Doctor Who Reviews: 'The History of the Doctor'

Doctor Who has finally become a fairy tale. Quite where the transformation began, I’m not sure, although it undoubtedly picked up pace earlier this year as the Matt Smith era began. It’s not to say that once the series was hard science fiction; there’s been the occasional episode of a more scientifically realistic bent, but at heart this is a show about a man who flies around in a police box. It’s always leaned more heavily towards fantasy than sci-fi. Still, A Christmas Carol, more so even than The Big Bang, is Doctor Who as fairy tale...

Over the last half decade we’ve all become accustomed to Doctor Who’s festive thrills and spills. The annual Christmas special seems to have developed its own identity and set of rules separate to those of the series that we watch as spring turns to summer. Cinematic set pieces, celebrity guest stars, even specially-written songs – these are all critical ingredients in a modern Who Christmas. But A Christmas Carol is the first Christmas Day episode of Doctor Who in forty-five years not to have been written by Russell T Davies and carried by David Tennant. This year we have a new writer and a new Doctor, and a brand new rulebook to go with them...

2010 has been a fantastic year for the site; our most flourishing yet, in fact. As well as embracing a slick new look; incorporating countless ‘Companion’ and ‘Continuity Corners’; expanding our scope to take in several more spin-off series; posting masses of your feedback; and attracting over ten million visitors since The End of Time (I remember when we used to average 83 visitors per month!), we’ve also earned kind words from a few different people involved with Big Finish, and can now claim to be Google’s number one ranked site for the search term “doctor who reviews”. We’re further down the list for “dr who reviews”, unfortunately, but unless you’re unusually lazy or looking for critiques of the old Peter Cushing movies (which we do have, incidentally), then you shouldn’t really be typing that anyway.

In 2011 we hope to build upon this year’s successes. My first order of business will be to finally put paid to the technical issues that continue to beleaguer us – I’m afraid that unless you’re reading this in Microsoft Internet Explorer or a browser with an Internet Explorer plugin, then this page (and indeed, most of the site) is going to look very peculiar indeed – but this won’t prevent us bringing you reviews of all the latest full length Doctor Who stories as soon after their release as we reaso-nably can (or, as is more often the case, affordably can. It’s an expensive game, this). What’s more, Dan, Chris and I are presently conspiring with a view to adding an exciting new dimension to the site over the next year, and by the end of January 2011 I hope to have closed the circle by reviewing the last batch of BBC Books, finally completing The History of the Doctor - 1963-2010, at least.

I’d also like to take his opportunity to unveil our updated Big Finish List of Stories, which is now available for download as a PDF. I would have liked to have made this available much sooner, but before I’d listened to productions such as The Four Doctors and Farewell, Great Macedon, I hadn’t the foggiest idea as to where to place them. As before, this list is entirely unofficial, and in places contradicts the guidance offered by Big Finish, but our reckoning is always set out in the Continuity Corners found on the site. Let the errata avalanche begin…

It just remains for me to wish you all a very merry Christmas, and to thank Dan, Chris, Joe, and Kory for all their hard work, as well as all those readers who have helped out with the Continuity Corners (Jason particularly). Without these continuing contributions, the site wouldn’t be within a whisker of covering the whole canon – and doing it justice too, I hope.

See you after A Christmas Carol.

With the notable exception of the hiatus-hit mid-1980s, Doctor Who’s first year of production seems to boast more for-saken pitches and aborted scripts than any other era of the show. Terry Nation, for instance, found his adventure about the British Raj in India being shelved in favour an inevitable Dalek sequel, whilst Malcolm Hulke’s plans for a story about...

The Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance is the most excep-tional Lost Story that Big Finish have produced thus far. Unlike its predecessors, which had all been constructed from the ashes of solicited submissions to the Doctor Who production office, this one-off episode was penned by Moris Farhi simply to show the series’ original script...

There’s been a buzz about this release for almost a year now. Big Finish’s annual anthologies always seem to prove popular with listeners in any event, but The Demons of Red Lodge and Other Stories is a particularly exciting offering as, just like 2008’s Forty-Five, its four stories have been written by authors new the range - and in one notable case, new to...

Each year that I’ve been a Big Finish subscriber, their annual bonus release has become ever more enticing, culmin-ating in this Christmas’s irresistible offering, The Four Doctors, the title of which tells you almost everything that you need to know. I say ‘almost’, because as well as Peter Davison; Colin Baker; Sylvester McCoy; and Paul McGann, The Four Doctors also features the Daleks...

The TARDIS intercepts a distress signal and the Doctor feels obligated to investigate.

Tracing the call to a beautiful world, the Ship lands within a mysterious vessel, and soon

the Doctor, Steven and Dodo find themselves trapped in the sinister clutches of the Voord.

And to make matters worse, there is also another TARDIS on board the Voord ship -

a TARDIS with a Monk at its helm.

With Dodo and Steven held hostage inside the Monk's TARDIS,

the Doctor is forced to assist his fellow time traveller in completing a dangerous task.

But why has the Monk allied himself with the Voord? What is their bold, new intention?

And what is the strange object that lies at the bottom of the Ravine?

The answer to these questions leads the Doctor straight into a catastrophe

that hits closer to home than he ever thought possible…

Featuring the first Doctor, Steven, Dodo and the Monk, this novella takes place between the

TV stories The Gunfighters and The Savages, and after the novel Bunker Soldiers.

Of all the Demon Quest adventures, I get the impression that Paul Magrs enjoyed writing this one the most. A Shard of Ice is a romantic tale blazing with intoxicating imagery and me-taphor, and with a strong moral message at its centre to boot. Doctor Who stories will often have a lesson or two slyly buried in them, but this story’s is so explicit that it could...

Due to postal delays caused by the adverse weather conditions here

in the UK, our Demon Quest reviews will continue in January 2011.

The second stage of the Doctor’s Demon Quest brings him to Montmartre in the late 19th century, where a murderous shape-shifter has been preying upon the population of artists and demi-reps, including a certain chanson réaliste cabaret singer immortalised in a poster by beleaguered painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who just happens to look...

I’ve really been looking forward to this Hornets’ Nest sequel. Whilst last year’s mini-series may not have been quite what I was expecting at first, as it progressed I became increa-singly enamoured with it. In a market saturated with Doctor Who audio adventures of every conceivable kind, there is nothing el-se even remotely like the acclaimed Paul Magrs / Tom Baker...

Prior to this year’s extravagant live tour, Doctor Who and the Daleks in ‘Seven Keys to Doomsday’ was the most ful-some stage production ever mounted under the series’ banner. Designed to be performed in West End theatres before huge audiences, this 1974 production had more money thrown at it than most Doctor Who television serials...

When Johnny Morris sat down to write The Resurrect-ion of Mars, he didn’t simply dash off a synopsis or even weigh in with one of his trademark tone summaries. Instead, he wrote a 2,000 word essay about the issues that he wanted to explore in his story. This essay would give rise to the most thoughtful and provocative tale about the Doctor, his ethics, and...

Simon A Forward must be an acquired taste. Of all his works published to date, I’ve only really enjoyed The Sandman, which puts me firmly in the minority, especially when it comes to his magnum opus, Emotional Chemistry. Forward’s renowned eighth Doctor novel is not only imaginative and beautifully-writ-ten, but it’s also indulgent and romantic too...

Sometime Never… marked the beginning of the end for the eighth Doctor in print. It brought BBC Books’ last long-runn-ing story arc to a resounding close, masterfully tying up many of the range’s long-standing threads (as well as few from its ‘past Doctor’ sister range besides), inflaming and...

Our BBC Books “retro reviews” will continue in January 2011.

I’m surprised that Big Finish’s recent first Doctor Lost Stories didn’t include an adaptation of what many would argue is the definitive Lost Story; the original, you might say. Anthony Coburn’s Masters of Luxor was originally intended to be the series’ second serial, occupying the slot that would eventually be allocated to a seven-part script from Terry Nation...

With the BBC, Big Finish and Telos all publishing new and apparently divergent adventures for the eighth Doctor, it’s actually quite surprising that it took until 2002 for BBC Books to take alternative timelines and forge a gripping story out of them. Time Zero sees Justin Richards takes a cold, hard look at whet-her the Doctor’s erratic existence could ever be confined...

Simon Messingham’s fourth novel for BBC Books, The Infinity Race, is probably the most divisive of the lot. Not only does it seem to prompt polarised opinions from different rea-ders, but it often does so within an individual reader too. I, for instance, love it and loathe it in fairly equal measure...

It’s tempting to be scathing of BBC Books’ “alternative timelines” arc, given that Virgin had done something very similar almost a decade previously in the New Adventures, but I just can’t bring myself to be because it’s so very impressive. The canon may be littered with innumerable tales that explore...

Despite my waxing eloquent about their merits for many years now, it wasn’t until earlier this year that my brother tried his first original Who novel: Reckless Engineering by Nick Walters. Some might think it a peculiar choice for an introductory read, given that it is neither a novel of great repute nor even one...

With the notable exception of The Turing Test, The Last Resort is perhaps Paul Leonard’s most remarkable Doctor Who novel. A scintillating synthesis of half-plagiarised ideas; wanton, meaningless death; and staggering temporal set pie-ces, this book may not be perfect, but it’s certainly provocative...

Timeless saw prolific range contributor and former editor Stephen Cole tasked with bringing another chapter in the eighth Doctor’s long life to a resounding close. Having already erased the Time Lords from history and rendered the Doctor amnesiac, this novel sees Cole finally...

It must have taken nearly the length of the first episode for me to appreciate the irony of the situation; perhaps my synapses were half-frozen. There I was, half asleep at half seven in the morning, wading through nearly four feet of snow and listening to an audio play that told of how the Ice Warriors had awoken from their slumber and were planning to freeze their...

The Brilliant Book of Doctor Who 2011 was a little surprise gift from my wife. The Book People reportedly nobbled her at work and, knowing that I generally don’t go for reference works (preferring as I do to create my own!), she was able to purchase this copper-bound tome safe in the knowledge...

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