Gallifrey: Intervention Earth

I listened to the first series of Big Finish's Gallifrey spin-off, but after that I had not followed this range. However, when I saw the incredible cover of this audio, with the new Romana, Ace and Omega in his original costume, I had to buy it. As it turned out, I had no problem enjoying it having heard only one Gallifrey season. I'm sure Doctor Who fans could have enjoyed it without having heard any previous releases.

In this story, we see Ace with her own TARDIS, working for the Celestial Intervention Agency. I have always like the idea of Ace becoming a Time Lord; it made sense of the way the Seventh Doctor seemed to be testing and preparing Ace for some unknown task. Ace is not a Time Lord here, but she is obviously moving in that direction. I'm not sure Sophie Aldred pulls of this massive character development, but I'm glad she's here.

The big treat here is the return of Stephen Thorne as Omega. I simply adore his bombastic vocal performance as Omega in The Three Doctors. Sadly, we don't get to here him as much as we might have hoped and he does not get quite as angry as he did the first time around (You have angered me!)

The story follows The Three Doctors quite closely in plot. This actually makes it the second attempt to re-write the Three Doctors after The Infinity Doctors. One problem is that though we go into the anti-matter universe, the sound effects do not really convey any sense of what this place is like. They could at least have given us Omega's wibbly-wobbly Gell Guards!

I really do like the new incarnation of Romana. Juliet Landau really does bring something new to the character with a much more seductive and understated performance than we got under Lalla Ward. I'm very much forward to hearing more of her. There seems to be quite a bit of debate among fans as to whether the Juliet Landau Romana, known as 'Trey' is the same as the Romana III in the BBC books. Her creator seemed to suggest she was not, despite other voices in Big Finish to the contrary. I am very much of the opinion that she is the same Romana III who becomes War Queen of Gallifrey. Her appearance clearly resembles descriptions of the character, even down to the outfit she wears on the cover. Furthermore, she has the ruthlessness and seductiveness of the novels' Romana III. Her interest in the future of Gallifrey reflects the interest of Romana III in the coming War of Heaven, though I doubt Big Finish will be exploring that continuity minefield, even if Lawrence Miles did give them permission.

I don't think this audio quite lives up to the explosive cinematic looking cover, but it is enjoyable and promises exciting things ahead. The upbeat musical score, included as a separate track, as usual, is impressive too.

The Deadly Assassin

In the view of many fans, the great sin of The Deadly Assassin's is its revision of the Time Lords. The all powerful Time Lords of The War Games are replaced with a cast of senile Oxford dons and Anglican bishops. Being the first substantial portray of Dr. Who's home planet, this story must have come as something of a disappointment for many long term viewers.

As a young fan, my perception of Gallifrey was shaped by the post-Deadly Assassin stories. The Invasion of Time was one of my favorite Target novels, and The Five Doctors was the first VHS release that I watched. I was rather disappointed by the lack of Chancellory Guards and Staser guns in The War Games.

As an older fan, my enthusiasm for Chancellory Guards and Staser guns has waned. I have come to prefer the idea that the Time Lords are a god-like race with incredible power. There is a lot in The Deadly Assassin that I dislike. Yet I still find something likable about the idea of the senior Time Lords being a bunch of Oxford academics. It is also undeniable that the visual iconography established in The Deadly Assassin has become a fundamental part of the show. The genius of Lawrence Miles can be seen in the way he has combined Robert Holmes' Gormenghast Time Lords with the elemental Time Lords of the The War Games. In a clever nod to The Deadly Assasin, his Book of the War tells us that the senility of the senior Time Lords is just an act:

"their mumbling, even their occasional deafness is often quite carefully orchestrated. Nowhere on the Homeworld is there a House so ready to work its will by planting the correct whisper in the relevant ear, by making murmured suggestions so subtle that after the fact nobody remembers who spoke. While House Dvora moves with an efficient unstoppable openness, the mandarins of Lineacrux are so softly spoken, so serene, so elderly that in this brutal new War age even those who should known better rarely remember how ruthless these 'senile old men' might possibly be."

It must be pointed out that the view of the Time Lords given in The Deadly Assassin was not a sudden departure. The Three Doctors had shown them to be less than all-powerful, and Genesis of the Daleks and Brain of Morbius had shown them to have a shifty side. This development shows a considerable departure from how the Dr. Who's relationship with his people was originally conceived. The Hartnell Doctor was an exile, but from the beginning he showed a genuine desire to return to his homeworld. When Susan speaks about her planet, it is described as a beautiful place, with its burnt orange sky and silver trees. The Gallifrey of The Deadly Assassin seems such a miserable and grim place that it is hardly a surprise that Dr. Who would want to leave it. If Gallifrey is like that, there is no longer any sense that the Doctor has suffered loss or sacrificed anything in leaving it. For this reason, I very much prefer the idea that Gallifrey is a beautiful and magnificent place, whatever the faults of its ruling elite.

If this serial can be forgiven for its depiction of Gallifrey, and I'm not sure it can, it cannot be forgiven for its appallingly badly thought out plot. The Master's scheme makes no sense and the Time Lords society makes even less. Are we really expected to believe that the Time Lords have been completely unable to figure out the nature of the Rod and Sash of Rassilon and that they have no idea where their electricity comes from? I very much agree with the Prosecution case (presumably Lawrence Miles) in About Time, which castigates The Deadly Assassin's plot as utterly contrived:

"But perhaps the real trouble with "The Deadly Assassin" is that aside from the occasional snack-bite of political satire, everything here is so thoroughly contrived that it's alien in all the wrong ways. The script makes up new rules for Time Lord society minute-by-minute, so what chance does the audience have of feeling as if it's any of their concern? If the Doctor reaches a dead end then a new piece of Time Lord technology or custom can be invented to help him get to the next scene, and if characters aren't in the right places then they can be shifted around by Time Lord "traditions" which everybody knows about except the viewer."

For some reason fans seem to love episode three with the nightmare sequence in the APC Matrix. I don't understand why, as it does nothing to advance the plot and feels tediously long. I have a real dislike of dream sequences in fiction. If what the character is experiencing is not real, why should the viewer or the reader care about it? It is just a string of scary events strung together without actually going anywhere. What is more, this episode indulges the worst aspect of the Hinchcliffe era, a morbid delight in pain and cruelty. It is easy to laugh at Mary Whitehouse, but this episode pushes up the violence in the show to a level that is probably not quite appropriate for younger viewers. The BBC made a wise decision in bringing Hinchcliffe's producership to an end after this story.


What I enjoy most in this serial is Angus Mackay's performance as Borusa. Borusa is such a wonderful character, a school teacher turned into a Machiavellian politician. I love the way the schoolboyish way Dr. Who addresses him as 'sir.' There is such a deep sense of respect between the two characters, which adds to the beautiful poignancy when Davison's Doctor exclaims "What happened to you, Borusa?" in The Five Doctors.


For all its failings, The Deadly Assassin makes a bold attempt to tell a very different kind of Doctor Who story. We get to see the Doctor on his own planet, stripped of the reassurance of his scarf and without a companion to rely on. I don't like this story, but I appreciate the attempt to experiment and do what had not been done before.

Scream of the Shalka

Scream of the Shalka was an animated webcast put out by the BBC in 2003. It featured a new Doctor voiced by Richard E Grant. For a while there was talk of a new series being launched with this Doctor.

I like the Gothic look of this Doctor, though I find it frustrating that they decided to give him a generic Victorian look. This is disappointing because it does not set him apart from the McGann Doctor. In personality, the Shalka Doctor most closely resembles Pertwee, though he is loaded with a massive dose of angst and guilt. This was not an original move, as both the New Adventures and the BBC EDAs had been full of angst, with the Doctor variously feeling guilt over manipulating Ace, blowing up Skaro or blowing up Gallifrey. On the whole, this Doctor comes across as just a bit too angry to be likable. Paul Cornell's script gives him a lot of humour, but Grant plays it so straight (like Pertwee) and so he comes across as an humourless man trying to be funny. Of course, it's unfair to judge this Doctor by this one performance. Most of the Doctors have taken a few stories to completely get into their role. Sylvester McCoy's Doctor evolved massively during his time on the show. Scream of the Shalka offers us a faint glimpse of what might have been.

The animation for this story is very nicely drawn, but the movements of the characters are not terribly fluid. One could probably enjoy a series of such animations had it ever been made. The real problem with the story is its traditionalism. There is too much effort made in trying to come up with all of the elements of Pertwee-era Doctor Who; the Doctor arguing with the military, an alien invasion, the Master and the Doctor not wanting to kill.

The only really clever idea this story has is the robotic version of the Master in the TARDIS. The idea of the Doctor keeping the Master as a kind of mascot or buddy is quite inspired and deals with the difficulty of taking seriously a Delgado-style Master in a 21st century story.


RT Davies has made it quite clear that Scream of the Shalka is not considered to be canon and that the 9th Doctor is Christopher Eccleston. If you are a fan who loves the Shalka Doctor, you can probably find a few clever ways to incorporate this story into the Doctor Who mythos. Lance Parkin includes this story in his AHistory guide to Doctor Who continuity by suggesting that this might be a future Doctor after the 9th Doctor. His Gallifrey Chronicles novel famously stated that there are three versions of the ninth Doctor, a meta-textual reference to this story, Curse of Fatal Death and Eccleston. In his discussion of Gallifreyan history, Parkin provides another potential solution as to how there could be more than one 9th Doctor. Attempting to tie together the War of Heaven in the BBC novels and the Last Great Time War of the new series, Parkin argues that the Eccleston Doctor could be a regeneration of the Grandfather Paradox version of the 8th Doctor in The Ancestor Cell. This is an interesting theory and raises the question of what happened to the proper version of the 8th Doctor. Perhaps he could have regenerated into the Richard Grant Doctor? It would be disconcerting, however, to think that there could be two Doctors at the same time.

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.

Gallifrey: Weapon of Choice (Big Finish Audio)

In his infamous 2002 interview, Lawrence Miles said of Big Finish:

"SOME HAVE SEEN THE NEW RANGE OF BIG FINISH AUDIOS AS THE RETURN OF REAL DOCTOR WHO". Yeah, sure. Never mind the fact that some of us have been doing everything we can to build up a next generation fanbase. Just get a couple of has-been character actors to do the voices, and suddenly that's real. For f**k's sake... When Doctor Who finally dies... and it will die, because now the newcomers are going to start turning away again, and you're going to be left with this dwindling audience of fifty-year-olds who just buy the CDs because they've got Peter Davison's picture on the front...

For all the harshness of this comment, it does hit a certain truth. I'll admit I am a sucker who bought the first season of the Gallifrey spin-off just because it had Louise Jameson and Lalla Ward in it, not to mention Lynda Bellingham. The folks that created Big Finish are smart people; they realise how much we fans love these 'has-been character actors' and they are making capital of this pool of human resources. Just yesterday I went into ecstasy with excitement on hearing about the forthcoming Big Finish spin-off, Counter-Measures. Just the thought of hearing Pamela Salem reprising her role as the delightful Rachel Jensen made me giddy. It is incredible that there are people like me who will shell out fifty quid just to hear a bunch of obscure actors reprising roles from just one story broadcast over twenty years ago.

So it's got Louise Jameson and Lalla Ward in it, but is it actually any good?

A series about Time Lords on Gallifrey is an obvious option for a Doctor Who spin-off series, but that does not mean it is a good idea. In 2004, Doctor Who writers really ought to have learned to move past this sort of thing. Stories like Invasion of Time (as story for which I have a degree of fondness) and Arc of Infinity killed the Time Lords. The idea of the Time Lords as gods of history is a fascinating one, but it is an idea that cannot easily be presented on television. Hence stories about the Time Lords ended up being about a rather mundane society of bureaucrats and technologically advanced Oxford dons. The BBC books and our beloved Lawrence Miles helped to correct this and restored a sense of awe and wonder to the Time Lords. The writers of the Gallifrey series have not learned from this development in the slightest and what we get in Weapon of Choice is a political thriller set in a technologically advanced society. Potentially entertaining, but yet another nail in the coffin of the idea of the Time Lords as an ethereal race of beings who uphold the universe.

The intrigue of Weapon of Choice revolves around a weapon called a Timonic Fusion Device. It's basically just a big bomb that blows up time, barely a step away from the Daleks' 'Time Destructor.' The Book of the War in the Faction Paradox range revealed all kinds of surreal conceptual weapons used by the Time Lords, sorry Great Houses, and their opponents. The Timonic Fusion Device just feels like any old Doctor Who McGuffin.

The plot of Weapon of Choice is quite complex. I listened to Weapon of Choice late in the evening before going to bed. This did not help me to make sense of the complex plot, but I found it extraordinarily relaxing to have it on and just let the atmosphere wash over me. I listened to the rest of the Gallifrey Season 1 this way. These audios are absolutely great for nodding off to.

One obvious question is how old Leela is at this time. Taking into account other aspects of Doctor Who continuity, considerable time must have passed between Invasion of Time and Romana's presidency. Is she being kept alive artificially using Time Lord technology? This question becomes even more pressing in the next story when Leela becomes an exotic dancer!

For all the deficiencies of this story, the cast are absolutely great and make it worth listening to. I had not heard Irving Braxiatel in the Bernice Summerfield audios, but he certainly is great here, mysterious, a bit self-serving and manipulative but quite decent at heart(s).

Weapon of Choice has contemporary relevance in its concern for issues of refugees and asylum seekers. The Enclave of Gryben captures the misery of places inhabited by people stuck in transition. I also love the Gallifrey theme tune. This story may have similarities to American science fiction shows like Star Trek, but the cool, industrial-sounding theme tune indicates that we are in a different league.

If you want something relaxing to listen to before you go to sleep, Weapon of Choice and the rest of the first season of Gallifrey is worth buying.

This Town Will Never Let Us Go, by Lawrence Miles (Faction Paradox)

Five minutes ago, or maybe fifteen, she was squinting at the screen and trying to work out who the celebrity guest is on this particular show. The token sacrificial human, an old, sad, beaten-looking man, evidently trying to enjoy his time with these colourful puppet-breeds but realising they represent a world he no longer understands. Kermit the Frog described it as a 'great honour' to have him in the studio. Inangela finally identified him- shakily, it's got to be said- as George Orwell. She vaguely recalls that when she first walked into the stopover, the Muppets were in the middle of a comedy re-enactment of the 101 scene from 1984, starring Rizzo the Rat. Or at least she thinks she remembers that, but she could be retro-imagining it.

On the very first page of this novel we get the most surreal idea imaginable; George Orwell apparently appearing as a celebrity guest on The Muppet Show. Only a mind like that of Lawrence Miles could have come up with something like this. It's such a gloriously colourful and bizarre notion that it just sucks you in and draws you into the rest of the novel.

Like every other Lawrence Miles novel, This Town will Never Let us Go is not blessed with a strong plot and things start to get a bit frantic towards the end as the author tries to bring the book to some sort of resolution. I suspect most people who have heard of this novel know who Lawrence Miles is and will not be reading it in the hope of reading a tightly-written , gripping adventure. That's just not the sort of book that he writes. If you don't care for Lawrence Miles' blend of surrealistic madness and intellectual analysis of everything, you may as well not bother reading this.

The most distinctive literary feature of This Town Will Never Let Us Go is the highly involved narration. The book is narrated almost conversationally, as though Lawrence Miles were sitting with you, telling you the story, along with his opinions on modern life. Miles is almost become the central character in his own novel. It is a feature which risks alienating the reader, as it is fair to say that Miles uses the novel as a platform to preach his particular take on society. Being a pro-free market conservative who supported the War on Terror, I inevitably find myself disagreeing with Miles most of the time, but I still find his views very interesting.

While This Town Will Never Let Us Go is the first novel in the Faction Paradox series, it is not really about Faction Paradox. The Faction are more of a background presence. This novel differs from other Miles books in the scale on which it operates. While his other novels deal with grand, sweeping cosmic events, this book is all about ordinary characters and how they are affected by the unseen cosmic War.

Bizarrely, Lawrence Miles continues the original educational agenda of early Doctor Who. The first companions of the Doctor were a science teacher to teach young viewers about science and a history teacher to teach them about history. Lawrence Miles' books are rather thin on school teachers, but in his inimitable way, he educates fans about postmodernity, poststructuralist literary theory and cultural anthropology. This Town Will Never Let Us Go has the influence of the French postmodern philosopher Baudrillard written all over it. Baudrillard's theory of hyperreality is explored in depth and with it the notion that events like wars have a more substantial media existence than they do an actual spatio-temporal reality. Lawrence Miles also brings up some interesting anthropological ideas about the place of rituals and symbols and how magic has an important place even in modern society.

The novel is set in a world that looks very much like ours, but is not quite the same. The town in which the story unfolds is never named. At first I wondered if the setting was meant to be Italy, but then it became apparent that this place was meant to resemble 21st century Britain. The most obvious difference from our world is that it is being affected by the mysterious War. This seems to be the same war explored and detailed in The Book of the War. This War is very obviously analogous to the War on Terror. In a postmodern spirit, it is not at all clear whether the events of the book are meant to be taken literally on their own narrative terms or whether they are intended to be treated purely on a metaphorical level. Given the highly didactic nature of the book, the latter seems rather more likely. The appearance of a literal 'Dog of War' is a nice play on metaphors.

The characters are an odd bunch. We have the ritual-obsessed Goth, Inangela. It's hard to really get a feel on her character. She comes across as very confident and having mysterious depths. Her friend Horror is very shallow best-friend type, who turns about to be rather more important to the plot than might be expected. Many reviewers have suggested that these characters have a very Buffy flavour. I found myself taking a massive dislike to Valentine, an ambulance driver who is also a fanatical revolutionary type. He shows a callous disregard to human life. As somebody who works in an accident and emergency department, I was unconvinced by the realism of his activity. There is absolutely no way an ambulance could go off on excursions with a dying girl in the back. Ambulance crews are just too closely monitored for that to happen.

The most engaging character was Tiffany Korta, one of those manufactured pop stars. It's remarkably disconcerting to see her discovery of the way her media image is being manipulating. One of the most terrifying scenes is when she is put on 'trial' by her record company executives who seem to almost wield absolute power over her very existence.

As in Alien Bodies, we get a character called the 'Black Man.' He appears remarkably similar to the one we met in that novel. He gets a very powerful and quite scary scene with Valentine. The comparison between the Black Man and the strange media witch, Miss Ruth is interesting.

I found This Town Will Never Let Us Go an immensely interesting and enjoyable read, but then I am a massive Lawrence Miles fan. It is certainly not his best novel and I suspect those who dislike his work will not be impressed.

Dead Romance, by Lawrence Miles

The founder of time-traveller society was a great thinker, a great scientist, a great philosopher, and a great politician. That's what the stories say, although whenever Cwej told me the stories he always got distracted and started talking about rocket-ship fights with giant vampire-beasts. But the statue in the fortress? Just a great warrior. Because warriors were what Cwej's employers needed, I suppose. Warriors were what they wanted their agents to be.... When I think about Cwej, I sometimes end up thinking about two different people. Nice Cwej, who used to snuggle up next to me and watch night-time TV in the flat. The Cwej of cuddles. And Warrior Cwej, who did whatever his employers told him to, right up until the end. The Cwej of Holy War. The Cwej of Destruction. I think I know which Cwej is going to end up on top, if his employers ever get round to writing their history of their fight agaist the Gods.

Dead Romance is Lawrence Miles' best novel ever. Alien Bodies was great, but it pales in comparison to the brilliance of Dead Romance. Furthermore, Dead Romance sets a literary standard that outshines and outclasses every single Doctor Who novel ever written. I won't say this is the best Doctor Who novel ever, as it is not altogether certain this is a Doctor Who novel, but if it was, it would be the best Doctor Who novel ever.

Dead Romance was originally published as part of Virgin's Bernice Summerfield range of novels. It was more recently republished with minor changes by Mad Norwegian Press. It is not actually part of the Faction Paradox series (they are never mentioned in it), but does provide some background to how the Faction Paradox ideas and concepts developed. It is difficult to fit Dead Romance into any sort of continuity. The bottle universe idea was Miles' way of illustrating his denial that the Virgin and BBC novels occupy the same universe. The novel is part of a story arc within the Bernice Summerfield novels, but now that it was republished independently, it is not clear that this continuity still stands. Do the revelations about the Gods in Twilight of the Gods apply to the new edition of the book? The ideas in it are similar to those in the Faction Paradox books, but are certainly not identical. It's not at all certain that the Gods in Dead Romance are the same as the Enemy in The Book of the War.

This novel is closer to being Doctor Who than the Faction Paradox books. Cwej, first introduced in the New Adventures, is one of the main characters. Bernice Summerfield does not appear, but is referred to throughout the book. The Doctor is mentioned, described as 'the Evil Renegade,' according to Cwej a sinister character who kidnaps people and makes them think they are having wonderful adventures. We also get the Time Lords, Rassilon and even the Daleks without any copyrighted names being mentioned. The clever nameless references work really well and show just how shallow a lot of the continuity referencing in some Doctor Who novels can be.

Nevertheless, this is very much a Doctorless novel. Even the darkest of Doctor Who novels still have the reassuring presence of the Doctor. Dead Romance does not. There is no Doctor to rescue everybody here. We are told right from the start that the world is going to come to an end and it does. This is a dark, bleak novel pervaded with an overall mood of pessimism. Dead Romance presents an hopeless, chaotic and futile cosmos. This is a quite different mood to what we generally get in Doctor Who.

The story is told through a first-person narrative. Cleverly, this an unreliable narrator. In a postmodern spirit, we are never quite sure how much of the cosmic picture she has grasped. She is also clearly baffled by all the alien technology she encounters and so describes it in magical terms like 'potions.' This is a refreshing change from the technobabble you get in so much Doctor Who.

The narrator, Christine Summerfield (not an ancestor or in any way a blood relative to Benny) is a typical Lawrence Miles character, a cynical drug addict with very loose morals. I find her very likable. She is a down to Earth person who is easy to identify with. I much prefer her to Bernice Summerfield. Despite my adoration of the Virgin NAs, I absolutely hate Benny. She is far too overconfident and self-righteous. Christine is a much more believable character. Cwej comes across quite differently to how he appears in other novels. Part of the tragedy of the book is seeing just how corrupted he has become. The lack of redemption for him shows just how far this is from the happy humanism of Doctor Who.

Like every other Lawrence Miles book, the plot rambles a bit. There is a bit red herring half way through. There is also a massive twist in Dead Romance towards the end. I won't give it away, but it totally changes your perspective on the story and it makes the whole thing seem even more dark than it was up to that point.

I really appreciated the lack of action in the book. It is very much a work of reflection. It is all about exactly what is going through the mind of the protagonist and narrator. In fact, the only time in the book that she does something heroic, there is an apology!

The Time Lords are brilliantly portrayed. We never meet a flesh and blood Time Lord in the book, and this distance helps to keep them god-like and ethereal. They appear utterly cold and ruthless. They are simply beyond caring about the lives of human beings. Their obsession with altering the bodies of their subjects and employees is a new idea. I suppose the Rani must have learned her tricks on Gallifrey.

Dead Romance shares some common themes with the works of H.P. Lovecraft, as well as the sense of doom and cosmic pessimism. However, it stands above pretty much everything which is consciously written in the vein of Lovecraft. Seeing Miles manage to use the very same ideas as Lovecraft, yet avoiding the cliches of his imitators made me realise just how bad and pointless most Mythos fiction is.

Dead Romance is simply the cleverest and best written book ever to be associated with Doctor Who. It's absolute literary perfection.

The Book of the War, edited by Lawrence Miles (Faction Paradox)

Between the age of 11 and 14 I was massively into Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 game. This is a tabletop war game in a setting far into the future. Warhammer 40k is probably one of the most vivid and fascinating fictional universes ever created. I gave up Warhammer 40k when I was 14, but in my twenties I would actually buy the Games Workshop magazine, White Dwarf, not because I had taken it up again, but just to enjoy reading the background material. I think Warhammer 40k has gone downhill massively in recent years because of the efforts of Games Workshop editors to impose too much uniformity on their universe. They got rid of something that really made it work; the quirky sense of humour that characterised the background material in the early nineties. Reading The Book of the War reminds me of reading Warhammer 40,000 rulebooks and source books back in the early days of Warhammer 40k. It definitely has the feel of a role-playing source book, with all the elaboration on key characters and factions. It portrays a bleak and rather disturbing cosmos, yet embues that cosmos with a tongue in cheek humour. If the idea of buying a gaming book just to enjoy the source material makes any sense to you, then you are probably going to enjoy The Book of the War.

Lawrence Miles has always been much better at building worlds than coming up with effective plots. His books are always full of brilliant ideas, but tend to ramble and plod a little. This book therefore capitalises on his strengths by dispensing with any plot and just gives a A-Z guide to the various elements of the universe he effectively created out of Doctor Who. He is assisted in this by an imaginative group of writers notably including Simon Bucher-Jones and Mark Clapham, co-authors of the impressive Taking of Planet 5 within the BBC novels original War in Heaven arc.

The key elements of the War in Heaven, Faction Paradox, Celestis, humanoid TARDISes, Mictalan and the mysterious Enemy were all introduced by Miles in the BBC Doctor Who novels. Unfortunately, this stuff was too radical for the BBC range to handle properly so it was all retro-erased in The Ancestor Cell. The Book of the War undoes the destructive work of The Ancestor Cell and expands upon this new and disturbing version of the Whoniverse that we glimpsed in Alien Bodies.

For legal reasons this can't be proper Doctor Who. There are possible references to the Doctor if you look for them, but this is a book about the universe he might have inhabited rather than about the man himself. The elements created by Miles himself, such as Faction Paradox and Compassion are allowed in, as well as Cwej and the Yssgaroth with the permission of their creators. Other key Doctor Who elements have had a change of name. Hence, we get the Great Houses in place of the Time Lords and timeships for TARDISes. The War King is thought to be the Master and the Imperator is definitely Morbius.

The Time Lords, or Great Houses, as they are called in the book, are very much Lawrence Miles vision of the Time Lords. His genius is to combine the two models of the Time Lords that we get in Doctor Who; the predominant Robert Holmes idea of a corrupt and sinister society and the early War Games image of god-like beings. The Great Houses are as Machiavellian as they get, but they are also shown to be an almost all-powerful elemental presence in the universe. It is the Great Houses who have made history what it is. The War is not exactly a physical assault on Gallifrey, but an attempt to overthrow history as the Time Lords have directed it.

The Book of the War does not reveal the identity of the Enemy (would you really want it to?) but does give some elaboration of how they fit into the concepts of the War. Cleverly, a list of entries is offered relating to the Enemy with some intriguing titles, but these are purposely missing. It's a very clever way to play with the reader.

I was very glad to see the use of the Yssgaroth, courtesy of Neil Penswick. These help to tie this world to the mythos of Doctor Who. We get some great discussion about their history and relation to the Time Lords. Neil Penswick never made clear in The Pit whether the Yssgaroth are supposed to be the same as the Great Vampires in State of Decay. The Book of the War essentially treats them as the same. It also introduces the Mal'akh, humans who have been tainted by the Yssgaroth. These are identified with the Nephilim of Genesis 6 in the Old Testament.

One has to admire the sheer scope of this book. It does not simply describe characters and settings but outlines an entire cosmology. As well as the satire of popular culture that one can expect in a Miles book, we also get explorations of philosophy and temporal physics. The book often offers conflicting perspectives on the various concepts and characters, some psychological, some scientific, others theological. This leaves a certain doubt about the whole truth of the War.

In the About Time guides to Doctor Who, Miles and Wood distinguished between science fiction and fantasy by arguing that science fiction deals with humanity's relation to tools, while fantasy deals with humanity's relation to symbols. The Book of the War is totally in the latter category. It is a book about symbols and concepts. For instance Faction Paradox's 'Eleven Day Empire.' The historical change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar resulted in the loss of eleven calendar days. Rather than treating them as merely words and numbers on a paper calendar, these days are treated as having an independent existence which can be used as a stronghold for Faction Paradox. The Book of the War outlines a kind of Platonic metaphysics in which concepts have a real existence as entities. Hence a creature called a 'Memovore' can actually eat concepts! The concept of 'Biodata' does not seem radically different to Plato's concept of the 'Forms.'

One of the greatest aspects of the book is the playful use of language. Some of the titles of the entries are delightful- The Broken Remote, Production Hell, The Unkindnesses. Take the City of the Saved. A lot of readers were annoyed by that, thinking the idea of a city containing the resurrected form of every human who ever lived smacked of religion (there seems to be a big atheist contingent in fandom). Reading the word 'Saved' makes one assume that theological salvation is in mind. However, this is deconstructed in the novel Faction Paradox: Of the City of the Saved..., where somebody points out that 'saved' can refer to data being saved on to a disc or computer drive.

If you are fascinated by the Time Lords, if you enjoy exploration of the background of Doctor Who or you just love reading Lawrence Miles' leftfield ideas, you really need to read this book.

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).

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'

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.

Dr. Who in Fairyland, by Matthew Clarke (my fan fiction)

I wanted to capture something of the whimsical nature of the First Doctor TV Comic adventures, yet also to tie it to later Doctor Who concepts.

These fairies are not scary, freaky fairies like you might find in a Neil Gaiman book. They are old-fashioned, Victorian-style cute fairies.


Meeting Santa Claus and the Pied Piper was one thing, but being in Fairyland was definitely another.

Fairyland was another universe altogether, with quite different properties from the one the TARDIS was used to. It was quite remarkable that the ship had been able to enter it at all.

Being in Fairyland felt very different from being on an alien planet; something seemed quite wrong with everything; as though the visible world was a highly stylised painting rather than the real world. John and Gillian could see colours that they could not describe in words. The proportions of the place seemed wrong. The trees seemed to be of normal height, but they grew next to enormous flowers and colossal toadstools. It seemed to be night, for the sky was full of stars, yet they seemed so bright that it might as well have been day.

Dr. Who and his two grandchildren were seated inside the Grand Palace of Fairyland; though inside seemed a meaningless concept. The palace subverted the normal concepts of indoors and outdoors. It was made up of pillars, canopies, marquees and walkways that seemed to intersect with the trees of the forest themselves and open out into the starlit air. At times they seemed to be 'inside' and at other times 'outside.'

Gillian had once owned a copy of Cicely Mary Baker's 'Flower Fairies of the Garden.' She could not help being reminded of it when she looked at the creatures who surrounded her. They had massive butterfly (or in some cases, moth-like wings). Their skin was pale, almost slightly transparent. Their faces were pretty and they had long, pointed ears. Perhaps their most disconcerting feature was the insectoid antenna that sprouted from their heads. All of them had long silvery hair. They wore long tunics of a silky material. Some of them decorated themselves with silver jewellery, others with flowers or even lengths of cobweb. All of them were barefoot. At times they walked upon the palace/forest ground, at other times they flew about on their insectoid wings. John and Gillian found it impossible to tell which of the Fairies were male and which were female.

"I had never realised that fairies existed!" exclaimed John.

His grandfather shouted at him, "Stop it! Do you realised every time you say that a fairy dies!"

Gillian was horrified. "Oh no, Grandfather," she cried. "That's terrible!"

Dr. Who chuckled. "I was only joking my dear child. Fairies don't exist? Hmmm. Well, you know better now."

The Fairies prepared for the three travellers a quite remarkable feast. John and Gillian were quite unable to identify what most of the dishes were, barring the odd plate of fish or fruit. Their grandfather suggested to them that it might be best not to enquire too deeply into what was on the plates. He neglected to mention that the over sized insects of Fairyland were a massive part of the Fairy diet.

While they were being served, Dr. Who took the opportunity to give his two grandchildren a lesson in cosmology. He explained to them about the six-fold realm of time and space, of Ur-space, the sea in which the multitude of universes floated and of the mysterious Guardians, the celestial powers that governed the multiverse. He explained that Fairyland was a pocket universe, a separate dimension which intersected with their universe. He pointed out that their was another pocket universe from which unimaginably horrifying beings had come, creatures that had been vanquished by the Time Lords a long time ago.

Dr. Who noticed that the assembled lords and ladies of Fairyland seemed as fascinated by his lecture as his grandchildren were. He continued, explaining how the Time Lords had fought against forces of chaos when the universe was young, destroying some of them and banishing others. The universe had been re-ordered by the Time Lords and history directed along the lines of reason demanded by their great hero, Rassilon. Rassilon had reached an agreement with the Fairies, allowing them a limited ability to interact with the normal universe on condition that they resided in Fairyland and stayed there for the most part.

The conversation soon shifted to lighter topics, such as hunts and flowers and stars. John and Gillian enquired about the animals that lived in Fairyland, and were fascinated to learn about dragons, unicorns and giant butterflies.

The meal was followed by much music and dancing, with the Fairies singing and playing on instruments that resembled harps. The TARDIS crew were invited to join in their dances, though this proved difficult, as the Fairies involved flight in their dancing.

During the festivities, the Fairy King (he looked as beautiful as his queen) took Dr. Who to one side to talk in serious matters.

"Doctor, we have accepted the Time Lords dominance of your universe for a long time, but we grow weary of it. We have watched as the Time Lords have allowed great evils to go unchecked throughout the cosmos. There are many among the Elder Folk who feel that it is time that we tore up our treaty with Rassilon. There are voices in Fairyland that are calling for war against the Time Lords," said the Fairy King.

"A War in Heaven, what a terrifying thought," replied the Doctor. "I don't mind admitting that the thought makes me very afraid."

"You Time Lords travel in time, to us time is meaningless. If war comes between ourselves and the Time Lords, it will be a time war, perhaps a war that will end your very notion of time," said the Fairy King.

"Maybe so, maybe so," replied Dr. Who. "I don't doubt that you people have terrible powers. Nevertheless, I would be careful you don't go thinking that you would win a war in heaven. I fear that the Time Lords have it in them tear Fairyland apart if it came to that."

"Let it be hoped that it does not come to that," said the Fairy King. "Perhaps you can warn the Time Lords that the eyes of the Elder Ones are upon them. We will not suffer their misrule forever."


It was soon time for the TARDIS crew to take their leave of Fairyland and to return to the normal universe. They were given rich gifts, some of the strange food and bottles of equally strange wine. John was given a sword made of some silvery metal and Gillian was given a bow and arrows made of the same stuff. Both of them were given the silky tunics that the Fairies wore, though John did not seem as enthusiastic about this gift as Gillian.

"We hope that one day you will return," said the Fairy Queen. "There is much that we could learn from your race." The Fairy King looked sadly at her as she said this.

After the TARDIS dematerialised, Dr. Who pondered on the solemn warnings the Fairy King had given him. Would the Fairies really go to war with the Time Lords? He knew that despite their benign appearance, the Fairies had terrifying military capabilities. If they had fought against Rassilon in the Eternal War, it was not certain who would have prevailed. Were the Fairies really prepared to unleash a four-dimensional war on the cosmos?

The Wormery, by Stephen Cole and Paul Magrs (Big Finish Audio)

* Spoiler alert! *

‘You say you never wanted her in your hair, well as you know she’s famous for it! Her name induces sighs of despair, well as you know she’s famous for it! Aside from vats of liquor, your cupboard is bare! You damn her to the devil but she’s already there! No one else beside her you’re beside yourself with joy!’

I think I can safely say that The Wormery is the most entertaining Big Finish I have heard so far. It has such great sense of fun and frivolity that is thoroughly grounded in the imagery and themes of cabaret. For the most part, The Wormery also feels refreshingly original.

Iris Wildthyme was first introduced by Paul Magrs in the BBC novels. She is a marvellously entertaining character, particularly in the way she is a bizarre parody of the Doctor. This is particularly well exploited here in that the story mirrors the Trial of the Time Lord, a recent memory for the Doctor, with Bianca turning out to be an evil version of Iris who is intent on stealing her regenerations. Hilariously, the Doctor is outraged that his own adventures are being copycatted.

Katy Manning might have played the worst Dr. Who companion ever, but all his forgiven after her portrayal of Iris Wildthyme. Katy is simply glorious as Iris. Maria McErlane is also great as Bianca, coming across as delightfully camp.

The Wormery offers much exploration of the character of the Sixth Doctor. We see his inner turmoil after the events of the trial and his deep loneliness. We discover his secret affection for Iris; he is very cross when she reveals that she does not care for this incarnation (though she later changes her mind and concludes that he is very 'cuddly').

This story is certainly a lot better than The Ancestor Cell, a novel that Stephen Cole co-authored (review coming up eventually). Interestingly enough, the background of the worms is remarkably similar to the theory about who The Enemy are in The Ancestor Cell. The Wormery does have a few faults. Its plot is confusing. It is also not much of a surprise when Sylvester McCoy makes a cameo at the end. I also felt it ought to have been a little more obvious that many of the patrons of the bar were from other worlds.

The song that Iris, and later Bianca, sing is wonderfully catchy and is so true to Iris' character. It is a real shame that it was not included at the end as a music track, as Big Finish might have done had this been put out more recently.

The Wormery is one of the best of the Big Finish range and a great introduction to Iris Wildthyme for those who missed her in the BBC books.

Goth Opera, by Paul Cornell (Virgin Missing Adventure)

Tegan flicked open a page and began to read at random and with force, drowning out the vampire's words. She kept on walking until she was nose to nose with the creature. 'You can't lay a finger on me, can you?' she told him. 'I've got a good book in my hands, and a dirty great snake in my brain, so get back!' She emphasised the point with a finger stuck very nearly up Jeremy's nose. 'Or I'll bite your head off.'

These days I don't like vampire stuff very much at all. I was introduced to the Anne Rice books when I was when I was 17 and read quite a few of them, though all the sex did bother my conscience. I also developed a collection of vampire movies that I destroyed about seven years ago when I decided they were not very edifying. Nevertheless, within the Doctor Who mythos I am quite fascinated by the idea of an ancient conflict between the vampires and the Time Lords. Goth Opera homes in on why this conflict seems so appropriate- the fact that there is a similarity between the immortal, invulnerable vampires and the immortal, invulnerable Time Lords. It is Goth Opera that first suggests the notion that the Time Lords gained their ability to regenerate from the vampires, a notion repeated in Lawrence Miles' Book of the War.

Paul Cornell is a great writer and it's hard to imagine him giving us a bad novel. Goth Opera maintains the standards to which he had kept in his New Adventures. Cornell liked to go to town on continuity references and he pushes it a little too far in describing Romana's escape from Ruath, an escapade that sees her ending up in a Drashig-filled miniscope, meeting Sabalom Glitz, before being rescued by Castellan Spandrell. It's a silly incident, but one can't help finding it funny.

Continuity-wise, this book is closely connected to Terrance Dicks' New Adventure, Blood Harvest. It would be helpful for readers to have read this before embarking on Goth Opera, but it can still be enjoyed without the knowledge of the events of Blood Harvest.

Nyssa gets to show some much needed personality in this book. Having her becoming a vampire made her so much more interesting that I wished she would stay that way. The Fifth Doctor is also very well portrayed, showing that breathless energy that made him so likable. However, for me it was Tegan who was the star of the show. She is so fiery! I love her description of the Fifth Doctor- "a really dull Romper Room reject who'd rather play bloody cricket than do anything entertaining." Cornell dwells on the fact that the Mara's possession is a permanent change to Tegan's nature. It does seem it is rather an improvement. The best moment in the book for me was when Tegan was completely unafraid of the vampire and chases him out of her room, having been taught to deal with his sort by her Serbian grandfather.

Yarven and Ruath are rather pantomime, but they are fun. The part where Ruath sacrifices herself to restore Yarven and then regenerates was cool. It was especially interesting to find out she was the Doctor's ex-girlfriend. I loved her description of Borusa's class at the academy:

Her eyes never left the Doctor's. 'Mortimus, the Rani, that idiot Magnus. And you, Doctor. All graduates of Borusa's Academy for Scoundrels.'

I thought the vampire baby was a little too comical to fit with the darker themes of the book. The story could have done without it. Nevertheless, the rest of the characters are very well conceived. Goth Opera is definitely one of the great books of the Virgin range of novels and a superb introduction to the Missing Adventures.

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.