Back in the 1970s, our local PBS station started broadcasting Doctor Who episodes on Saturday. At that time, Doctor Who was played by Tom Baker (aka, The Fourth Doctor) who jazzed up the character with a lot of weird antics for 179 episodes from 1974 to 1981.
So it should come as no surprise that Philip Reeve’s “Root of Evil” story about the Fourth Doctor would resonate with me. The Doctor and his companion Leela face a puzzle and a threat. The TARDIS takes The Doctor and Leela to a bizarre satellite where a humongous tree provides the air and food to a colony of humans. And, of course, the humans–who have been stranded on the satellite for 900 years–plan to kill The Doctor.
I also loved Neil Gaiman’s clever tale about The Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith), “Nothing O’Clock” about a dangerous alien called The Kin who the Time Lords trapped in a bizarre prison. But, The Kin, released by the death of the Time Lords, are intent on killing the last Time Lord: Doctor Who!
If you’re a Doctor Who fan, you’ll love DOCTOR WHO: 12 Doctors 12 Stories. If you like innovative Science Fiction, you’ll enjoy this volume, too! GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
The first Doctor: A big hand for the Doctor / Eoin Colfer — 1
The second Doctor: The nameless city / Michael Scott — 39
The third Doctor: The spear of destiny / Marcus Sedgwick — 89
The fourth Doctor: The root of evil / Philip Reeve — 145
The fifth Doctor: Tip of the tongue / Patrick Ness — 185
The sixth Doctor: Something borrowed / Richell Mead — 221
The seventh Doctor: The ripple effect / Malorie Blackman — 267
The eighth Doctor: Spore / Alex Scarrow — 317
The ninth Doctor: The beast of Babylon / Charlie Higson — 355
The tenth Doctor: The mystery of the haunted cottage / Derek Landy — 407
The eleventh Doctor: Nothing o’clock / Neil Gaiman — 461
The twelfth Doctor: Lights out / Holly Black — 503
About the Authors — 537
I have never watched DR. WHO and had no idea there were also stories about him. I don’t recognize any of these writers except for Gaiman either. How much I don’t know!
Well, Patti, if one doesn’t read in a field, there’s not too much means of keeping up with it! I don’t sneer at romance fiction as a whole by any means, nor all “men’s adventure” fiction, but they are the two large commercial as well as actual/textual/artistic categories of fiction where I have read the least…as most of the others that have more than a coterie following have managed to generate at least some Best of the Year anthologies to graze from, and something similar in the case of western fiction–Bill Pronzini’s books alone can give one some grounding. And I am Not Keeping Up with any of my literature of late.
Patti, I’ve been a Doctor Who fan since the 1970s. I like some of the Doctors better than others.
I’ve seen a handful of shows and a couple of the early movies, but have no real interest in this.
Jeff, I had no idea this book existed until I saw it on the shelf of a Salvation Army Thrift Store. I suspect it probably came from Canada.
I didn’t know Dr. Who had been around for that long, and don’t believe I became aware of the series until maybe the 90s, and still haven’t seen any of it. At this late stage of the game I probably never will. I wonder how much crossover there is between Dr. Who fans and the MCU cult.
Michael, I’m into DOCTOR WHO and the MCU. But there are Highs and Lows to both.
Dr. Who started as an educational/adventure program in 1963 with William Hartnell as the first doctor. It quickly dropped its educational mission and moved into television history with episodes that were both unique and thrilling, or those that were banal and trite. (I hated K-9.) There are several hundred professionally published Dr. Who novels out there, many based on individual episodes of the show and many available on Internet Archive. Each Doctor had his/her own personality — my favorites were Tom Baker, David Tennant, and Matt Smith. Almost as interesting were his various “companions,” who either greatly elevated the show or dragged it down.
The bit of a turn toward sexual sadism, more or less, during Peter Davison’s run as the Doctor was a bit odd. I think the WGB_ stations in Massachusetts were the first to import DOCTOR WHO wholesale in the States, and I caught an odd Pertwee episode circa 1972 or so (WIKI seems to think Time/Life Television sold it to commercial stations first in the US, but I definitely was seeing it first on WGBX in Boston and later on WGBY in Springfield, after moving to Hazardville, CT in 1973). I had watched it for the mostly good-humored low-budget fun of it during Tom Baker’s years, but was pretty much done by the time Colin Baker took on the role, and haven’t even watch all that much of the revival, even given how much I’ve enjoyed other projects by the reviving producer-writers such as COUPLING, SHERLOCK and THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE tv series so far. Did watch a bit of the spin-off series. TORCHWOOD.
Todd, I watched TORCHWOOD, too. It was just okay.
Jerry, I would probably rank my favorite Doctors: Tom Baker, Matt Smith, David Tennant (although Tennant and Smith are in an almost virtual tie in my mind sometimes). Karen Gillian is far and away my favorite Companion!
I caught up most thoroughly with Karen Gillan (which WordPress doesn’t care for, but it’s her name) on the Adult Swim short-form parody series NTSF:SD:SUV::, and here’s her first go in that series:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Jq_qVpovFE
Todd, I’d like to see more of the Real Karen Gillan, but her character in the MCU, Nebula, hides many of her best features.
Was John Eastman impersonating Tom Baker’s Doctor Who, in those clips of him and Giuliani helping to inflame the mob at Trump’s Jan. 6 rally? Check out his hat in the clips.
I’ve been vaguely aware of Doctor Who since those Peter Cushing movies in the ’60s (and apparently the TV series was already well-established by then on the BBC), but I’ve never delved much into any of the shows, movies, or spin-off books. Michael Moorcock has written at least one of the spin-off books.
Fred, I have several Doctor Who novels. Maybe I’ll read a couple this Summer. If you want to go down the Doctor Who Rabbit Hole it’s a long, long fall!
You know, George, while you’ve been in Buffalo, you could’ve seen DW on CBC stations as early as 1965, by WIKI’s account. But it was on and gone in not much more than a month, as they bought only an initial 26 episodes and presumably stripped them weekdaily…and didn’t buy more WHO till 2005.
TV Ontario, Canada’s closest approximation of PBS, first stepped into the breach during those years, with Judith Merril doing some of the wraparound commentaries in the ’70s.
Todd, back in the Sixties, watching the CBC was an iffy proposition. We had an antenna on our roof that brought in the three network broadcasts and PBS. I used to watch NHL hockey games from Toronto…when the weather was right. But the Canadian broadcast would frequently be snowy.
There’s a potential pun if ever there was.
And, fwiw, you were watching NET, National Educational Television, in the ’60s…I think the official switchover for most stations was in ’69, perhaps ’70. I hope you’ve been able to look at TV Ontario from time to time…for one thing among many, they had a nice interview program with Ed Hoch not too long before his death.
Todd, you might be surprised to learn the Canadian TV station on our cable system is in Low Def.