Ultimate Doctor Who - a Look at an Underrated Era of Doctor Who Books

Doctor Who is quite the hit nowadays, both as a big success in its native England, and as a cult hit in the United States. Since the launch of the new series, it has been critically acclaimed and is consistently one of the highest-rated shows in the UK. A whole new generation of viewers has embraced it.

What many of the new viewers may not realize is that Doctor Who remained active since the original show's cancellation in 1989. A series of novels were published from 1991 onwards (first by Virgin, later by the BBC), detailing original adventures of the then-current Doctor. In fact, several of the new series' writers, including show-runner Russell T. Davies, Paul Cornell, and Mark Gatiss, had contributed novels to these ranges. By many accounts, the Virgin era of the Seventh Doctor adventures, from 1991 to 1996, are considered the Golden Age of Doctor Who fiction. When the Doctor Who television movie was released in 1996, featuring Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor, BBC took the license back from Virgin and began publishing their own novels, featuring a new range of Eighth Doctor adventures, as well as past Doctors.

By its nature, media tie-in books such as Doctor Who or Star Trek garner only a small subset of the shows' overall fan base. However, that fan base is very dedicated, and the followers of the Virgin range of books were disappointed in the initial set of BBC books. They found them lacking in the mature tone and literate quality of the Virgin novels. The BBC books were "dumbed down", aimed at having little inter-novel continuity, and featured returning villains from the original television series as opposed to developing their own unique antagonists. There was a change in editorship early on, and Stephen Cole took over as the editor (from Nuala Buffini) beginning with the sixth Eighth Doctor novel, Alien Bodies. Though that novel was highly regarded and contained plot elements that fans were clamoring to see continued (which included a war in the future that the Time Lords were waging against an unnamed, terrifying enemy), Cole failed to capitalize on the momentum, instead waiting until 19 books later to pick-up on that plot thread. His handling of the range, while superior to Buffini, was still very uneven, producing some a few excellent books (such as Seeing I) and mediocre ones (such as The Placebo Effect, which followed Seeing I and yet bafflingly failed to incorporate any of the strong character development for the companion occurring in that novel). While Cole attempted to give the range a tighter focus and return to some of the plot elements that fans wanted to see, the execution was again uneven. Cole, apparently burnt-out from his responsibilities of editing the range, handed over stewardship to Justin Richards, who had written several Doctor Who novels over the years and was highly respected by both the fans and the authors for his work ethic, crisp writing, and keen sensibility.

Immediately, Richards set out to tighten up the range and wipe the slate clean. This included the then-controversial decision to have the lingering plot elements of the future war/enemy tied up, as they would not be continued under his direction. Richards also introduced another set of controversial ideas. First, at the end of the novel The Ancestor Cell (which would completely wrap up the future war/enemy arc and related elements), the Doctor's home world, Gallifrey (and just about all of the Time Lords), was destroyed at the Doctor's hand (in order to save the universe and all of Time, as it had fallen into enemy hands). This resulted in the Doctor having amnesia, unable to cope with the guilt of his actions (or so it seemed at the time).

This all occurred in 2000, five years before the new television series would premiere, and before it, too, would wipe out the Time Lords.

In August, 2000, the first novel under Justin Richards' vision of Doctor Who was published, called The Burning. It not only began a six-novel arc of the Doctor being "caught on Earth" from the late nineteenth century (around 1889) to 2001, but also laid the groundwork for a revision of the Doctor's character. As the books were not allowed to regenerate the Doctor, Richards did the next best thing and gave him a character upheaval (the trauma of his lost home world underlying the amnesia), providing a more defined - and altered - version of the Eighth Doctor (referred to in some circles as "Doctor 8.5"). Richards wanted to return the mystery and alien nature of the Doctor, something that had dissipated in previous years. He also wanted the Doctor to be front and center with the action, as opposed to being sidelined and ineffective (a trend of later books under Cole's reign). Finally, Richards had wanted the books to be more "standalone." Although the books would build its own continuity and character arcs, a reader would be able to pick up any book and dive right in easily, without feeling that they are missing something.

Thus began a run of 38 novels (39 if you include the Past Doctor novel Wolfsbane, which not only features the Fourth Doctor but also the Eighth in an interweaving narrative that takes place during the latter Doctor's extended stay on Earth) that were, by far, the best run of Eighth Doctor novels, and arguably one of the best stints of Doctor Who fiction due to the consistent quality under Richards' editorship.

This is the underrated era of Doctor Who novels.

These were the novels published during an awkward time for Doctor Who. The series had been off the air for years, and attempts to relaunch the show had fallen through. A large segment of the readership from the Virgin range had dropped the BBC books, and there is the lingering debate of which range is better (and even a sense of nostalgia for those older books). To make matters worse, it was hard for American readers to get a hold of the BBC Doctor Who books, as their US distributor had major problems in getting the books to this side of the Atlantic (and BBC Books allowed the problem to linger, inexplicably, for years). Now, these novels are getting harder to find, and sadly may never reach the audience they deserve.

As these Richards-edited novels were published during a time when there was no new television series, they were able to move in bold new directions, and in some ways acts as a precursor to the new series. In the novels, there were consequences to the Time Lords' demise, and something similar was touched upon in the new series (such as the episode "Father's Day"). The Doctor loses one of his hearts. Reality begins to fall apart. Doctor even gains a daughter. All the while, this run of novels does not reuse any of the "classic" Doctor Who villains (though the Daleks were set to appear in one of the novels, but the rights were not granted), and is actually the stronger for it. The authors are thus forced to work outside the standard Doctor Who conventions, and it works great.

However, some may ask: where do these stories fit into continuity? Canonicity debates have raged in fandom for years. Big Finish was able to secure Paul McGann to act in a series of Eighth Doctor audio adventures, which make it clear that they take place in a separate continuity from the books, and thus muddies the issue. Some fans don't care about the "canon" issue, and that's great (because it's a headache). But some people like to pin down just where these adventures take place.

I think the best way to look at these novels is based on a comment author Dale Smith posted on Outpost Gallifrey. He stated that one could view this run of Eighth Doctor books as "Ultimate Doctor Who", making reference to Marvel Comics' successful Ultimate range. The Ultimate range featured classic characters from Marvel's rich history with re-imagined and updated back-stories. The "relaunched" Eighth Doctor adventures could be seen in this light, with the removal of the baggage of the Doctor's past continuity, having him work without a safety net and returning to the roots of the series- the mysterious and alien character.

In viewing these books in this manner, and not getting caught up in the details of canonicity, they can be fully appreciated as a strong set of stories that tried new things with the series. Many of these books can still be found on popular online book stores like Amazon.com, or used on eBay or Half.com.

If you love to read, and love the new Doctor Who television series, give these books a try. Start with The Burning and work your way forward. The books based on the new series are aimed at a younger audience, and have the caveat that they cannot feature lasting or significant changes. Not so with the Eighth Doctor books. You may be surprised just how engrossing these novels can be. They are well-worth the time.