41 Weeks to 50: Poll-of-Polls Countdown: The Witch Hunters

[hammard]

Continuing my 50th Anniversary countdown of aggregated poll results for Doctor Who Books, TV Serials & Audio Dramas, with number 41:

Comments

[jjpor]

Agreed - things like The Massacre are pretty strong meat indeed for something like Doctor Who. I'm not sure the new series would dare do something so bleak without providing some sort of cop-out. Having said that, I know exactly what you mean about the BBC books (and indeed some of the Virgin ones that came before); I guess it was partly a response to the then-ageing fandom, and also to the trend in the 90s towards "dark'n'gritty" pop culture in general, but sometimes it is very jarring, even with later Doctors, but especially with One and Two where some books just seem to get the whole tone and ethos badly askew.

Possibly my favourite/unfavourite example, though, is a Three one - one of the Missing Adventures, I believe, without actually looking it up - called "Rags". This basically puts Three and the UNIT gang in what amounts to a full-on, blood-and-depravity-soaked James Herbert-style horror paperback and really puts the characters through the mill in a way that it's hard to imagine them just picking up sparring with the Master again next week. And I think that's the thing - there's no way some of these stories could actually be slotted between TV stories, which was sort of the idea of them.

But maybe I should do meta posts or whatever about this kind of stuff instead of writing epic replies in comment threads. ;D

[swordznsorcery]

Nothing wrong with epic replies! But yes, there's a lot that can be said about the BBC Books, and how well they did or didn't fit into the canon as a whole (inasmuch as there can ever be any "canon" for Who). I remember becoming quite frustrated with the Virgin books, as the swearing and violence seemed to be more for effect than necessity, and it just didn't seem like Who to me. There was less of that with the BBC range, but some authors still seemed to go too far at times. There's one book, "The Face of the Enemy" by David A. McIntee, where Ian believes Barbara to be dead, and tries to throw himself out of a window, feeling that life isn't worth living anymore. It might have made for a dramatic interlude, but it just didn't feel like either Who, or Ian Chesterton.

Other authors seemed to 'get it' perfectly. I often say that one of my favourites of the whole range was Mark Morris's "Deep Blue", a grown-up Fifth Doctor story that manages to combine the fun of the show with actual consequences. The Eighth Doctor range got a bit tied up in arc knots at times, but there were some excellent books in that line over the years. I miss them!