August brings the ‘Destiny of the Doctor’ series to the Eighth Doctor. While there have been various companions to draw on for other eras of the show, choices are rather limited here with Paul McGann’s single television outing. Luckily the job can fall to one of his audio companions.
The inclusion of a Target Books novelisation in BBC Books’ 50th anniversary collection seems most appropriate. With the scarcity of repeats during the show’s original run, before the advent of home video, many fans will have experienced older stories and earlier Doctors through the pages of just such a book.
For the Sixth Doctor adventure in Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary collection, BBC Books have chosen to reprint a novel by the biggest name in Who prose, Terrance Dicks. A writer and script editor of the show, Dicks went on to pen over 60 novelisations as well as a host of novels and spin off books.
The Stuff of Nightmares starts with a bang. Quite literally. The latest in a spate of bombings to hit London narrowly misses Doctor Watson and throws the reader like a rag doll into James Lovegrove’s adventure.
There comes a point while reading Apocalypse Now Now – and it’s roughly the halfway point – when you’re presented with a scene of such graphic and perverted gruesomeness that you actually feel you brain trying to shut down in order to save itself from having to picture what’s on the page.
Representing the Davision era in this anniversary collection of Doctor Who novel reissues, ‘Fear of the Dark’ brings the Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan to a barren moon orbiting the dead word of Akoshemon in the year 2382.
Do you remember Varnax? Or the Doctor’s best friend Gonjii? How about the battle with Scratchman or the time he stopped Mandrake’s audacious plan to gain a new regeneration cycle? What about the genocidal androids of Krikkit or the time that Amelia Earhart travelled in the TARDIS?
‘The Leisure Hive’ opened Tom Baker’s final season and was the first full Doctor Who story of the 1980s.
July brings us to the Seventh Doctor in this series of anniversary audios and ‘Shockwave’ delivers the TARDIS to a planet on the literal edge of destruction.
The 23rd of November 1963 holds particular significance for Doctor Who fans as the date of its first transmission. The previous day is etched into history, far more significantly, by the assassination of American President John F. Kennedy and this globally resonant event frequently comes up when discussing the start of the show.