Doctor Who novels
December 30th 2006 04:32
The first book I ever read and liked was a Doctor Who book. It was called 'The Dalek Invasion of Earth' and I borrowed it from my local library when I was 8. From here on in I would read virtually nothing voluntarily but Doctor Who, up until the age of around 19. There are a lot of Doctor Who books, and I have read nowhere near them all.
For those of you not in the know (I pity thee!), Doctor Who is a British science-fiction/adventure television show. It's the greatest thing ever put on TV, ever. It even beats most movies. It's the longest running science-fiction show of all time, it ran uninterrupted from 1963 to 1989, and was recently revived (with much success) in 2005. To put it shortly, it rules. It's about a mysterious alien called The Doctor, who travels through time and space in a wonderful and quaint travelling machine called the TARDIS. He often travels with human companions, and they get into adventures throughout all of time and space. Lots of cool stuff happens and they meet historical figures, nasty aliens and robots, and all sorts of cool stuff. Did I mention cool stuff?
Anyway, what really turned me into such a rabid fan of Doctor Who was the novels. The show is great, don't get me wrong, but the books opened up a whole other world for me. At first, there were just novelisations of the television episodes, but when Doctor Who got cancelled in 1989 - well, the floodgates opened. Stacks of amazing and original full-length novels were written. I've built up quite a collection, nearly 300 (by no means all of them), and it fills up an entire bookcase.
Yes. I am a massive nerd!
Here are some of the different ranges of novels...
The Target Novelisations
These are thin 100 page books written for a family audience. They're mostly book versions of the televised stories (with one or two exceptions). Every televised Doctor Who story from between 1963 and 1989 has been released in book form, with about four exceptions (for copyright reasons). You can find a lot of these books for about a dollar each in second hand stores. Some editions and releases are quite rare. There are only seven of these that I don't have.
The New Adventures
A couple of years after Doctor Who was cancelled, a licence was granted to Virgin books to publish a range of original Doctor Who books. Recognising that Doctor Who fans were mostly no longer children, it was decided to run with the format and go deeper and more broadly with the stories. There were very few taboos as far as these books were concerned. Swearing, sex, gratuitous violence - nothing was off limits. Fans were polarised by the books... some were put off by the more adult nature, or felt that the books didn't really capture the feel of the show. Some - like me - absolutely adored them. The New Adventures opened up the Doctor Who universe in ways that very few science-fiction franchises have managed. Unlike, say, Star Trek novels, these books were given almost free range with what they could do with their characters. As there was no on-air counterpart to the novels, the degree of freedom given to the writers was quite large. Major characters from the show were killed off... new versions of villains and aliens appeared. All sorts of COOL STUFF happened.
The Missing Adventures
With the success of the New Adventures, Virgin decided to launch a second line of novels. Whereas the New Adventures continued the adventures of the last and most current Doctor (the 7th Doctor), these novels would bring us new stories featuring the past incarnations of the Doctor. Originally aimed to be more traditional than their New Adventure counterparts, the Missing Adventures ended up being just as daring in some aspects - at one or two points even directly contradicting the televised series!
The BBC Avdentures
After five or eight years or so (I can't remember), Virgin's licence ran out and the BBC (who owned the original rights) decided they would publish their own line of novels rather than renew Virgin's contract. The subsequent novels were published in two lines... one featuring past Doctors (now including the 7th), and one concentrating on the further adventures of the 8th Doctor (from the failed American telemovie pilot for a new series of Doctor Who). The BBC were a lot more conservative with their treatment of the franchise, the past Doctors line was a lot more traditional in scope and the 8th Doctor line - while sometimes incredibly daring in the ways it broke with the show's established mythology - remained altogether less adult in what it was willing to allow on the written page.
Virgin Books
But the New Adventures weren't going without a fight! Although their licence had been revoked, and the last few Doctor Who novels they published had to be pulped in large numbers to avoid copyright issues (and now fetch up to 150 pounds each on eBay in some cases), Virgin decided to keep on keeping on. Utilising a popular companion character they had created for the New Adventures range (25th century crusading archeologist and party girl, Bernice 'Benny' Summerfield), they continued to publish Doctor-less science-fiction adventures set in the Doctor Who universe. They weren't allowed to mention anything Doctor Who related by name, but if you know Doctor Who and read these books it's pretty obvious which characters and alien races they refer to and feature sometimes. This line was doomed to fail though, it's audience appeal was minimal, and it petered out a year or two after it started.
Telos Novellas
A short-lived range of Doctor Who novellas was commissioned by the BBC as well, granting a short licence to an independent publisher. These books explored the show in a variety of new and interesting ways, and brought some new writing talent in, and were very much of the 'collectors item' variety - featuring detailed frontspieces and hard covers. A few spinoff non-Doctor novellas have been published in this range since their licence for Doctor Who ran out.
BBC Books 2005
With the new televised 2005 series of Doctor Who, the BBC called their line of original Doctor Who books to a halt. The 8th Doctor stories were tailed off with an epic called 'The Gallifrey Chronicles', and it's unknown if the past Doctor adventures will be revived any time in the near future. Instead we now have new novels featuring the current televised Doctors. 2005-2006 saw the release of 6 books featuring the 9th Doctor, and 2006 onwards has seen the publication of three 10th Doctor novels and another four on the horizon. These novels aren't as long as previous original novels, and - in keeping with the on-air show - are more mainstream and family orientated. I'm yet to read any of these.
And that's about it! I'm sure I'll talk more about my adventures with Doctor Who in the future (apologies to anyone who isn't interested, hahaha).
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