Doctor Who’s 50th Anniversary Collection is a series of eleven reprints from BBC Books. Drawn primarily from their own back catalogue, each edition features a new forward from the author and they carry a unified look new artwork featuring the anniversary logo.
The authors chosen are some of the major names in the BBC’s book range which launched off the back of the 1996 TV Movie and many have gone on to write for the show on television or in audio format. CultBox will be tackling these novels in turn over the coming months, beginning with ‘Ten Little Aliens’ by former range editor Stephen Cole.
First published in 2002, this First Doctor tale finds him just prior to the end of this tenure and teamed with companions Ben and Polly. Billed by the author as a high concept mix of ‘Starship Troopers meets Agatha Christie’, the adventure takes place on an asteroid.
The first twenty pages introduce us to a band of troopers under the command of the aggressive Marshall Haunt. With Aliens-style marines banter, technical jargon and the sheer number of characters it is initially a little difficult to penetrate but it appears their mission involves neutralising a pair of Kay-Dees (kill droids) in a training exercise with live ammunition.
To be fair, the author does address the introduction of so many characters with a four-page run down, profiling their ages, physical attributes and providing some revealing quotes. We found this useful to refer to in the early chapters of the book but it does become easier as we get to know the stronger personalities and, being a murder mystery, the field is soon thinned out a bit.
As the team explore, the training mission goes askew when they discover a chamber containing the dead bodies of their hated enemy, the Schirr. They also find the Doctor and his companions who have arrived and are unable to re-enter TARDIS. As the group endeavour to puzzle out the mystery, we get snatches of the wider context; the humans are in conflict with the Schirr, but also subject to the influence of the mysterious Morphians.
Initially Hartnell’s Doctor seems an odd choice for such a situation, but his personality and distinctive manner of speech cut through all the military bluster. You receive a real sense of his character as although Space Marine elements might jar with the first Doctor, the mystery solving suits him perfectly. The companions are well employed too. Ben falls in with the troops to a degree and shows what he is made of, while Polly finds herself in a caring role with a complex emotional relationship to one of the troopers, despite her better judgement.
As well as the Schirr, there is an additional threat in the form of statues of oversized cherubim. Of course, they carry unconscious shades of Weeping Angels about them despite the novel’s original publication predating their introduction by a good five years.
In addition to the bulletin board style rundown of the troopers, the narrative breaks ambitiously during one of the later chapters. Employing a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ structure, events are revealed though a shifting range of perspectives. This is quite a savvy move and would have originally appealed to a readership who grew up on the Fighting Fantasy books of the 1980s and will still doubtless engage with role-players and gamers in the readership today. It also conjures up memories of the Colin Baker era Doctor Who ‘Make Your Own Adventure’ books by Severn House as well as more recent ‘Decide your Destiny’ Who titles. The chapter is fun and does not outstay its welcome.
Given the subject matter, this is pretty gruesome stuff in places and certainly the kind of broader territory that Doctor Who could only tackle in expanded media, which is what we hope for from the novels. It is also a very clever tale with a well conceived mystery and a satisfying conclusion.
Published on Thursday 7 March 2013 by BBC Books.
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