Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters
by Terrance Dicks; read by Katy Manning (Bolinda, 2014)
[first published by Target, 1977]
Precious few Target novelisations reach heights anywhere near those of the original broadcasts; certainly none by Terrance ‘run-of-the-mill’ Dicks. Carnival of Monsters is elevated somewhat in audiobook form by voice artist Katy Manning, whose range encompasses even a husky Jon Pertwee imitation.
Doctor Who: Wooden Heart
by Martin Day (BBC, 2007)
While exploring a spaceship filled with corpses, the Tenth Doctor and Martha discover a mysterious village within a forest bigger than the ship itself. This story is remarkably televisual, though as a corollary perhaps presents more as a novelisation than standalone novel.
Doctor Who: The Forever Trap
by Dan Abnett (BBC Audio, 2008)
For Doctor Who aficionados this is Paradise Towers meets The Long Game, plus a satire on bureaucracy. Unfortunately, this latter element is ipso facto less than riveting, and once overcome leaves nothing but the standard Tenth Doctor recourse to resolution via knob-twiddling.
Doctor Who: Fear Itself
by Nick Wallace (BBC Books, 2005)
Fear Itself is of that rare breed of standalone Doctor Who novel the success of which doesn’t depend on familiar echoes of the programme itself. Wallace crafts a mystery — one that actually wouldn’t work on television — melding setting, characterisation and genuine intrigue.
Doctor Who: The Last Voyage
by Dan Abnett (BBC Audio, 2010)
The Last Voyage – a somewhat middling spaceship under siege story – would have been a flat read on page, but has some life breathed into it by David Tennant’s engaging narration and redolent-of-Doctor acting. Even so, both premise and prose seem awkwardly belaboured.
Doctor Who: The Rising Night
by Scott Handcock (BBC Audio, 2009)
A village in perpetual darkness; a devourer that makes the (companionless Tenth) Doctor retreat into his own mind: The Rising Night begins with great promise but doesn’t deliver, undermining its threat with a deus ex machina solution and an irksome moral quandary.
Doctor Who: 50th Anniversary Collection
(Puffin, 2013)
Doctor Who doesn’t lend itself well to short fiction. This collection of stories — one each for the Doctor’s first eleven incarnations — is pleasant enough, but only Neil Gaiman’s darkly imaginative ‘Nothing O’Clock’ moves beyond nostalgia into the realms of original, broadcast-worthy adventures.
Doctor Who: Dark Horizons
by J. T. Colgan (BBC, 2012)
While writing in a style evoking the tv show’s snapshot paciness, Colgan nevertheless crafts a solid historical setting — a Scottish island under both Viking and alien incursion — and adds depth to the mercurial flitting about of Matt Smith’s otherworldly (yet unworldly) Doctor.
Doctor Who: The Ring of Steel
by Stephen Cole (BBC Audio, 2010)
#DoctorWho meets War of the Worlds (or the Tripods; take your pick) in an adventure that does little to exonerate the programme from claims it repeatedly sledgehammers the law of conservation of energy (while outdoing Wells for off-handedness in thwarting alien invasions).
Doctor Who, Series 9
BBC, 2015
Bookended by Steven Moffat’s tulipomaniacal stake-raising and overblown (if ingenious) retrofitting of Doctor Who’s mythology, the other writers of Series 9 have crafted a straight flush of dark, self-contained science fantasy; gothic disturbances in which Peter Capaldi adds depth to his characterisation.