Review: Doctor Who: Jak and the Wormhole by Justin Richards

While I'm discussing Doctor Who, I am back in action at Unreality SF after a couple weeks off, with a review of the first four episodes of Torchwood series 6: God Among Us 1.

Hardcover, 37 pages
Published 2016 (originally 2015)
Acquired February 2017
Read July 2018

Doctor Who: Jak and the Wormhole
by Justin Richards
illustrated by David Wardle

I do like that in this BBC Books prestige product designed to lure in people who like Matt Smith there's a whole book that's just an adaptation of 1979-80's The Horns of Nimon, notoriously one of the worst Doctor Who stories ever made. This is actually a somewhat fun Jack and the Beanstalk riff, and sure, why not end the series with it? I enjoyed it more than most of the volumes.

Next Week: On to a new reading project: I catch up on the Star Trek fiction of the Destiny era!

Review: Doctor Who: The Twins in the Wood by Justin Richards

Hardcover, 36 pages
Published 2016 (originally 2015)
Acquired February 2017
Read July 2018

Doctor Who: The Twins in the Wood
by Justin Richards
illustrated by David Wardle

I would say this is the worst Time Lord fairy tale yet except I can't reject the possibility that there's a worse one I've purged from my memory. It's completely devoid of incident of interest. A pair of twins is framed by an evil uncle for killing their father, so they are exiled. But while they're gone, a nice guy fixes the problem for them. All they do is wait! They literally never make a single decision in the course of this story. Except, the woods they hide in are on Gallifrey for some reason. Why? Who knows, because it literally has no ramifications on the story. It does let David Wardle draw a nice picture of the Capitol in his woodcut style (as you can see on the cover), I suppose. But Jesus, what a waste of paper and time.

Next Week: It's all finally over! Jak and the Wormhole!

Review: Doctor Who: The Scruffy Piper by Justin Richards

I haven't caught up to the present in my recent catch-up listen-through of Bernice Summerfield stories (which I began back in July!), but I have caught up to the most recent one that I own. Read my review of Treausury, and soon I'll return my attention to catching up on Torchwood, Big Finish Originals, The Seventh Doctor: The New Adventures, UNIT, and more!

Hardcover, 36 pages
Published 2016 (originally 2015)
Acquired February 2017
Read June 2018

Doctor Who: The Scruffy Piper
by Justin Richards
illustrated by David Wardle

After I moderately enjoyed The Grief Collector, the Time Lord fairy tales are back to the same-old-same-old. You can guess how this story is going to go from page 1, and it does so without a single surprise. The second Doctor uses his recorder to lure away a group of Cybermats from a space station, and saves the day. Why bother riffing on "The Pied Piper of Hamlin" and use only the most basic part of its idea? Work with the creepiness of the concept, don't sanitize it!

Next Week: An extra helping of mediocrity in Twins in the Wood!

Review: Doctor Who: The Grief Collector by Justin Richards

Hardcover, 36 pages
Published 2016 (originally 2015)
Acquired February 2017
Read March 2018

Doctor Who: The Grief Collector
by Justin Richards
illustrated by David Wardle

I... actually kind of liked this? It's a short, creepy tale that mixes a fairy tale devil's bargain type story with a Doctor Who-ish alien maguffin. Not amazing, but it does exactly what I wanted the stories in this series to do in the first place, but which it so rarely has accomplished. Huzzah, I guess.

In Three Weeks: A side-step for Christmas, in fact it's The Christmas Invasion!

Review: Doctor Who: The Three Brothers Gruff by Justin Richards

Hardcover, 37 pages
Published 2016 (originally 2015)
Acquired February 2017
Read March 2018

Doctor Who: The Three Brothers Gruff
by Justin Richards
illustrated by David Wardle

This book isn't even a riff on a fairy tale, it's just The Sontaran Experiment all over again with three brothers. Like, it's basically a blow-by-blow rip-off of what wasn't a very good story. Jesus Christ, Justin Richards, make it stop.

Next Week: A creepy man comes to town in The Grief Collector!

Review: Doctor Who: The Three Little Sontarans by Justin Richards

Hardcover, 36 pages
Published 2016 (originally 2015)
Acquired February 2017
Read January 2018

Doctor Who: The Three Little Sontarans
by Justin Richards
illustrated by David Wardle

The only two things I remember about this book is that 1) Sontarans are in it, because of the title, and 2) it's not actually worth remembering, none of these books are. Why am I doing this to myself? These books are such wastes of a beautiful premise.

Next Week: More triads: The Three Brothers Gruff!

Review: Doctor Who: Frozen Beauty by Justin Richards

Almost forgot to post this one, but I've reviewed Big Finish's most recent The Avengers audio, Too Many Targets, for Unreality SF.

Hardcover, 37 pages
Published 2016 (originally 2015)
Acquired February 2017
Read December 2017

Doctor Who: Frozen Beauty
by Justin Richards
illustrated by David Wardle

Subtract the reference embedded in the title, and there's nothing remotely fairy tale-ish about this at all; it's just a generic space action story about humans-versus-Wirrn, like The Ark in Space without all the good bits. I've come to the beliefs that 1) hiring the unimaginative Justin Richards to write all of these was a mistake, as maybe he had one or two ideas for good "Time Lord fairy tales" but he sure didn't have sixteen, and 2) releasing them in a fancy box set just like 12 Doctors, 12 Stories gave a misleading impression of their quality and interest. Why didn't BBC Books do a box set for Time Trips or Twelve Doctors of Christmas instead? Oh well, only six of these to go...

Next Week: Hopefully there are at least some good jokes in The Three Little Sontarans!

Review: Doctor Who: The Garden of Statues by Justin Richards

Hardcover, 36 pages
Published 2016 (originally 2015)
Acquired February 2017
Read November 2017

Doctor Who: The Garden of Statues
by Justin Richards
illustrated by David Wardle

This is basically just "Blink" all over again but without the Doctor and without anything remotely approaching atmosphere, suspense, or novelty. I don't get what the point was supposed to be. Is it even riffing on a fairy tale? I didn't notice one.

Next Week: The Wirrrn menace a Frozen Beauty!

Review: Doctor Who: Sirgwain and the Green Knight by Justin Richards

Hardcover, 36 pages
Published 2016 (originally 2015)
Acquired February 2017
Read October 2017

Doctor Who: Sirgwain and the Green Knight
by Justin Richards
illustrated by David Wardle

I thought this was even worse than the average Time Lord Fairy Tale. This series's best part is turning out to be the paratext, not the text: the conceit, the titles, the cool box set, the illustrations. But this story is miserable: guy turns up, guy builds spaceship, guy leaves. There's not plot or complications at all. I mean I know it's only 36 pages long but there are plenty of writers who could do a lot more in 10 pages than Justin Richards does in 36.

Next Week: Some Weeping Angels are inhabiting a Garden of Statues!

Review: Andiba and the Four Slitheen by Justin Richards

Hardcover, 37 pages
Published 2016 (originally 2015)
Acquired February 2017
Read September 2017

Doctor Who: Andiba and the Four Slitheen
by Justin Richards
illustrated by David Wardle

I didn't get that the title was a riff on "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" until the Slitheen spaceship had the electronic lock code "open six one three." It's pretty meh on the whole, with the Slitheen's weakness to vinegar turning out to be an all too obvious way to take care of them. Maybe I just don't remember the original story very well, but this doesn't seem to make use of it very much, and certainly not interestingly so.

Next Week: A real medieval fairy tale in Sirgwain and the Green King!

Review: Doctor Who: Helana and the Beast by Justin Richards

Hardcover, 37 pages
Published 2016 (originally 2015)
Acquired February 2017
Read August 2017

Doctor Who: Helana and the Beast
by Justin Richards
illustrated by David Wardle

The quality of these "Time Lord Fairy Tales" seems to vary pretty heavily to me, but they're probably really all about the same. I mean, they are all by the same guy and pretty much doing the same thing. I found this "Beauty and the Beast" riff one of the weaker efforts, a pretty ho-hum take on the original that makes Helana even less of an agent than Beauty was in the original story, basically just chilling out until the twelfth Doctor saves her and the Beast. But then she marries the Beast for some reason?

Next Week: Everyone's favorite aliens in Andiba and the Four Slitheen!

Review: Doctor Who: The Gingerbread Trap by Justin Richards

Hardcover, 36 pages
Published 2016 (originally 2015)
Acquired February 2017
Read August 2017

Doctor Who: The Gingerbread Trap
by Justin Richards
illustrated by David Wardle

The Krillitanes from "School Reunion" fit surprisingly well into "Hansel and Gretel": instead of eating them, the "witch" feeds the kids food cooked in Krillitane oil (chips, but they don't know it because it's medieval Europe) so that they can fix its spaceship. Once you realize that, nothing here will surprise you, but it's cute enough, and less of an awkward/random fit than, say, vampires and Cinderella.

Next Week: A tale as old as time... Helana and the Beast!

Review: Doctor Who: Cinderella and the Magic Box by Justin Richards

Hardcover, 37 pages
Published 2016 (originally 2015)
Acquired February 2017
Read June 2017

Doctor Who: Cinderella and the Magic Box
by Justin Richards
illustrated by David Wardle

This is probably the straightest of these Doctor Who fairy tale adaptations yet: it's really just Cinderella as usual, with the eleventh Doctor in the fairy godmother role, plus some vampires and a peace treaty. Not the most interesting of these little tales.

Next Week: Magic sliced fried potatoes (a.k.a. chips) in The Gingerbread Trap!

Review: Doctor Who: Little Rose Riding Hood by Justin Richards

Hardcover, 36 pages
Published 2016 (originally 2015)
Acquired February 2017
Read May 2017

Doctor Who: Little Rose Riding Hood
by Justin Richards
illustrated by David Wardle

If these stories really are Time Lord fairy tales, it seems to me that this one raises some existential issues: how can there be a fairy tale on Gallifrey that clearly features Rose Tyler and the ninth Doctor? (plus a Zygon and, of course, Bad Wolf) If the Doctor had remembered this one during the tv programme (as he did some others during "Night Terrors"), I feel like some confusing things would have resulted. The po-faced TARDIS wiki, of course, just categorizes this story's Rose as "Rose (Little Rose Riding Hood)," with scarcely a mention of who the character actually is. Richards does do a good job capturing the voice of Christopher Eccleston.

Next Week: Night and day it's Cinderella and the Magic Box!

Review: Doctor Who: Snow White and the Seven Keys to Doomdsay by Justin Richards

Hardcover, 36 pages
Published 2016 (originally 2015)
Acquired February 2017
Read April 2017

Doctor Who: Snow White and the Seven Keys to Doomsday
by Justin Richards
illustrated by David Wardle

This is one of the fairy tales that inspired this whole set: in "Night Terrors," the Doctor tells a kid, "When I was your age, about, ooo, a thousand years ago, I loved a good bedtime story. 'The Three Little Sontarans.' 'The Emperor Dalek's New Clothes.' 'Snow White and the Seven Keys to Doomsday,' eh? All the classics." That last one being a reference to not just "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," but also the stageplay Doctor Who and the Daleks: Seven Keys to Doomsday. This book is kind of like Seven Keys to Doomsday or maybe more the 1964 serial The Keys of Marinus, in that the activation keys to a deadly weapon have been hidden across a planet. However, even considering this is a 36-page fairy tale, the way Snow White recovers them feels a little too easy to be convincing.

Bizarrely, four years before he wrote this, Justin Richards wrote a completely different story with the same title, for Doctor Who: The Official Annual 2012. More here.

Next Week: My, what big teeth you have: Little Rose Riding Hood!

Review: Doctor Who: The Emperor Dalek's New Clothes by Justin Richards

Hardcover, 36 pages
Published 2016
Acquired February 2017
Read March 2017

Doctor Who: The Emperor Dalek's New Clothes
by Justin Richards
illustrated by David Wardle

In 2014, BBC Books reissued 2013's 12 Doctors, 12 Stories as a box set of novellas; in 2016, they did the same thing with 2015's Time Lord Fairy Tales short stories. So, like I did with 12 Doctors, 12 Stories, I am going to read one of them a month, beginning with The Emperor Dalek's New Clothes, which is actually the last one published, being added for this box set release.

It's cute, I guess? The Time Lord Fairy Tales are half the length of the 12 Doctors, 12 Stories novellas, and they're all written by Justin Richards, instead of luminaries of British children's fiction. This one reads how you would imagine a fairy tale written by Terry Nation would read: plucky rebel fighters with goofy space names fighting a Dalek occupation force. The ending didn't go how I expected, to the benefit of what had been a very predictable story. If that's what Richards set out to do, he accomplished it perfectly. It is neat to see Daleks rendered in David Wardle's woodcut-style illustrations, though he depicts the sessile Emperor Dalek from "The Parting of the Ways," which doesn't line up with the mobile one described in the text.

Next Week: The Keys of Marinus crossed with Snow White in Snow White and the Seven Keys to Doomsday!