What Doctor Who novels would you say are the most well-written, use literary techniques, etc.? Bonus points if it is particularly experimental (in the way much of the show occasionally experiments with film). I enjoyed Human Nature and a few other books.
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An obvious candidate in the experimental section is Campaign by Jim Mortimore which was the novel he published unofficially because the BBC ended up rejecting what he wrote.
I didn’t like it because it was a bit too self-indulgent but it definitely ticks the experimental box.
(We need to get Campaign on the site actually)
The short story The Trials of Tara is written in iambic pentameter.
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The Giggle and Day of the Doctor are both incredible for this imo.
The everywith with Day of the Doctor, but especially the multiple perspectives (the scene with the three doctors being put in the Tower of London’s cellars is a particular standout), and the little extra added touches with The Giggle (The games, the choose your own adventure sequence in The Toymaker’s domain, the words all across the page making the game of catch more interesting to read than watch?!) are brilliant.
I struggle to read sometimes, but I devoured both of those books
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I have only read the EDAs up to Kursaal + the Telos Novella Frayed. I wouldn’t call them experimental per si, but both Vampire Science and Alien Bodies are great books.
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I really liked, from the EDAs, Seeing I and The Scarlet Empress. Seeing I was just good all round, and Scarlet Empress is in that classic Paul Magrs whimsy style which I love
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You’ll probably know these authors as their names always come up in 'best of’s, but I’ll always bat for Jon Blum and Kate Orman (spectacular books, all of them, and some of my very favourites) and Paul Magrs (Scarlet Empress is a perfect fantasy novel, and Blue Angel is… just perfect! And VERY experimental.)
In terms of literary-ness– well, literary is a very broad term, but some of the books I’ve read I think would qualify:
The Turing Test by Paul Leonard is written from the perspective of three people (Turing, Graham Greene and Joseph Heller), none of whom know who the Doctor is, and all of whole have a unique perspective on (some pretty dark and disturbing) events.
City of the Dead by Lloyd Rose definitely qualifies as literary! Excellent prose, and a fantastic plot to boot. I haven’t read her other books yet but apparently they’re just as good.
The Adventuress of Henrietta Street is an interesting one I finished a few weeks ago. It’s a sci-fi fantasy extravaganza written as if it were a historical non-fiction boom. I didn’t love it– I think it could have been executed better– but it’s a fascinating idea and some people adore it.
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Looks really interesting. I see a part in the book just straight up becomes a comic lol. In case anyone’s curiosity has also been piqued, found that the updated version is available for free:
https://doctorwho.org.nz/archive/campaign/
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I reviewed it many years ago (this is a link to my book review blog until we correct it’s omission from TARDIS Guide).
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Eye of Heaven · BBC Books · TARDIS Guide by Jim Mortimore is a Fourth Doctor/Leela novel set between S14/S15 that’s told in a non-linear fashion.
Non-Linear Breakdown from tardi.wiki
- The main linear story is told in the Prologue, then Chapters 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 and 14 telling the story of the events in London, leading up to the launching of the Tweed and its possession by Jennifer Richards.
- Chapters 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13 tell the story of the journey from England to Rapa Nui.
- In Part Two, Chapters 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26 and 28 tell the story of the attack by the Peruvian slavers.
- Chapters 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27 and then the epilogue tell the story of the discovery of the dead world on the other side of the wormhole and the effects that Stockwood’s original journey had on the alien civilisation.
- Chapter 15 is the misleading one here: Leela’s dream of the vortex is not related to the tornado we just saw in Chapter 13, but is rather the effect of travelling through the wormhole at the end of Chapter 27.
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Honestly, a lot of the 8th doctor books fit this criteria. I want to echo praise especially for Alien Bodies, The Blue Angel, The Turing Test, and The City of the Dead. To add to the list, I finished The Crooked World yesterday, and it’s incredible.
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I liked Eye of Heaven’s structure until around the halfway point when it started spoiling itself. Like, a character would be in a perilous situation, and then it would switch to a scene later on when they were fine, utterly destroying the tension.
I really like the first half of this book and how it was told but Mortimore just kept trying to be more and more clever and consequently shot himself in the foot (I think I just described everything by Jim Mortimore)
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Eye of Heaven was also supposed to be part of a two-novel sequence but the second novel never appeared.
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Angel of Redemption is written as a poem and often from the perspective of a weeping angel. Really unique.
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The anthology Twelve Angels Weeping has some cool stuff in it, specifically the short story Student Bodies, which is told via transcript from a university student’s audio notes as she encounters the Silence and River Song.
In fact, this whole anthology’s great, Dave Rudden is so effortlessly readable whilst still having some utterly stunning descriptions.
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Kim Newman’s Time & Relative is written entirely as if it was from Susan’s Diary and it’s sheer perfection.
While I really hated reading it, The Man in the Velvet Mask does really interesting things with Sadism (as in Marquis de Sade’s writing) and Commedia Dell’arte.
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Just listened to this, it was really enjoyable.
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I apologise for the massive rant I’m about to drop…
The thing is that Eye of Heaven is not really a book about tension. I’d argue Eye of Heaven is more a story about perception. The novel is in the first person for this reason, but also it’s clear in the way roles shift and blend, images like dreams are offered the same opportunity as ‘real’, well-documented events. Eye of Heaven even lets Mortimore slip in ideas about how an author deals with time! Telling the novel in a straightforward way, if restoring tension, loses most of the exploration of Mortimore’s point. I think the best example of this is in the last words we hear from the Doctor - compare the two ‘final’ lines of the Doctor - as the novel tells it:
The Doctor’s voice was furious. ‘Every life is important. Do you hear me, Topeno? Every life!’
and as time would tell it:
‘Then run, Leela, run for all our lives! And everyone else -’ - there was only me - 'be sure and keep up! Now,’ he added in a tremendous shout whose echoes rolled to every horizon, and might possibly be the last sound this world would ever hear, ‘“Further up and further in!”’
The former is really Mortimore’s point. The novel offers different takes on the Doctor, as his role continually shifts both within the narrative and within the plot (which we’ve established are very different things here) - he goes from onlooker to hero, from magical to deeply human. These quotes come from Chapters 28 and 27 respectively; the chapters are juxtaposed for a lot of reasons, but for the purposes of perspective alone, consider how the Doctor is powerless and condemning in one, just as powerful as any of us, yet dashing and heroic in another - the story is more a reaction to the story than the story itself.
To be clear: I’m not saying that looking at the plot for a basic storyline or something like that is wrong, or that it’s invalid or anything of the sort. However, it is worth noting that the book is not trying to cater to that kind of perspective at all. Like basically all Mortimore, it’s exploration on its own terms.
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