's much more interesting than saying it's 'silly but fun.'

I would heartily recommend Doctor Who fans to buy this book and also the second volume that is now available.

Canon and Conundrum

I absolutely love the New Adventure novel, Conundrum by Steve Lyons. I think it is among the best of the Virgin New Adventures. The sequel, Head Games is also a great book. Steve Lyons is a great Doctor Who writer. Yet I find it really hard to forgive him for a clever meta-textual trick he pulls in Conundrum and repeats in Head Games.

In Conundrum, we learn that a new Master of the Land of Fiction has created a fictional counterpart of the Doctor, who is called Dr. Who (and the real one is not?) and who has two grandchildren, John and Gillian. In the sequel, Head Games, we meet Dr. Who. Although he looks like the Sylvester McCoy Doctor, his personality is quite different, having a very superficial and naive view of good and evil. His answer to monsters is to wipe them out. Dr. Who references several TV Comic stories. The clear meta-textual implication is that the TV Comic stories did not feature our Doctor, but this Land of Fiction creation.

I realize very well that Steve Lyons meant all this in good humour, but I can't help seeing a certain literary snobbery in the idea of relegating all the TV Comic stories to the Land of Fiction. This is basically an attempt to create some sort of Doctor Who canon and to define the boundaries of what is Doctor Who and what is not.

Doctor Who has no canon. The BBC licences products, but it makes no attempt to define what material is part of the Doctor Who mythos. Doctor Who has no Gene Roddenberry or George Lucas who can make pronouncements about canon. I'm very glad it does not. I grew up with the Star Wars Expanded Universe novels. I actually have a much fonder place in my heart for them than I do for the original Star Wars trilogy. When George Lucas changes things in the Expanded Universe, it really annoys me. I totally agree with Paul Cornell's claim that canon is just another form of bullying. To exclude a story from the canon is to say "No matter how much you might love this story, it doesen't count. So there."

There is a certain incongruity about a spin-off novel trying to exclude another spin-off from an hypothetical canon. I am a New Adventures fanatic, but there are plenty of fans who hate them. There are fans who hate the manipulative Doctor in the NAs and the bitter and violent Ace. There are fans who like the idea planned for Season 27 of Ace going to Gallifrey to become a Time Lord. Steve Lyons seemed to think that the TV Comic did not count. Plenty of fans think the New Adventures don't count and only the televised stories are genuine Doctor Who.

It is often pointed out that the TV Comic stories give the Doctor a somewhat different personality to the televised Doctors. The TV Comic version of the First Doctor uses magic and its Second Doctor invents things to make money, appears on a television chat show and carries a ray gun. Yet it ought to be apparent to a fan that even the televised show does not always get the Doctor quite right or achieve a consistent tone. Take the Seeds of Doom. I'm sure that Seeds of Doom went through a much more rigorous editorial process than Martha the Mechanical Housemaid, but there are still some oddities about that story. Seeds of Doom is a very enjoyable story, but in some ways it does not feel like Doctor Who. The tone of it comes closer to a spy thriller at times and in the end, the monster is destroyed not by the Doctor, but by an airstrike. Furthermore, the fourth Doctor does not quite feel the same as in other Fourth Doctor stories. He seems more of an establishment figure and much more ready to deal out violence. Robert Banks Stewart had not spent hours studying past episodes to make sure he got every detail right (as a fan would do); he just wrote it to commission. That is why the tone of the story is different and that is exactly why the TV Comic strips feel different to most Doctor Who stories. We would not exclude Seeds of Doom from the 'canon' because it is a bit different and neither should we exclude the Sixties comic strips.



Steve Lyons makes a really interesting point in Head Games about the TV Comic version of the Doctor having a naive view of good and evil and being ready to destroy anything that looks like a monster. While this is true of the Doctor in the TV Comic, it is also true of much of the televised show, especially in the Second Doctor era. The Doctor wipes out the Macra without knowing anything about them, he cheerfully blows up the Dominators with a bomb and he destroys the entire Martian fleet, even though they are a dying race. This is the sort of gung-ho attitude that Robert Holmes so brilliantly satirized in The Two Doctors.

There is another irony in the idea of the TV Comic being relegated to the Land of Fiction, that is that the whole idea of the Land of Fiction is a bizarre concept in itself and might just as easily have been something from the TV Comic strips. The Mind Robber might be part of an hypothetical canon, but there is no way that story would have been made in any period other than the Sixties era of Doctor Who. There is just as much a stretch to say that The Mind Robber and Terminus occurred in the same universe as to say that The Challenge of the Piper occurred in the same universe as Pyramids of Mars.

Mission for Duh

From the Doctor Who 1967 Annual

As odd as that might seem, the 1967 Annual was my first experience of Doctor Who (barring ten minutes of being terrified by Curse of Fenric). Unlike many of my school friends, I had not watched the last two seasons of Doctor Who and had no interest or knowledge of the show.

During a Cub Scout holiday in 1990, I came across a dusty old copy of the 1967 Doctor Who Annual in the youth hostel in which we were staying. I was not particularly enjoying the holiday and this strange old book was the highlight of it for me. The annual seemed like the most amazing thing ever. Being very keen on carnivorous plants, I was particularly blown away by the comic strip, Mission for Duh. This relic of another era sold me on Doctor Who. It was 1990 and the show was cancelled, but I began reading Target novelization after Target novelization.

Mission for Duh might have really shoddy artwork, but it's such a lovely piece of Sixties kitsch. I love 'throwaway' stories like this and I resent anyone who tries to exclude them from the canon of Doctor Who. It's wonderful to think that Dr. Who had all kinds of adventures that never made it to the screen. The planet Birr and its Verdant inhabitants may never get mentioned outside of the 1967 Annual, but in my mind their part of the Doctor Who universe.

Stories like these raise interesting questions of continuity. In Mission for Duh and the rest of the stories in the annual, the First Doctor is travelling on his own. This is hard to fit into the apparently seamless narrative of the First Doctor televised stories. However, there are a number of places where it could fit. It could be set in between The Dalek Masterplan and The Massacre after the First Doctor has left the Death Zone in The Five Doctors. Alternatively, it could be set during The War Machines, before the Doctor returns to collect Dodo. The TV Comic stories featuring John and Gillian would also take place during this unseen gap.

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 Underwater Menace

"Blimey! Look at him! He ain't normal!"

Animated recon courtesy of DrWhoAnimator.

I read the novelization of this when I was nine or ten years old. It was the hardback edition from WH Allen. The local library had a whole collection of these hardback Doctor Who novels with beautiful covers. It made a huge impression on me and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Many years later I was to discover that The Underwater Menace is considered one of the worst Doctor Who serials ever, a reputation which I think is entirely undeserved.

Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood point out in About Time that this is the Doctor Who story that comes closest to what was going on in the 60s TV Comic strip, with lots of insane plots, a cranky Second Doctor and mad scientists. The resemblance is even stronger when we notice that the Doctor signs his name as Dr. W, providing yet more confirmation that he really is called Dr. Who. Perhaps my affection for the TV Comic helps to make me sympathetic to this story or just my fond memories of the Target novel.

In many ways The Underwater Menace is cartoonish and silly. It's plot is utterly ludicrous, it has many derivative elements and the most outrageous mad scientist ever. Yet so much science fiction really is like this. You can find elements of this story in Jules Vernes and H. Rider Haggard. There are plenty of B-Movies that are pretty similar to this serial, the sort they always show at 2:00 PM. I really do not see how The Underwater Menace is really all that sillier than Invasion of the Dinosaurs (possibly the most bonkers Doctor Who plot ever) or even The Green Death (toxic sludge that makes maggots become bullet proof).

The plot is full of holes and is a bit of a runaround, with lots of getting captured and escaping again (hardly unique in Doctor Who). It is full of action, however. It is not a story that will send one to sleep. It's difficult to judge the quality of the final scenes of Atlantis being flooded, but you can't fault the ambition displayed. The surviving episode reveals some really horrible direction and some appallingly sloppy fight scenes. On the other hand, the scene at the end of episode one, with Polly menaced by surgeons about to turn her into a Fish Person is quite chilling and effective.

It might be supposed that the Fish People have been thrown in just because somebody thought the story needed a monster. They are, however, quite interesting visually, especially with their balletic swimming. The concept behind them is very reminiscent of the Cybermen, as is their appearance. The notion of being surgically altered is quite a frightening one and is captured quite well here.

It is not just the Fish People that look good; most of the sets are very well designed, despite being pathetically small. There is a real sense of a distinct and alien world, a bit like what we got in Gerry Anderson's Stingray show. The costumes are also very creative and make a strong visual impact. Polly looks glorious after replacing her hospital gown with an Atlantean seashell dress! The musical score is also very atmospheric, with the spooky organ music giving it a really dark mood.

Professor Zaroff is certainly the most bonkers of bonkers Teutonic scientists. Can anyone believe that somebody would attempt to destroy the world just for the sake of doing it? You might have thought that turning people into fish was a big enough achievement in itself. It is as though a character from a children's' cartoon had suddenly been given an extra dimension. That said, he is awfully entertaining. You can't watch it without all joining in with the immortal line "Nothink in ze vurld can stop me now!" It's not like we haven't recently seen any motiveless camp villains on Doctor Who recently. Anybody who dismisses The Underwater Menace while praising episodes featuring the eyepatch-wearing Kovarian is an hypocrite. The servant girl Ara, played by Catherine Howe, was a pretty good non-regular character. She had the potential to become a companion (probably a better one than Victoria), though with three companions on the TARDIS at this point that was not going to happen.

Troughton is great as Dr. Who in this story. He is so wild and eccentric and he looks hilarious in his gypsy outfit. I really wish writers had continued to have Dr. Who dressing up in disguises as the Second Doctor was prone to do at this stage. There is something delightfully anarchic about the Second Doctor in Season 4 that was lost in the next two seasons.

Ben is fantastic in this story, along with The Macra Terror (where he becomes a Daily Mail reading fascist) he is at his best. Polly does not fare so well and does an awful lot of whimpering. It's remarkable how Polly alternates so frequently between being plucky and resourceful to being completely pathetic. Still, being threatened with monstrous surgery must be pretty traumatic. Jamie fails to make much impact in his first story as companion proper, but it's always tricky for writers to manage three companions.

Anybody who likes Indiana Jones or James Bond films ought to be able to recognise the entertainment value of The Underwater Menace. To my mind this is much more fun than The Moonbase or The Ice Warriors. Season 4 is definitely the most interesting phase of the Troughton era. It is such a shame that fun stuff like this was replaced by routine stories about returning monsters and bases under siege.

The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve

"And now, they're all gone. All gone. None of them could understand. Not even my little Susan. Or Vicki. And as for Barbara and Chatterton - Chesterton - they were all too impatient to get back to their own time. And now, Steven. Perhaps I should go home. Back to my own planet. But I can't... I can't..."

As with The Highlanders, I used the YouTube recon of DrWhoAnimator. These animations are not very good quality, but this person has gone to the trouble of animating all the lost stories, which deserves respect. So far 2Entertain have only given us one DVD featuring animated lost episodes, with one forthcoming.

If the producers of Doctor Who had continued to make serials like The Massacre into the Troughton era and beyond it is safe to say that the public image and reputation of Doctor Who would be completely different. It would not be thought of as a show about tinfoil or bubblewrap monsters, but a much more sophisticated and intelligent show. The Massacre is utterly removed from the silliness of the last two seasons, so far that it is practically a different show. In the unlikely event that Moffat or a future producer decided to make a proper historical, it would be very different to The Massacre. It would no doubt be set in a well known historical setting like the reign of Henry VIII and it would be a comedy.

The Massacre was made for a more historically literate generation than ours. Back then, a lot of school children would have been taught about the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve at school, instead of sitting through endless pointless lessons about the Third Reich. The Massacre assumes that its viewers have a certain basic knowledge of history and also presumes that they are willing to learn a good deal more. History is presented in its full depth and not treated as a Bill and Ted style theme park in the manner of the BBC Wales series. Of course, this means that the viewer has to make a bit of effort and concentrate when watching this serial. It is not easy to keep up to speed with the large cast of characters and the intricacies of the political machinations that are discussed in the dialogue. Clearly the writer of this story expected just a bit more from his audience.

The Huguenot on the Eve of St. Bartholomew, by Millais

The Massacre offers some serious historical drama with a lot of tension and excitement. It is also a Doctor-lite story. The Doctor remains absent for much of the story and we are left to wonder what he is up to. Could the Abbot of Amboise really be the Doctor in disguise? Often removing the Doctor from the action reinforces the power of the Doctor as a force. With the absence of the Doctor, Steven is driven to the centre of the action as a man bewildered, out of his time and hopelessly entangled in the complexities of a society he does not really understand. Peter Purves delivers a really powerful performance. While this is Peter Purves' story, Hartnell does not fail to impress. By taking on the extra role as the Abbot, he proves that he really could act. Perhaps it is a little disappointing that the Abbot did not get a few more scenes. What is interesting is how both the Doctor and the Abbot both make themselves absent from their associates and work behind the scenes. They are similar not only in their appearance, but in their mysterious roles in this serial.

This is one of the bleaker Doctor Who stories. Not only do we see the inescapable climax with the start of a massacre, but the unwillingness of the Doctor to interfere and to save one life. Yet Doctor Who should always offer some sense of hope or optimism, as with Curse of Fenric, where Ace's mother is saved from death as a baby. One of the failings, in my judgment, of Pyramids of Mars is the lack of any upbeat element in that story. In this story, we get the introduction of a bright and cheerful new companion (I know some fans dislike Dodo, but I think she is lovely) who offers the hope that she is descended from Anne Chaplet. There is the fan theory that Steven and Anne made love during this story and Dodo is in fact a descendant of Steven. This has a certain romantic appeal and should not be discarded, despite the obstacles that Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood point out in the About Time guide.

Like the cruelly maligned Warriors of the Deep, The Massacre is one of those stories that makes you curse the Doctor. The Hartnell Doctor was always a good deal less cuddly than other Doctors, but here the viewer is disturbed by his callous disregard for the safety of Anne. The Doctor is alien to us; it is always a mistake to get too comfortable with his character. The Doctor has seen many horrible and violent events in history; the death of one young woman will not trouble him in the way it troubles Steven. Yet after Steven's angry departure we are made to sympathize with the Doctor, left alone for the first time in the series.

The Massacre is significant in terms of continuity. As improbable as it might seem, the First Doctor stories in the TV Comic most likely take place during Steven's brief departure from the TARDIS. The Doctor tells us that he cannot go back to his own planet, so where does he go? I believe he goes to find his two other grandchildren, John and Gillian and before returning for Steven has a number of adventures with him, including battling Kleptons and meeting the Pied Piper and Santa Claus. Well I think they're canon, even if nobody else does.

As a Protestant Christian I see the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve as an important part of my heritage and am glad that Doctor Who used this as a source of inspiration. This is story is a brilliant example of just how sophisticated and intelligent Doctor Who could get.

Girls' Day Out, by Matthew Clarke (my fan fiction)

In Tears in Paradise, I brought Venussa from The Ark into the TARDIS crew with the Second Doctor, John and Gillian.

I think it is about time Gillian wore something other than that yellow turtleneck pullover!



The planet Isis, 2880

The Doctor and John had gone to the spaceport. John was a 14 year old boy and the Doctor was a boy at heart. Neither of them liked anything more than spending the day looking at spaceships.

Venussa and Gillian were free to spend the day shopping without two bored males dragging their feet behind them.

Isis Central Plaza was the largest shopping centre in the Earth Empire, a vast complex the size of a town, or perhaps even a small city. Its malls and terraces were linked by interior monorails. While one could buy almost anything at Isis Central Plaza, as with most shopping centre, it was really all about fashion, with every high street fashion retailer in the empire having at least one store in the plaza. The terraces were thronged with shoppers from across human space, with even a few non-humans browsing the stores.

It was warm weather outside, but deliciously cool inside the plaza. Gillian wore a purple top and leggings, with ballet pumps. Venussa wore a pink blouse and denim skirt, with flip flops. Neither of them were quite sure if their clothes were in fashion in this period, but that was usually the problem they had.

As Venussa browsed the stores, she was amazed at the variety in clothing. Until she travelled on the TARDIS, she had always worn the simple tunics and sandals of the Guardians. On the Ark, her people had obtained their clothing from dispenser machines. On Refusis, they had started making clothing by hand, but still kept to the same style as ever. Venussa bought a few things for herself, but mostly she did not care for the attire she saw in the shops.

In contrast to Venussa, Gillian had three shopping bags from different stores by mid-morning. Venussa was surprised that Gillian felt the need to buy so much clothing. The TARDIS wardrobe was so vast and new outfits mysteriously appeared on its racks occasionally. Perhaps her shopping spree was motivated by a desperate desire to live as a normal person and not a traveller in time and space.

Venussa loved Gillian like a sister, but she could not help but think of the girl as a spoilt child. She seemed very good at always getting her own way with her grandfather and lacked discipline. Venussa did not want to ruin her friendship with Gillian, but she definitely needed to talk to the Doctor about the teenage girl's attitude. Venussa's own upbringing had been harsh. Her childhood had been spent as a slave to the Monoids. With whole families crowded into the Security Kitchen to work, eat and sleep, children were given short shrift. She wondered if perhaps she should not begrudge Gillian her care-free childhood. The girl had certainly had to face plenty of danger from Trods, Kleptons, Quarks and Daleks.

By the middle of the day, Venussa and Gillian were in need of a well earned lunch and they retired to one of the many cafes in the plaza. Venussa found it difficult to identify a lot of the dishes on the menu, but she tucked into a plate of synthetic meat, vegetables and some sort of grain. According to Gillian, the grain was called couscous.

Over the meal, they talked about a number of things, Refusis, Earth, Cybermen and Gillian's encounter with the Pied Piper. Venussa asked a question she had been meaning to ask for a while.

"I don't understand how your grandfather could have become so different to how he was when I first met him. I know he is the same man, because he remembers me perfectly and travels in the same blue box, but he seems like a completely different person."

Gilian smiled. It was just as difficult for her to get used to her grandfather becoming a different person. She had not actually been there when the change took place. Nevertheless, she very much liked the new Doctor's calmer temper and more easy-going attitude.

"Perhaps you have gathered that my grandfather is not human. He is a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey. He likes to be mysterious, so he probably wouldn't tell you that himself," explained Gillian.

Venussa had indeed suspected that the mysterious traveller was something other than human.

"Time Lords change," continued Gillian. "When they get very old, like grandfather, or if they are seriously hurt, their bodies regenerate and take on a new form."

"Can they choose the new form?" asked Venussa.

"Generally not," replied Gillian. "Though I have heard some of the younger Time Lords are getting better at regeneration and can make choices about when and how they change."

Venussa could not help wondering about Gillian herself.

"So will you change one day, Gillian?"

"I will, and to be honest, I'm terrified of it. It's like I am going to die and be reborn as somebody else," she replied with a shudder.

"That does sound scary," said Venussa.

"Grandfather has talked to me about it, to help me prepare, but it is still going to happen whether I like it or not. Perhaps if I went to study on Gallifrey, I might be able to learn to control it like some of the young Time Lords have managed to do."

"It must still be exciting to change. I mean all of us grow up and get old anyway, so even if you weren't a Time Lord you would change. On the Ark, my people got too used to everything being the same," mused Venussa.

"I suppose so," said Gillian. "Perhaps when I regenerate, I might be black. I quite like the idea of being like an African princess. Or perhaps I will end up being a redhead like my brother."

"Your brother has lovely red hair," said Venussa. There was still another question she wanted to ask.

"Do Time Lords get married?"

"It's hard to explain about that," replied Gillian. "Time Lord things are always complicated. I was born on Earth, so I'm not really an expert. Grandfather got married a long time ago. He would hate me telling you that. He hates people knowing about his past. Most Time Lords don't marry. I have no idea whether I will ever get married."

"Being married is so wonderful, Gillian. It's beautiful belonging to somebody else and having somebody else belong to you. It can be hard though. Dassuk and I had some painful times together and losing him was even more painful," said Venussa. She had no idea whether somebody as alien as Gillian could relate to this. Outwardly, Gillian seemed so human, yet inside she had to be utterly different. Venussa could not begin to imagine what kind of a life the teenager had before her.

Somehow the conversation moved on to lighter topics; clothes, space travel and the wonders of Fairyland. The two young women decided to go to the Central Plaza's enormous cinema. The day was theirs to enjoy.

Klein and the Evil Quarks, by Matthew Clarke (my fan fiction)

Klein encounters the dreaded Quarks! I love bringing the TV Comic stuff into other Doctor Who eras.

This story features Big Finish character, Elizabeth Klein. It is set between A Thousand Tiny Wings and Survival of the Fittest


The TARDIS had taken the Doctor and Klein to a mysterious spacecraft floating in space. They had sought out the craft's control centre to find some clues. The Doctor examined the banks of machinery and navigational computers.

"It rather seems that these controls are not designed to be operated by humanoid limbs. In fact, I would say they are meant for robots," declared the Doctor.

"How fascinating. A robotic crew. So there might be no life forms on board this vessel at all?" asked Klein.

"I suspect not," replied the Doctor. "This technology seems familiar. I must have seen a ship like this a long time ago."

The Doctor pulled out several electronic devices from his cavernous pockets. Tinkering with the machinery, he established an interface with the ship's computer.

"Ahh. Bad news, Klein. I have just realised what technology this is. We are on board a Quark ship," the Doctor announced.

"Quarks?" Klein queried.

"Evil robots. I haven't time for a lecture. I need to work out the deactivation code and shut them down before they get to us. According to the computer, there are six of them on board this ship."

The Doctor frantically entered various codes into his interface device.

Suddenly, the sound of heavy, clunking metallic footsteps could be heard from the corridor. A lumbering machine marched into the control room. It had a cuboid body from which protruded it's featureless mechanical arms. Its head was a sphere covered in spaghetti-like nodules with several spikes jutting out.

The robot spoke in a eerily girlish voice. "You are Dr. Who! You are an enemy of the Quarks! You must be taken prisoner and interrogated!"

"Chatty as ever," said the Doctor, as he continued to tinker with the computer. "Got it," he cried and punched in the deactivation code. The Quark ground to an immediate halt.

Klein stared at the metallic horror. The robot was one of the most ridiculous machines she had ever set eyes on, and the feminine voice seemed to add to the comical effect. Nevertheless, she had certainly noticed how terrified the Doctor had become when he realised that Quarks were on board.

"They are quite terrible machines. They have enormous firepower in thos clumsy metal limbs," said the Doctor.

"Who built them?" asked Klein.

"The Dominators, a cruel race of intergalactic conquerors. They make your Third Reich look like amateurs. The Dominators suffered from a falling population, so they engineered their mechanical warriors to act independently and sent them out into deep space to conquer other galaxies," replied the Doctor.

The Doctor unscrewed the back of the Quark and began examining the machinery inside. Klein peered over his shoulder, not wanting to miss the chance to examine an alien robot. "They haven't changed the basic design since I last encountered them. This Quark battleship must have been sent out centuries ago."

"Herr Doctor, I couldn't help but notice that the Quark addressed you as 'Dr. Who," she said.

"Ah, the secret is out," replied the Doctor. "I went through a phase of using the name Dr. Who a long time ago. I was a very different man back then."

"Is that your real name, Herr Doctor?"

The Doctor winked at Klein. "Klein, if you want to discover all my secrets, I think you can do it without my help."

'What of it?' Klein thought to herself. She doubted knowing the Doctor's name was going to help her outwit him or enable her to gain control of the TARDIS. Though she could not help but feel curiosity about it.

A thought crossed Klein's mind. Could she use this formidable machine to help restore the Third Reich to glory? If she could get to the 1940s, could she bring this robot as a trophy? Then she realised that there was no way the Doctor would allow her to bring it into the TARDIS. On the other hand, some of the circuitry that the Doctor had pulled out of the robot would fit in her pockets quite nicely. If she ever got back to the Reich, German scientists would get the chance to examine and exploit them. The opportunity was for the taking.

Blasting Monsters, by Matthew Clarke (my fan fiction)

Venussa gets to do her Ripley turn!

I introduced Venussa(played by Eileen Helsby) from The Ark into the TARDIS with the Second Doctor, John and Gillian in Tears in Paradise. The Molgs are my creation.


Venussa made her way warily through the dimly lit tunnels of the Molg hiveship. Occasionally she would have to shoot down the Molgs that barred her way. The blaster was heavy in her hands. It was an ugly and brutal weapon, but she was glad that the Doctor had provided her with it.

The Doctor had gone to the nerve centre of the hive ship in order to put it out of action. He had entrusted Venussa with the task of rescuing John and Gillian from the Molgs before it was too late. 'What a responsibility,' she thought to herself.

Venussa's arms and legs had become covered in slime. Some of it was from the tunnel walls, and some of it was from the Molgs she had blasted. She wore only a sleeveless top and denim shorts, with sandals on her feet. The Doctor had suggested she might do better to wear more substantial clothing, but she had grown up wearing the minimalist tunics of the Guardian women. Just a week ago, the Doctor had taken her to some period in Earth's past where he had made her wear some horribly restrictive clothing. She had never imagined that her ancestors could have worn so many layers! She had noticed John seemed less uncomfortable around her when she was dressed like that. Poor boy. If only he knew what it was like living in the Security Kitchen, with both men and women doing their business with just a curtain to keep up a pretence of privacy. He would have learned not to blush in the Security Kitchen!

Forget the slime. She had a job to do. She had to get to John and Gillian fast. She had seen the gruesome remains of beings that had been harvested by the Molgs.

She had known John and Gillian for barely a month, but already they felt like a little brother and sister. John felt shy and awkward with her, but she knew he liked her. Gillian had become an affectionate sister to her. Gillian had spent so long in the company of her brother and grandfather that it was a great relief to talk to have female company in the TARDIS. The thought that the pair of them were in danger was unbearable.

Venussa knew about monsters. She had spent the first twenty years of her life as a slave to the brutal Monoids. However, there had always been a half-heartedness to the Monoids' tyranny. When the shooting started, they turned out not to have much stomach for violence and they gave in. These Molgs were an altogether more terrifying and vile adversary.

She came to a junction in the tunnel. She checked the device that was leading her to John and Gillian's biotraces. Just as she returned the device to her belt, a Molg jumped from the ceiling, shoving her toward the wall with its spider-like limbs. It moved its octopus-like head towards her, tentacles reaching for her face. Her blaster had been sent crashing to the floor. Grabbing the knife at her belt, she slammed it with all her might into one of the creature's eyes. Gurgling, it fell back. Seizing her chance, Venussa grabbed the blaster and fired. An explosion of slime told her she was not going to be wearing this outfit again.

She gunned down several more Molgs that approached her from the tunnel. She was surprised by how few they were; the Doctor must have been keeping them busy with his sabotage efforts. She kept here strange wailing noises. Was it some kind of alarm?

Finally, the bleep of her scanner became louder. She had reached her quarry. In a small chamber, she found John and Gillian, unconscious and bound with slimy webbing. She checked their biosigns with her scanner. They were alive.

She gave Gillian a kiss on the forehead and freed her with her knife. She did the same for John. The two teenagers struggled to rise to their feet. "Are we still on the hive ship?" mumbled John as he woke.

"Yes, we are," snapped Venussa. "We need to get out of here and back to the TARDIS. Try to walk on your own, but if you can't, lean on me."

John and Gillian were a little unsteady on their feet, but they managed to walk unaided.

The Doctor suddenly appeared. "Well done, Venussa, I knew I could rely on you," he said.

"How did the sabotage go, Doctor?" Venussa asked.

"Splendidly. I've sent their biomass-processor into overdrive. Eventually, it will become unstable and cause the hiveship to break down. The Molgs will mostly be occupied with trying to sort it out. If they succeed in repairing it, I very much doubt the ship will be fit for carrying out any invasions. It's time to go, Venussa," he explained.

The Doctor had triumphed over the monsters once again and Venussa had been a part of it. It had been terrifying, but it felt right. The Doctor had saved her people, now she was helping him to save others. In all her time as a slave, as a childless and frustrated wife and as a grieving widow, she had never imagined a career shooting down monsters and fighting them with knives. What a strange new path she had engaged on with her wonderful new family.

Conundrum, by Steve Lyons (Virgin New Adventure)

'I trusted you,' stormed Ace, waving a trembling finger in Benny's face. 'I trusted you and you grassed me up to the bloody Doctor!'

'Don't you play the injured party with me!' she snapped grabbing Ace's arm and pushing it roughly away from her. 'I've bent over backwards to accommodate you- I should have known from the start, you're nothing more than a selfish maladjusted killer!'

In my opinion, Conundrum is the best of all the New Adventures. It has an experimental style and offers a playful postmodern touch, but is also highly readable. I first read Conundrum when I was 13 and found it much more enjoyable to read than some of the other Virgin New Adventures. I found it puzzling that the two companions seemed to be so moody and that Ace hated the Doctor so much, but I accepted that. When I later came to watch the Seventh Doctor televised stories, I was surprised to find that Ace was not as moody and aggressive as she is in this novel.

Conundrum is a sequel to The Mind Robber. I would venture to say that this sequel is actually a bit better than the original story, which had a rather weak plot. Lyons creates a very English provincial town in a rural backwater and populates it with a weird collection of cliched characters from different literary genres. The plot seems to shift from murder mystery, children's' adventure, superhero comic and horror until we discover the nature of this world. Cleverly, the story is narrated by the Master of the Land of Fiction and so we get a narrator who interacts with the characters he is describing. One of the most hilarious moments is the narrator's amazement at the Doctor's ability to come up with a scientific explanation for a superhero gaining his powers.

One of the things I really enjoyed in this story was the soap opera drama between the Doctor, Ace and Benny. This was the high point of the NA angsty phase, but it was Steve Lyons who really made this drama fun. Many people love the New Adventures for introducing Bernice, but hate the way they handled Ace. I am the opposite. I don't like Bernice at all, but I love the NA version of Ace. Lyons manages to show the nasty side of Bernice, presenting her as a self-righteous, hypocritical and manipulative bitch. I find Bernice too overconfident and too clever for her own good. I find it impossible to identify with her. NA Ace on the other hand, is a loser. She is a talentless failure who blames everybody else for her problems and just wants to lash out. That is a terrible attitude to have, but it's easy to empathize with her. There is something of Ace in most of us who aren't lucky enough to be as confident and clever as Bernice.

I am not entirely happy with the suggestion that John and Gillian were not really companions. I suspect that back in the 90s, Doctor Who fans were a bit more closed-minded about what could be considered canon. These days, many fans would be more open to seeing the TV Comic as canon. Of course, that Conundrum is canon need not rule the TV Comic out of the canon. The Doctor never actually denies having two grandchildren called John and Gillian, he just does not recognise the Land of Fiction duo as being them.

The revelation that the Land of Fiction was originally created by the Gods of Rrrragnarok is cool.

Conundrum is the best of the Virgin New Adventure novel and should be essential reading for any fan.