Fiction

Doctor Who: Something Borrowed by Richelle Mead
Chapters 1–6 [the end]
Heading rapidly towards the end of the classic era in my Doctor Who 60th marathon, now. Indeed, you could argue this is the end, because for my Seventh Doctor main text I've chosen something that came after the final episode from 1989 (see: further down this very post). Of course, a counter-argument would be the classic era doesn't actually end until 2005, just before the start of Rose. Anyway, that's really a discussion for another day: here, we're still with the Sixth Doctor, for the next story from the 11/12/13 Doctors, 11/12/13 Stories series.


Doctor Who: The New Adventures
Timewyrm: Genesys by John Peel
Preface + Foreword
Prologue + Chapter 1

For the Seventh Doctor portion of my Doctor Who 60th anniversary marathon, we're heading into the Wilderness Years. After it became apparent that the series was done on TV (at least for the time being), Virgin acquired the rights to publish a series of novels continuing the adventures of the Doctor and Ace. The New Adventures are practically an era unto themselves — a run of books that took the series in new directions (violence, sex, and swearing, as well as genuinely adult ideas), introduced enduring characters (Professor Bernice Summerfield remains a Big Finish favourite to this day), and even stories (Human Nature was later adapted for TV).

When I first got into Doctor Who, they sort of 'were' it (arguably alongside the DWM comic strip; although the TV Movie was on the horizon, which caused its own changes). I read a couple of them back in the day, but they were already very well established at that point — it felt like too many to catch up on in full, especially as I was probably a bit young for them. A year or two ago I went on a bit of a spending spree and bought up a bunch of those that are supposed to be the best (I ended up with 23. Buying the entire series still feels like a ridiculous expenditure — there are 61 novels in all — especially as some of the later ones were subjected to short print runs and so go for hundreds of pounds). My purchases included the linked quartet of novels that opened the range, of which this is the very first. Yes, for the Seventh Doctor I'm reading a book that's "part one of four". I have no idea how well it stands alone (let's find out!), but I may well be looping back round to read books 2 to 4 later (after I've finished off my 60th marathon, of course).