The first six novels to feature Matt Smith’s 11th Doctor demonstrate why the first batch of novels for ANY new Doctor will suffer, compared to the batch that follows.
The first three books, comprising batch #1, are written with very little visual material to work from, other than film rushes, rough cuts, and snippets of scenes made available to the writers…IF such things are made available at all. Only the scripts and the character outlines offer prospective authors any hint of how to successfully transfer the Doctor and Amy to print. It’s hit and miss, at best…and the first batch definitely screams “miss” on this occasion. I’d also use the word “disappointing“…
Luckily, along comes batch #2 to redeem the situation. A good chunk of the episodes have been broadcast, lending more legitimacy to the literary characterizations, and offering writers far greater inspiration. This hopefully combines with some more ambitious storytelling…and in this case, the second batch truly delivers. All three books capture the fairy tale atmosphere permeating the season…and each one manages to do this in radically different ways.
In short, batch #2 quickly wiped the bad taste of batch #1 from my mouth…but you can judge for yourself, from the capsule reviews below…
Written by Justin Richards
The novel with the strongest plot of the first batch…though that’s damning with faint praise. Technically, it’s well constructed, flows smoothly, and plays with some nice cold-war/American visuals. It would have made a successful transition to television, providing they filmed in New Mexico or Nevada.
But there’s little heart in the story, and it’s the weakest of the three in terms of capturing the characterizations of the 11th Doctor and Amy. I didn’t dislike it…and there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the book. But I ached for a bit more ambition it its execution. The Doctor Who novel most likely to be nominated as “just because it’s good enough”.
5
Written by Brian Minchin
The weakest Doctor Who novel since Judgement of the Judoon…and perhaps the weakest since the launch of the New Series novels back in 2005. It’s absolutely childish and clichéd from start to finish, and it attempts to masque its shortcomings by throwing the plot into warp speed, not stopping for anything. It’s certainly the best way to get through the novel…especially when I simply didn’t care what happened by the end of it.
What is more irritating is that there are flashes of absolute genius at times: the characters of the Doctor and Amy are nailed, and even animals at the zoo get hilarious moments of contemplation (especially when a certain elephant encounters a mastadon). Why the rest of the novel couldn’t expand these brief flashes of inspiration remains THE unanswered question…
3
Written by David Llewellyn
Now this is the first hint that the range is back on form. The opening third is rather run-of-the-mill in terms of characterising the future, and offers a main villain so outrageously camp and cardboard thin that you wonder if the author is simply taking the mickey out of the readership. However, it introduces some interesting ideas into a standard us-vs-them conflict…and then it runs with it once we cross the halfway point.
The final third of the novel - especially the conclusion - plays with some poignant and extraordinary visuals, and puts the characters into some tense and emotional situations that are all but absent from the previous two novels. It’s the only book out of the first batch that I actually raced to finish, and that’s always a good sign. Not perfect, but getting there…
7
Written by Gary Russell
Not quite as good as his previous novel, Beautiful Chaos…but only by a hair! Now THIS is the good stuff, at last. A ridiculously impressive alien race that comes straight out of the Douglas Adams school of civilizations (aliens made of WOOL, for heaven’s sake!)…a TARDIS crew on top form (Rory is especially extraordinary and on form) …a fascinating mix of various historical periods…and a dollop of solid psychology to top it all off. You never know where the plot is going until the very last moment…and then you kick yourself for not seeing it earlier.
I read this on the plane on my way back from Paris, and time seemed to pass by in an instant. I’m willing to nominate this as the archetype for what a solid, entertaining, and successful Doctor Who novel should be…and Gary Russell never disappoints. If anything, it could have used another 50 pages to flesh the characters out even more…but I’m looking for minor quibbles at this point.
9
Written by Una McCormack
It is VERY difficult to get me to enjoy a Doctor Who novel with a heavy fantasy base…it’s simply not my cup of tea. That said, it’s as if Ms. McCormack had read that in my mind and took it as a challenge. Dragon-shaped spaceships, medieval-looking civilizations founded on rational debate and mutual compromise….thrown upside down by two con-men, an addictive substance to end all addictive substances (with another bit of dark psychological analysis thrown in for good measure), and a galactic conflict that places this medieval world smack dab in the middle of some deadly crossfire.
In terms of ruritanian-flavoured futurism, this is the adoptive child of 1978’s The Androids of Tara, and it’s just as successful. The reader becomes just as frustrated and worried about the situation as the TARDIS crew trying to how to resolve the situation…and reading to the end in order to see how the Doctor will save the world once again makes for some breathtaking material. This is Doctor Who as Phillip Pullman might imagine…and it’s a very satisfying adventure.
9
Written by Oli Smith
…or, as it could be retitled, “The Novel that Apollo 23 WISHES It COULD Have Been!”
It’s the weakest novel of batch #2, but it’s also the most ambitious, the most outrageous, and the most mind-shredding. It’s the first novel to play games with time and the nature of the TARDIS in some considerable time, and the weakness merely stems from the fact that it could use 100 PAGES of extra characterization…because the material DEMANDS more time. It’s settling for very good when it could have been MAGNIFICENT, on the level of Lance Parkin’s The Eyeless.
But fear not…for what we DO get is a timey-wimey catastrophe in the making, with the astonishingly brave move of telling much of the story BACKWARDS, from the Doctor’s temporally-screwed point of view. It sets everything is a strange world where Valley of the Dolls has collided with an ultimate version of an Austin Powers fembot by way of The Stepford Wives…something I never thought I would write as a description for a Doctor Who novel! In short, it’s flawed GENIUS at its best…and another type of story that only Doctor Who could play with successfully.
8
