Doctor Who: Doom Coalition
by Matt Fitton; John Dorney; Marc Platt; Edward Collier (Big Finish, 2015)
Doom Coalition introduces one of the most striking and original Who villains ever: the Eleven, a Time Lord with trans-incarnational dissociative identity disorder. Unfortunately, having featured in the first story, he subsequently becomes a background presence à la the Key to Time.
Doctor Who: The Time Monster
by Robert Sloman; dir. Paul Bernard (BBC, 1972)
Roger Delgado is a tour de force as the Master but once again a Pertwee-era story does his character no justice. The Time Monster is overlong and shambolic — its threat false, the scheme pea-brained — with bafflegab and deus ex machina to burn.
Doctor Who: The Return of Doctor Mysterio
by Steven Moffat (BBC, 2016)
The New Series Christmas invasion takes a new twist when the Doctor, through rather comic happenstance, creates a bona fide superhero. Peter Capaldi revels in the light-hearted humour while the Superman homage dovetails nicely with the longstanding dynamic between Doctor and companion.
Doctor Who: Paradox Lost
by George Mann (BBC, 2011); audiobook read by Nicholas Briggs
In an otherwise fairly nondescript Eleventh Doctor adventure, Mann introduces two minor characters with potential for future appearances: Professor Angelchrist, an early twentieth century gentleman adventurer; and Arven, a soft-spoken AI from future London. Of less interest is the dismissively-dealt-with titular paradox.
Doctor Who: The Empty House
by Simon Guerrier (BBC, 2013); audiobook read by Raquel Cassidy
Guerrier’s well-executed Eleventh Doctor novelette puts a new spin on some old Doctor Who tropes. (New to Who, that is; in the time-honoured tradition of gothic homage this one is rather reminiscent of Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others, which incidentally featured Christopher Eccleston.)
Doctor Who: Terror of the Zygons
by Robert Banks Stewart; dir. Douglas Camfield (BBC, 1975)
The Zygons engineer a creature that can withstand nuclear weaponry, but themselves are one of the few aliens not impervious to UNIT bullets. Dynamically directed with plenty of location filming and lush, organic sets, Terror sadly peters out to become Sock Puppet.
Doctor Who: The Edge of Destruction
by David Whitaker, dir. Richard Martin (BBC, 1964)
Jacqueline Hill out-acts her fellow regulars in this, the third ever Doctor Who serial, a remarkable two-parter set entirely within the TARDIS. The tense, eerie and unsettling, claustrophobic drama of disorientation and distrust prefigures by forty-four years the David Tennant story Midnight.
Doctor Who: Shroud of Sorrow
by Tommy Donbavand (BBC, 2013); audiobook read by Frances Barber
Although Donbavand captures the Eleventh Doctor’s quick-fire whimsy very well, he rather lingers upon it, which in book (and especially audiobook) form robs the story of tension. Barber’s narration is fine but her JFK Dallas accents sound gratingly like the wild west.
Doctor Who: The Spectre of Lanyon Moor
by Nicholas Pegg (Big Finish, 2000)
Writer director Nicholas Pegg takes the Sixth Doctor and Evelyn out onto the moors and somewhat loses his way. The story proceeds at a ramble, the subplots more or less resolve themselves, and the Doctor, though empathetic, lacks both urgency and agency.
Doctor Who: The Crawling Terror
by Mike Tucker (BBC, 2014); audiobook read by Neve McIntosh
Although featuring the Twelfth Doctor and Clara, this novel labours along like the most interminable of Third Doctor stories; neither original in content nor polished in execution (think ‘Planet of the Spiders’ meets ‘Invasion of the Dinosaurs’). Neve McIntosh cannot save it.