Peladon is one of a surprisingly small number of planets to figure in more than one televised Who story, and though Big Finish have visited it twice I think this is the only spinoff novel set there. Gary Russell starts with the story of how the planet lifted itself from barbarism, and the stranded human astronaut who married the king; we then get ( Read more... )

Really a rather good Torchwood novel, taking Bilis Manger from the end of the first season and Idris from the Who episode Boom Town, and also an alternate timeline which foreshadows a lot of future developments (blowing up the Hub, leaving Gwen, Rhys and their baby as the sole survivors of Torchwood). To a large extent it's a sequel to the episode ( Read more... )

This is one of the best New Who books I have read, and certainly the most mature of the standard range of Eleventh Doctor novels (which I felt generally have been written for a younger readership). The plot is an alien conflict being played out in rural England in 1936, but the point is the rather good exploration of the regular characters - ( Read more... )

Another of the late 1990s BBC anthologies of short stories about the first eight Doctors. Standouts for me: "64 Carlisle Street", by Gary Russell, featuring the First Doctor, Steven and Dodo; "Special Weapons", by Paul Leonard, with Mel and the Seventh Doctor; and "Good Companions" by Peter Anghelides, featuring Tegan and a future Doctor with red ( Read more... )

Another Eighth Doctor novel, with the Foamasi and Wirrrn (Russell adopts the Ian Marter spelling) competing for attention in subverting a future interplanetary Olympic Games. Russell's depiction of the Foamasi is competent and his Wirrrn are memorably awful and nearly invincible. But the book is somewhat spoiled by a half-hearted enquiry into the ( Read more... )

( November Books 17) Time Of Your Life, by Steve Lyons )

All three of these are rather good, and all seemed to me to succeed by not trying too hard. The Eyeless has the Doctor on his own, the other two feature Donna. In all three cases I listened to an abridged audio version, but I imagine that the full dead tree original is also worth picking up.

( August Books 32) The Eyeless, by Lance Parkin )

I got this collection mainly because it had the only Erimem story I had not otherwise read or listened to - "The Gangster's Story", by Jon de Burgh Miller. I was not bowled over by it, or indeed by many of the other stories in the collection, which is built around a theme of people whose survival affects the Web of Time and who are therefore ( Read more... )

'I saw amazing things, out there in space. But there's strangeness to be found wherever you turn. Life on Earth can be an adventure too.

You just have to know where to look.'
4) Invasion of the Bane, by Terrance Dicks
5) Revenge of the Slitheen, by Rupert Laight
6) Eye of the Gorgon, by Phil Ford
7) Warriors of Kudlak, by Gary Russell ( Read more... )

34) Doctor Who [The Novel of the Film], by Gary Russell

This was the novel of the TV movie, written by Gary Russell (two of whose other Who novels I have read; I liked one of them). Not really a lot to say about this; he has stuck fairly closely to the script, padding out the introduction a bit more, wisely not expanding on the Doctor's demi- ( Read more... )