Doctor Who: The Christmas Invasion, by Jenny T. Colgan
Second paragraph of third chapter: She [Jackie Tyler] told herself that a lot, these days.
This is the second of the four recently published Doctor Who novelisations, reviving the Target series; by the great chick-lit writer Jenny Colgan, it puts the Tenth Doctor's first TV appearance into book form. This is far from Colgan's first encounter with Who; she wrote an Eleventh Doctor novel, Dark Horizons; an Eleven/Clara ebook, Into the Nowhere; and then a Ten/Donna novel, In the Blood; as well as a Ten/Donna Big Finish audio, Time Reaver, and several other bits and bobs (collected together in a volume to be published soon).
As with Russell T. Davies' novelisation of Rose, Rose Tyler is the central character here - partly because, as you may remember, the new Tenth Doctor spends about half of the story asleep in post-regenerative repose. We long-term fans can get rather blasé about regeneration, but Colgan really brings us inside the head of Rose who has just seen her best friend's body explode and burn, to be replaced by a total stranger who knows far too much about her - and of course Rose here stands for every fan whose first Doctor gets replaced by another; I have myself finally forgiven Peter Davison for not being Tom Baker, but it took me a long time, and the show has sometimes taken fan acceptance of the new lead too lightly (I'm looking at you, The Twin Dilemma) - though admittedly it has got it right more often than not.
Apart from that, the Sycorax are even nastier in Colgan's book, there is a lovely doomed romance between Dr Llewellyn and Sally Jacobs, and the depiction of an accidentally elevated British Prime Minister somewhat out of her depth when faced with the biggest political crisis in living memory seems more prescient than satirical from the viewpoint of today. ("In a particularly 2017 move, by the way," Colgan says in the afterword, "my Harriet also has a cough.") All rather glorious.
Anyway, the book does full honour to the Target tradition, and you can get it here.
This is the second of the four recently published Doctor Who novelisations, reviving the Target series; by the great chick-lit writer Jenny Colgan, it puts the Tenth Doctor's first TV appearance into book form. This is far from Colgan's first encounter with Who; she wrote an Eleventh Doctor novel, Dark Horizons; an Eleven/Clara ebook, Into the Nowhere; and then a Ten/Donna novel, In the Blood; as well as a Ten/Donna Big Finish audio, Time Reaver, and several other bits and bobs (collected together in a volume to be published soon).
As with Russell T. Davies' novelisation of Rose, Rose Tyler is the central character here - partly because, as you may remember, the new Tenth Doctor spends about half of the story asleep in post-regenerative repose. We long-term fans can get rather blasé about regeneration, but Colgan really brings us inside the head of Rose who has just seen her best friend's body explode and burn, to be replaced by a total stranger who knows far too much about her - and of course Rose here stands for every fan whose first Doctor gets replaced by another; I have myself finally forgiven Peter Davison for not being Tom Baker, but it took me a long time, and the show has sometimes taken fan acceptance of the new lead too lightly (I'm looking at you, The Twin Dilemma) - though admittedly it has got it right more often than not.
Apart from that, the Sycorax are even nastier in Colgan's book, there is a lovely doomed romance between Dr Llewellyn and Sally Jacobs, and the depiction of an accidentally elevated British Prime Minister somewhat out of her depth when faced with the biggest political crisis in living memory seems more prescient than satirical from the viewpoint of today. ("In a particularly 2017 move, by the way," Colgan says in the afterword, "my Harriet also has a cough.") All rather glorious.
Anyway, the book does full honour to the Target tradition, and you can get it here.
