DOCTOR WHO NOVELISATIONS

Up Pompeii and the Scottish play

RELEASED 14 JULY

171 pages/174 pages | Paperback/ ebook/audiobook

Authors James Moran, Rona Munro Publisher BBC Books

Sometimes it’s the Doctor Who stories which don’t quite achieve their full potential which make the better novelisations.

James Moran’s The Fires Of Pompeii , which calls for the Doctor to decide whether to save all of humanity or condemn 20,000 people to death, was always a bit of a heartbreaker. In bringing it to prose he’s made little embellishments here and there: there are further ominous signs of Vesuvius’s coming eruption, like the sounds of grinding rock and poisoned birds raining down from the sky. Moran is also very good at getting inside Donna’s head, revealing her thought processes – which are not quite as self-assured as you might expect.

There’s a faint whiff of Douglas Adams – Ford Prefect is quoted at one point, and there’s a reference to clipboards being banned on the planet Ryman IV – but the style never feels as forced as when Eric Saward tried it out for novelisations like The Twin Dilemma back in the day.

Moran also gets amusingly salty, explaining (for the benefit of internet smartarses) what exactly a deus ex machina ending is (“It doesn’t just mean ‘An ending I didn’t like’”). But as there wasn’t anything much about the finished episode which felt particularly undeveloped or unclear, the novelisation doesn’t come as a great revelation.

Rona Munro’s The Eaters Of Light , however, felt rather abbreviated on TV, and benefits enormously from having more room to breathe. Some of the events driving the narrative (like the mysterious slaughter of an entire Roman Legion) can now be dramatised, and the emotional stakes much more clearly spelt out. On-screen, legionary Lucius was just a bisexual kid who fancied Bill. Here, he’s given a proper backstory: a previous life as a haulier, and a doomed love affair with a fellow legionary.

Motivations make better sense all round now, and a couple of neat additions – like young Pict Kar riding on the back of a bull, and the Picts (and the Doctor) dancing reels before their final face-off with the monster of the piece – would have been highlights of the episode. If the story didn’t particularly wow you on TV, the novelisation will offer a fresh perspective. Both books, incidentally, would make a good gift for curious-minded Wholoving tweens, who will probably come away googling “pyroclastic surge” and “tortoise formation”. This month’s other two Target Collection releases aren’t technically new. About a decade ago, David Fisher was asked by BBC Audio to novelise two of his Fourth Doctor adventures (both previously adapted, by Terrance Dicks, in minimum-effort mode): swashbuckling The Prisoner Of Zenda riff “The Androids Of Tara” and killer standing stones tale “The Stones Of Blood”, with characteristically amusing results.

They’ve now made the transfer from audiobooks to print. Androids comes with a note on the edits required for this new medium; Stones has an introduction by the late writer’s son, and an afterword by BBC Audio’s commissioning editor.

An adaptation of Peter Harness’s “The Zygon Invasion” which was previously announced will now be released in 2023.

The novelisation offers a fresh perspective