Doctor Who at Christmas: The Christmas Invasion

In other Doctor Who Christmas news, my review of the Bernice Summerfield box set that takes place during Space Christmas, New Frontiers, is up at Unreality SF. It was released in April originally for some reason, though.

Mass market paperback, 169 pages
Published 2018
Acquired and read December 2018

Doctor Who: The Christmas Invasion

by Jenny T. Colgan

I keep thinking I've read all the Doctor Who Christmas books, and BBC Books keeps releasing more just in the nick of time; in 2018, they published novelisations of two different Christmas specials, and thus I read The Christmas Invasion for this year. (Twice Upon a Time will wait for 2019.)

It's exactly what a novelisation should be, I reckon, a pretty straight retelling of the television episode that reminds you why you liked it so much. Actually, "The Christmas Invasion" isn't one of my favorites, but like all Russell T Davies stories, it's chock-ful of brilliant moments, which Colgan usually captures. Jackie Tyler gets all the best lines, and I love the way everyone in the universe reacts to Harriet Jones. Some moments, like a swordfight or an evil Christmas tree, aren't really suited to prose, but she makes up for it by fleshing out the characters. By the end of the book, I really liked Sally Jacobs, the secretary at UNIT I probably wouldn't have even remembered before opening the book. Colgan gives us some nice moments with her, especially the night as the Sycorax ship approaches. Now I want to know when she will reappear in Big Finish's UNIT audios! The fleshing out of Major Blake (surely the shortest lived UNIT-UK commanding officer) was nice too.

Colgan also has a good handle on the regulars. There's a great moment at the book's end, where this new Doctor realizes what's changed about his relationship with Rose Tyler, and he's excited and frightened all at once. It's a good piece of characterization, and some nice foreshadowing of "Doomsday" all at once.

"The Christmas Invasion" isn't a very Christmassy story to be honest; most of the seasonal flavor on screen comes from visuals and music, which don't replicate well on the page. But I liked how Colgan used apt Christmas carols for chapter titles (e.g., "Do You Hear What I Hear?" when Mickey and Jackie hear the TARDIS land), and the closing Christmas dinner is a highlight of mixed emotion, like Christmas dinners so often are. Like the best Doctor Who Christmas books, a nice way to get into the spirit of the season.

(This is the first of the 21st-century Target novels I've read; it's a very nice little retro package. I particularly liked the "CHANGING FACE OF DOCTOR WHO" blurb for the tenth Doctor.)

Next Week: Back to the Time Lord Fairy Tales, with The Scruffy Piper!

Review: Doctor Who: Time Trips by Jenny T. Colgan et al.

Hardcover, 382 pages
Published 2015 (contents: 2013-15)
Acquired October 2016
Read February 2017

Doctor Who: Time Trips
by A. L. Kennedy, Jenny T. Colgan, Nick Harkaway, Trudi Canavan, Jake Arnott, Cecelia Ahern, Joanne Harris, and Stella Duffy

On the heels of 2013's 11 Doctors, 11 Stories, BBC Books deployed another monthly e-book series, the fruits of which are collected here in print format. Time Trips was less structured than 11 Stories, with just eight stories for a random assortment of Doctors: one for Two, two for Three, one for Four, one for Six, two for Ten, and one for Eleven. Like with 11 Doctors, the writers are popular successful writers outside of Doctor Who and that definitely works to the book's benefit: these are unique voices, not the same old folks who turn up in every Big Finish and every Short Trip. And, amazingly, six of the eight are women! Despite Doctor Who's huge female fanbase, few women seem to write for the tie-ins, but BBC Books shows it can be done.

Like any anthology, it contains both strengths and weaknesses. I really liked the opener, A. L. Kennedy's "The Death Pit," filled with droll witticisms and good characterization of a solo fourth Doctor and just-off-normal happenings. I appreciated Jenny Colgan's "Into the Nowhere" for being set after "The Name of the Doctor" and thus actually doing something character-wise with Clara's knowledge of the Doctor's timestream, but the actual story left me kind of cold. Two standouts featured the third Doctor written by women, which surprised me: Trudi Canavan's "Salt of the Earth" was a surprisingly atmospheric tale set in future Australia, while Joanne Harris's "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Time Traveller" focuses on him trying to make it back to UNIT HQ as he comes close to regeneration, being somewhat moving on its last page. They're both different sides to Jon Pertwee's incarnation than we usually get and all the better for it.

Weaker tales include the two tenth Doctor stories, Nick Harkaway's "Keeping up with the Joneses," a dull series of surreal events, and Cecelia Ahern's "The Bog Warrior," where I could just never bring myself to care about the characters.

The book as a whole is enlivened by the fact that each story has a title illustration by Ben Morris, and the inclusion of a bonus story, "A Long Way Down" written by Jenny Colgan and illustrated by Ben Morris, that starts on the back cover, moves to the back flap, and then mostly takes place on the reverse side of the dust jacket! A cute tale of the twelfth Doctor falling out of the TARDIS, amplified by Morris's illustrations and the way you have to keep rotating the dust jacket, giving you the same vertiginous feeling as the Doctor and Clara!

It's a shame that 11 Doctors, 11 Stories and Time Trips seem to be it for e-book novellas from BBC Books, as I've found all of them to be worth the time and effort of bringing new voices into Doctor Who prose fiction.