28 Weeks to 50: Camera Obscura

May 11, 2013 10:10

Continuing my 50th Anniversary countdown of aggregated poll results for Doctor Who Books, TV Serials & Audio Dramas, with number 28:

#28 Behind Cut )

50 years of who, eighth doctor, books, poll-of-polls countdown

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a_phoenixdragon May 11 2013, 18:23:21 UTC
OMG...now I want it!!

And out of the two Eight books I've read, I've found his Doctor is the...deepest? I guess?

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swordznsorcery May 12 2013, 11:38:44 UTC
Yes, I think that's a fair assessment. By this stage, the notion of Doctor Who as a family show had passed. It had been off the air for years, and the fans had all grown up. Consequently the stories did too. The books (in the 7th Doctor era) began as something written by fanboys for fanboys, but they matured over the years as well. There were a lot of books, and some were Not Great. By any means. ;) But Eight benefitted greatly from being allowed to explore themes that the show could never have touched upon. The same could be said for the Past Doctor range that BBC Books put out at the same time, but with them being split between seven Doctors, Eight could probably claim a good half dozen books for each one of theirs. He had the space to grow.

If you're interested in Eight, I highly recommend the collected volumes of the Doctor Who Magazine comic strips. There again they needed some time to grow, but over the years, the 8th Doctor comic strips turned up some truly awesome adventures. Nice drawing, too.

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a_phoenixdragon May 12 2013, 14:29:20 UTC
Thank you for the recommendation! I remember my Mom telling me she needed to collect more Eight (as he had the most books out of any Doctor she had seen and she liked what she had read), but I don't know if she ever did so. Guess it is time to find out!

Thank you for all the recs!

(Btw, LOVE that icon!)

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jjpor May 12 2013, 10:13:27 UTC
It doesn't surprise me that Eight is the most popular Doctor in terms of spinoff stories - it's pretty much a straight fight between him and Seven, isn't it, when you consider just how many novels they each appeared in.

As I've said before, I'm more of an NA fan than an EDA fan - which is probably more to do with the age I was and my own fannish evolution at the times each series was current, but there are an awful lot of good stories in the EDA range, and this is one of them. Sabbath in particular is a great character, who popped up later in alternative-universe form in Lawrence Miles's not-really-Doctor-Who-honest-guvnor Faction Paradox stuff. He's a real foil for the Eight of the novels, I think.

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hammard May 12 2013, 10:59:32 UTC
Yeah it is pretty much a straight battle in the book field yeah. The 7th Doctor's books tend to have less varied opinions, so more middling books but fewer right at the bottom (the 8th Doctor has 6 books in the bottom 25, the 7th Doctor has only 2). The 1st Doctor does best on average but he only has 15 books. The audios are reasonably equally distributed between 5,6,7 & 8.

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swordznsorcery May 12 2013, 11:08:37 UTC
Ah, Lloyd Rose. Her book "City Of The Dead" is one of my favourite bits of Who.

Not quite so fond of this. I hated Lawrence Miles' influence in the series, and whilst I didn't dislike Sabbath, I didn't like the story arc that he was a part of. I also felt that he was being used too much. But this was a good story nonetheless. I'm glad to see Lloyd Rose getting recognised in this countdown.

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