Godengine got me thinking about the few NAs
that I’d read back in the day which I’d actually enjoyed and I was grasped with
a sudden desire to fling off the EDAs and read all the NAs instead. So, I went
through the arduous and expensive task of filling in the gaps in my collection
(I say ‘gaps’ when I really mean ‘chasms’, since I only owned about six of them
at that point!)
At first my
plan was to alternate between an EDA and an NA each time, possibly with the odd
MA or PDA thrown in for good measure. This lasted for all of about two books
perhaps, before I ended up concentrating solely on the NAs. My EDA re-read
sadly remains incomplete to this day...
When Virgin started publishing the New Adventures I was about 17 years old – pretty much the perfect age
for them, you’d think. I’d loved Seasons 25 and 26 on TV in the late 1980s and the subsequent Target novelisations of those stories which were somewhat the precursors for the NAs in many ways, so I was very much ‘into’
the McCoy Doctor and Ace team – or so I thought. I recall being very excited about
the prospect of original Doctor Who
fiction; I owned the three Target Companions Of
Doctor Who books but hadn’t read them at that point. I was given the opportunity of borrowing the four Timewyrm books that opened the range from a friend. Hmmm. It
was clear to me straight off that this wasn’t quite the same thing as the TV
programme I loved. Timewyrm: Genesys by John Peel was all right, but unnecessarily sexual in places and what was all that mad stuff about swapping out the Doctor's personas? Timewyrm: Exodus by Terrance Dicks was much better, a good solid read. Nigel Robinson's Timewyrm: Apocalypse was okay too but Paul Cornell's Timewyrm: Revelation stumped me completely; I
couldn’t relate to it, I didn’t like where it was going and what it was trying to do and it put me off
the range completely. My friend Andrew, who had lent me the books, said he wasn’t
that keen either when we discussed them afterwards and he wouldn't be buying the next story arc, Cat’s
Cradle. Any money I had from part-time work was going on the videos which had started to up their frequency about that time too, and I decided I’d lose nothing by never going near the range again.
In retrospect I think that if I’d carried straight on to Marc
Platt’s Cats Cradle:Time’s Crucible that really would
have sealed the coffin for me, as it's even less accessible and reader-friendly than Timewyrm: Revelation to the uninitiated. As it was I came back to the range not too long after with Nightshade by Mark Gatiss - my first actual purchase in the range - having been swayed by its great reviews;
I didn’t enjoy it that much and I kept getting annoyed at the thinly veiled
self-referential 'Professor X'. I just don’t think my mind was in the right place
for the NAs at the time - I was the right age, but I wasn't mature enough as a reader to cope with the textual complexities or the hard-edged sci-fi content. Buying and watching old Tom Baker stories on video instead was much easier and more enjoyable for me at the time.
But thanks to the coverage and reviews in Doctor Who Magazine I remained aware of the range and like the good little fan I was I felt obliged to dip in now and again just in case things had improved. I was enticed by David Banks' Iceberg because of the Cybermen, and
picking that up for the first time I discovered I should read Nigel Robinson's Birthright too because they were happening
concurrently, so that's what I did and I enjoyed them both immensely - hurrah! I also stumbled across
second hand copies of Jim Mortimore's Blood Heat and Daniel Blythe's The Dimension Riders and very much
enjoyed them too, but I never felt the urge to fill in the gaps between and I was wary
of Paul Cornell's work. A few years later I picked up Terrance Dicks' Shakedown
because I’d rather enjoyed the video release (similarly with Marc Platt's MA Downtime), but when I borrowed Kate Orman's The Left-Handed Hummingbird from another
friend many years later I hated it. I also hated Russell T Davies' Damaged Goods when I borrowed that from the same friend after the programme
had returned in 2005. I was sickened by it in all honesty – too ‘on the nose’,
too 'kitchen sink' and far too much death and destruction at the end.
Clearly
something was amiss.
One of the joys of seeing through that decision to read the complete series from start to finish was finding
how wrong I’d been years before. I'd clearly changed a lot as a reader, as a person and as a fan in the intervening years, plus a certain amount doubtless falls to familiarity, being a little more prepared for what you're going to get. Timewyrm:
Revelation, Nightshade and The Left-Handed Hummingbird were among
my very favourites and although I still don’t love Damaged Goods I did prefer it the second time around. But it
wasn’t all fabulous by any means; Timewyrm:
Apocalypse and Dave Stone's Sky Pirates! were
utterly deplorable, The Pit by Neil Penswick is turgid and dull and I was very disappointed to find that Birthright
wasn’t as good as I’d remembered it. Paul Cornell's Love
and War and Ben Aaronovitch's The Also People came to me very highly recommended and as a consequence didn't live up to expectation and there were several runs of books
where the quality was consistently good, but not necessarily great, and I found myself
yearning for something extra special. It seems pretty harsh to condemn good
books for not being great, but I think it’s representative of the range as a
whole that they set their own standards of achievement – 'good' became the base-level norm, and thus not quite good enough; they needed to be 'great' to stand out.
I enjoyed the
three cross-overs into the Missing Adventures range too: Goth Opera, Lords of The
Storm and Cold Fusion, which I
read in their correct place without getting unnecessarily side-tracked into the
MAs. Goth Opera is easily Paul Cornell's weakest addition to the Virgin ranges, and as the opener to a new range that promises old Doctor stories which will fit in with those of the time it's a curious effort since it's nothing like the Fifth Doctor era at all. David A. McIntee's Lords of The Storm turns out to be far stronger than Shakedown, with which it is paired but Lance Parkin's Cold Fusion is the icing on the cake in cross-over country and surely one of the
best works of Doctor Who prose
fiction ever.
I started to
notice that some regular authors were consistently great: Kate Orman and Paul
Cornell in particular. I had a fondness for Terrance Dicks (who doesn’t, let’s
face it) but although his books were always readable they weren’t always great. Andrew Cartmel may not count as a regular contributor, but his three books were stand-out efforts of postmodern narrative and contemporary life. Gareth Roberts no doubt deserves a mention too for his refreshing yarns, although his best work was reserved for the MA range.
Throughout these books I still had
issues with the ‘scheming’ Seventh Doctor; although I came to the range this time around a lot more tolerant of this aspect of his character I felt it grew tiresome very quickly. I also
had issues with where the writers took the character of Ace too, and what she became. I started Gareth Roberts’ Tragedy Day while away for the weekend in the New Forest, and there was palpable relief to finally read a book where the
Doctor, Ace and Benny all actually get along fine for a change.
Benny, poor Benny. I was interested in her at first, and how her fresh dynamic
with the Doctor would develop. But we just get used to them together when Ace
returns like a bulldozer and Benny gets pushed to the side a lot, acting as
‘companion’ to either the Doctor or Ace depending on who she’s been lumbered
with that month. I’d have been happy for Ace to have gone after Love and War and not returned; she
certainly returned more quickly that I liked.
And then,
after Ace left properly in Kate Orman's beautiful Set Piece
again we only get a few books’ grace before Chris and Roz come along and again
the dynamic changes. I took to Roz Forrester, but found that Chris Cwej was very unevenly
written across many of the books; he was occasionally smart and intuitive,
occasionally just big and dim depending on what the narrative required - along
with the sex and the fast cars. As a consequence I was disappointed when Benny left and married
Jason because I felt I still didn’t know her as well as I’d have liked.
What I found,
towards the end of the Doctor Who NA
range and repeatedly through the Bernice
Summerfield NA run, was that I was already hankering to re-visit some of
the earlier NAs and give them a second chance, specifically Marc Platt's Cat's Cradle: Time’s Crucible, Andrew Cartmel's Cat's Cradle: Warhead, Paul Cornell's Love and War and Ben Aaronovitch's
Transit. I took that as a sign that I
was starting to tire of the range and although I’m certain that was true during
the Bernice Summerfield stories I
think that earlier it was because I was aware that the range had changed and
evolved quite a bit along the way. But I resisted the temptation to go back before I reached the end.
The Doctor Who NA range ended as it had
always been for me; So Vile A Sin, by Kate Orman and Ben Aaronovitch, Lungbarrow by Marc Platt and Lance Parkin's The Dying Days in particular were all superb - the latter giving the fledgling Eighth Doctor his solo Virgin outing - but there were some
within that final strait (post-Happy
Endings where it’s all obviously being geared up to hand over to Benny
Summerfield) that still didn’t hit the mark for me. I left the range feeling
saddened but also a bit relieved – Doctor
Who had been put through the ringer by Virgin and I was glad that it was ending
on a high and with such a great legacy behind it.
I made a
conscious decision at that point to see out the NAs fully and go through the briefer
'Benny' range too. I knew some of the Big Finish audios and I’d been bewildered
by The Sword of Forever but otherwise
the character still largely felt like an unknown quantity to me. I’d missed her not being in some of the
latter Doctor Who novels so I knew I
had some affection for the character.
Some of the
twenty three Bernice Summerfield NAs
were superb: Lawrence Miles was emerging as a force to be reckoned with, Justin
Richards too. And seemingly true to form I adored Jim Mortimore’s The Sword of Forever the second time
around. Paul Cornell and Kate Orman both left the range with excellent
swansongs, but a good half of the run were poor or average at best. Benny Summerfield gets reduced to being a series of cyphers and stock actions / responses. Gary
Russell’s Deadfall was another truly
dire effort and easily the worst of the lot. Dave Stone had clearly found his
niche, if not for quality then at least for being able to hit deadlines, but
his whole NA output varied massively. Death
and Diplomacy and Ship of Fools
were great. Sky Pirates! was
appalling and his further three Benny books were exercises in readerly patience at best.
I don’t think he helped the range in the long run. Although the ‘Gods’ story
arc added some interest towards the end of the run I was feeling by then that
it was all a little too late. Picking up something that was seeded during the Doctor Who stories was a mistake as certain names and characters were under licence and could no longer be used, which made for clunkiness. Bernice
had become a kind of pissed-up Jessica Fletcher, off solving murders and
mysteries wherever she went; there seemed to be a lack of initiative or
imagination as to what to do with Bernice and what stories to tell. I began to
wonder why Virgin hadn’t mixed up the pot a bit more and added stories about some
of the other companions or recurring pseudo-companions that they’d introduced
during the Doctor Who run, such as
Kadiatu or Chris Cwej. When we finally get a Chris Cwej solo novel, Dead Romance by Lawrence Miles, it’s a bit of a revelation
and all a bit too late to save things.
It’s a shame
but I felt relieved when I put down Mark Clapham & Jon De Burgh Miller's Twilight
of The Gods at the end. I’d grown weary. I was expecting to feel a little
empty inside, like I’d left an old friend behind, but I was instead enthused
with excitement about what proper Doctor
Who books I could go back to reading – like re-visiting those early NAs, or finishing off the EDAs after all...
I should
point out that I didn't read a straight run of all eighty four NAs, plus the three
MAs: I would read a few, usually encounter one I’d enjoyed less, pick up
something else for a break, then go back to the range a few days or a week
later – so I was reasonably dedicated but I didn’t weary myself with them, as I
didn’t want that to unfairly taint my views. I can’t imagine anyone reading all
of them back to back and maintaining an objective outlook.
Although I was old enough for the New Adventures range when they were first published, I believe I wasn’t mature enough either as a person, a fan or a reader to fully appreciate them, hence the mixed responses I had. But, I must admit, the best of the range are amongst the best books I’ve ever read. I can't pick a favourite - truly - and it's a mark of the quality of the range over all that even my shortlist would be rather long.
