Doctor Who novel adaptations wish list

With the release of Original Sin and Cold Fusion, Big Finish's novel adaptations line seems to be over. Its been a pretty good run that hit most of the high points of the Virgin line: we heard the Doctor's first meetings with Bernice Summerfield and Sherlock Holmes; got to hear Gareth Roberts' rightly legendary Fourth Doctor trilogy come to life; Russell T. Davies' first Doctor Who story (which, space-cocaine aside was practically a manifesto for his TV series); we even got a Chelonian story out of the deal.

Still, with how good the last two were it feels like the series is over just as it was starting to hit its stride so here are a few... *ahem*, humble suggestions on where the line might go if it ever returns. Honourable mentions for books that can't be adapted because of the sad loss of vital actors: The Dying Days, Happy Endings, The Shadow of Weng-Chiang, Managra and First Frontier off the top of my head.

The Empire of Glass

The whole point of this novel is to place the staunchly non-interventionist First Doctor in the sort of adventure he'll have in later lives: a pseudo-historical set in Renaissance Venice with loads of different aliens knocking around because Irving Braxiatel wants to hold an intergalactic peace conference. Also Gallileo, Shakespeare and Marlowe are there. It sounds over busy and, frankly, it sort of is but it has the potential to be a fun little romp with lashing of Miles Richardson thrown in.

Lungbarrow

Whilst the “true origin” of the Doctor as Marc Platt writes it here might not be to my taste, it was the cap off to the Seventh Doctor's adventures back in the day. It tied off a lot of threads that had been seeded throughout the novels, including in Cold Fusion. Now, a lot of these ideas got re-used by Platt in other work for Big Finish, the Doctor's origins being something of a pet project of his, but I'd love to see the original story see the light of day again.

Set Piece

This was the book that wrote out Ace and had her become her own hero, Time's Vigilante (as opposed to the Doctor as Time's Champion). Given that Big Finish are muleheadedly dedicated to not giving Ace a definitive send-off she might as well finally get one in the canon grey area that is the novel adaptations. Its a good send-off, too, unsurprising given its written by Kate Orman.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

A high fantasy romp set in the early, anything goes days of Season One. A year ago this would not have made the list since it has a really substantial solo story for Barbara but with Jemma Powell taking the role in The Early Adventures the possibility is open. Its a great little novel that handles the four person TARDIS crew better than most of the TV stories they appeared in giving everyone something substantial to do. Plus, the First Doctor doing magic is just too delightful an idea to resist.

Andrew Cartmel's War trilogy

The “Cartmel Masterplan” is, of course, not a thing. He's been quite upfront about how he had no endgame in mind when he seeded all those hints about the Doctor's past into the episodes he script edited. If anything its the Platt Masterplan but we dealt with that earlier in the list.

But if there were a Cartmel Masterplan this would be it: unapologetically political, anti-corporate Doctor Who with a focus on how the Doctor affects the world around him.

So Vile a Sin

Never read it. Probably never will. Out of print pretty much the moment it came out and insanely expensive second hand. The grand sequel to Original Sin with Chris and Roz returning to their home time written by two of the NA's best talents Kate Orman and Ben Aaronovitch. Frankly, even if it didn't sound great on paper, just the fact that its stupidly hard to get hold of makes it a worthwhile addition to this list.

Vampire Science

Naughty, I know. This was a BBC novel not a Virgin one and so probably Big Finish wouldn't be able to get the rights but it is absolutely the best Eighth Doctor Adventure in the whole in the whole series (which, being the second in s eries if seventy three novels is praising with faint damnation) and if I could have only one novel brought to life in audio it would be this. 

Vampire Science is basically Kate Orman and Jon Blum writing a stage by stage guide on how the TV Movie should have been made. Its set in San Francisco, the Doctor teams up with a female scientist who's having relationship difficulties, it delves into the series back catalogue for an antagonist but it does all these things in fresh and interesting ways. I absolutely love this novel.

Nostalgia for "my" Doctor

Last night I listened to the Big Finish adaptation of Andy Lane's novel Original Sin and as the first few scenes unfolded I was struck by a funny sense of nostalgia. This might be the ninth adaptation Big Finish has put out but it was the first one that really felt to me like one of those old novels I grew up on.

This isn't to say the other releases haven't been good, the worst I can honestly say is that I thought The Highest Science wasn't as funny as the book but it was still entertaining. Rather, its just that all the ingredients were present in this one in just the right ratios and just the right places.

You've got the in medias res beginning as we join Benny and the Doctor at the end of a mainly unseen adventure. You've got Benny, Chris and Roz together, which was the definitive TARDIS team of The New Adventures as far as I'm concerned (I never got on with the guntoting space marine version of Ace). You have a discussion of the Doctor's morality, albeit not a terribly compelling one, with the serial killer Zebulon Pryce. Most of all, though, there's the scenes in the Overcities of 30^th century Earth teeming with aliens and sly little reference like the Birostrop character.

One of the big selling points of the Virgin era was that the books had a pretty solid sense of what the future looked like in the Doctor Who universe but, sadly, not many of the books Big Finish have been able to adapt have been ones using that solid future continuity. What little we've seen of that future in the adaptations have been isolated outposts of the Earth Empire (Love And War, The Romance Of Crime) or random archaeological expeditions to the edge of space in that era (Theatre Of War, The Highest Science) with this being the first time the series has done the sweeping space opera I remember from that era.

Given that the adaptations seem to be ending with Cold Fusion (which I am so very much looking forward to) its nice they got in one like this before the end, a real nostalgia fest for the majestic height of the novel line.

Damaged Goods and The Well-Mannered War audio review

Sometimes I wonder if adaptations work better when you don't know the source material. I've never read The Well-Mannered War or Damaged Goods and I think these audios are fantastic. I have read all the novels Big Finish have previously adapted and found those audios lacked something. The Highest Science in particular was an adaptation I enjoyed but I missed the stuff cut from the Eight-Twelves section because I remembered it so vividly from the book.

So I think these are the best of Big Finish's novel adaptations but I don't know if its because they represent a real improvement or better source material or just plain less nostalgic bias on my part.

The Well-Mannered War

adapted by John Dorney from the novel by Gareth Roberts

directed by Ken Bentley

Of Gareth Roberts' three Fourth Doctor and Romana stories this is undoubtedly the funniest. You know all those stories from the early days of the trenches like the Christmas Truce and the football game and how the royals of the warring nations still sent each other letters because they were related? Well, here Roberts takes that idea and extends it to an entire conflict. There's even a scene where the human second in command tries to fix a photocopier so they can send invitations to the enemy for someone's leaving do or there'll be an “incident”.

The idea is that a human army and a Chelonian army (a race of cybernetic turtles) are in dispute over the ownership of an uninhabited, worthless planetoid. The two sides have dug in, waiting for the order to fight, but have been stuck in a holding pattern waiting for the order for so long that things are completely cordial between the two sides. The two sides try to assassinate each other's commanders at one point following a failed peace conference and its literally just done for the sake of form.

I do like a good pointlessness of war satire and this one hits all the high points, as far as I'm concerned. All of Roberts' Doctor Who work has a touch of comedy but this story is out-and-out farce. The comedy is broader than any of the Roberts novels adapted so far and so it comes across rather better as dialogue.

Another thing that helps the story compared to the previous instalments in the trilogy, is that the Doctor and Romana spend a lot of it apart. The Doctor spends most of his time shuffling from one side to the other in the warzone while Romana and K9 end up on the human colony world where (and I love this subplot) K9 ends up entering the presidential election race as a candidate. Funnier even than the war stuff is how Roberts uses K9's deadpan delivery to lampoon the script every politician uses to get elected.

Also, I don't know but I suspect that Baker and Ward might record their lines separately, which did impact the previous two productions. Keeping them apart in-story, albeit as a result of the source material than any production decision, certainly helps. It also gives Ward a chance to shine on her own as Romana in a way she hasn't had a chance to since... well, probably The Horns Of Nimon in 1979.

Damaged Goods

adapted by Jonathan Morris from the novel by Russell T Davies

directed by Ken Bentley

Much as I love Gareth Roberts' novels and was definitely looking forward to Big Finish capping off the trilogy, there's no denying Damaged Goods was the main event of the box set. Its Russell T Davies first Doctor Who story, after all, and a story too dark for him to even consider adapting for the TV series (his words, incidentally).

And, my goodness, but it is dark. Spoilers forbid me but there's a very real, very dark tragedy at the centre of the story that was somewhere I would never have expected Davies to go. You can see a lot of the approach he'd later take to the TV series in this story, including some new series references slipped in for fun, but there's no chance this could have been filmed without significant and harmful cuts.

The story takes place in the Quadrant, a council estate in 1987, with the Seventh Doctor, Chris and Roz moving into a flat to investigate a drug called Smile that's being peddled by a local dealer. Obviously the council estate setting echoes the Powell Estate from Davies' first two season on television, a local family who play a big part in the story are even called the Tylers. What surprised me, though it probably shouldn't, is that the whole setting is phrased as a criticism of how Doctor Who usually works. The Doctor worries about investigating in a tower block because he's used to the corridors of power and bluffing his way to authority whilst in the Quadrant each flat is a fortress he might not be able to gain access to when the time comes. Davies makes a big thing of how the “cosmic chessmaster” version of the Doctor is disconnected from the everyday world, which is as good as way as any to describe the very thing he undertook to fix when he brought the series back to television.

Then there's our “new” companions Chris and Roz. Or, rather, Travis Oliver and Yasmin Bannerman who give voice to the roles for the first time in their twenty year history. Hell, for a lot of fans this might be the first time they've ever encountered the characters, the books have been out of print since 1998. Damaged Goods doesn't go into great details about their background except to drop the fact that they're from the future and are basically cops, which is about all we need to know. Chris is the young idealistic one and Roz is the older cynical one, cop formula as old as time.

Oliver plays up the idealistic side of Chris but not in such a way that he seems naïve. There are some fantastic scenes in which a guy flirts with him in coded 1980s ways, baffling Chris no end, a plotline with a killer pay-off (which was about the only thing about the story I knew about in advance). Bannerman as Roz doesn't come off as well, or at least not as fully realised, as Oliver does as Chris. This is mainly because Roz's part in the story is far more functional than Chris'. Chris does a lot of interacting with people in the Quadrant, as does the Doctor, whilst Roz plays more of a back-up style role. Bannerman does well with what she's given but I feel we aren't going to see the full extent of what she can do until Original Sin waaaay in the future, which is sad.

I tried to temper my expectations in the lead-up to this release because, frankly, you can go very wrong expecting someone's long out-of-print early work to match what they did more recently. This goes double when the recent work is something like a massively popular, game-changing TV hit like Davies' Doctor Who. I shouldn't have bothered, frankly, this adaptations holds up fantastically well, not just as a story but as an audio since the kitchen sink setting really lends itself to audio. Even I, Big Finish fanboy that I am, have to admit the company does sometimes tend to bite off more than they can chew when it comes to what can and can't work on the audio medium.

I am very much looking forward to the next set of adaptations. 

Pre-emptive thoughts on Chris and Roz gaining voice

Last night I downloaded (all nice and legally and paid for, thank you) Big Finish's second box set of Virgin novel adaptations. I've already listened to The Well-Mannered War, which was delightful fun and seemed to adapt to audio better than the previous two Tom Baker/Gareth Roberts efforts. Next up, of course, is Damaged Goods, which has a lot going for it (or against it) in the expectations stakes.

Now, Damaged Goods is one of those New Adventures I've never read. I drifted out of the books towards the end and regret it immeasurably today since they were very good books and are now the devil to get ahold of now. Anyway, I never read it so I'm coming to this fresh. What I do know, however, is its the first published Doctor Who story by Russell T. Davies, future showrunner and series' resurrection mastermind; its one of the late-era New Adventures, from the time when the license had already been cancelled and the series put out some of its most challenging material; most of all, though, this marks the first time Roz Forrester and Chris Cwej (its pronounced “Kwedge”, apparently) have been portrayed by actors.

It'll be funny to hear actors playing these characters after nearly twenty years of defining them by voices dredged up from my imagination. I wonder if I'll like them enough to “recast” the characters as these actors when I read the books. To be honest, I can't remember how I imagined Bernice Summerfield's voice before I heard Lisa Bowerman play her. Bowerman's performance was just too pitch perfect that its her voice I hear when I re-read those books.

It'll also be interesting to see Chris and Roz as the Seventh Doctor's sole companions, the book being set after Bernice left the TARDIS. Again, because of how I drifted out of reading the books the Seventh Doctor, Chris and Roz crew isn't one I'm very familiar with. In fact, I think the only books I've read from that era are Return Of The Living Dad (which features Bernice anyway) and The Death Of Art (which shuffled Chris off on his own story) so I have practically zero experience of this crew.

Just a thought, or five. 

Fit for legacy: Big Finish Doctor Who novel adaptations

I'm a bit torn on Big Finish doing adaptations of the New Adventures novels. On the one hand the two they've done so far were good, The Highest Science especially, and its cool that a new generation of fans are being given a chance to experience these hard-to-find stories. On the other hand I'd really like it to be possible for a wide audience to experience these stories as novels, the way they were originally intended, especially as there are so many that can't be adapted because necessary cast members have passed on (Blood Heat, Happy Endings, The Dying Days and Eternity Weeps to name a few). 

Theatre of War

I know its a pretty minor aspect of the novel but I wonder if they'll do something with the Benny and Brax stuff at the beginning that reflects their future together. Aside from that I really don't remember much about this one but its by Justin Richards who was one of the more dependable wilderness years authors.

All-Consuming Fire

I've only listened to a couple of Big Finish's Sherlock Holmes range but I am interested to see how Nicholas Briggs' Holmes works out in this one. Its a cool genre mash-up, though I hope some of the more problematic aspects (there's a hell of a hash-up in the book about the differences between Islam and Hinduism) get ironed out in editing.

Actually, what interests me about these first two choices are they involve New Ace, the older space marine version of the character which Big Finish have historically had a lot of trouble with. This isn't unexpected, after all his version of the character developed without the actress' involvement. That said, the two previous attempts at New Ace on audio were tribute acts and these are the original source material. Not that the source material was always that good where New Ace was concerned.

Nightshade

I have read Nightshade but I don't really remember it that well. I remember enjoying it but that's about it. Its a pre-Bernice book, an interesting choice because that was a sort of developmental phase where the series hadn't really settled on a tone. Not necessarily a bad choice, mind you, I could do without every adaptation being one of the Dark Doctor type stories.

Original Sin

Probably the one I'm looking forward to the most: Chris and Roz's origin story featuring the return of one of the TV series' most interesting villains (no spoilers, though they will have to re-cast). One of the Virgin line's biggest selling points was its detailed and consistent future history and I'm looking forward to seeing how the 30^th century mega-cities come across on audio.

untitled fifth novel

Okay, maybe its going to be something completely out of left field since it isn't listed as starring Sylvester McCoy (Vampire Science? A man can dream) but let's assume its a New Adventure for the time being.

Its three discs so either its a long novel or one they didn't want to cut too much. For my money I'd guess either Human Nature (absolutely iconic); The Also People (long and complicated and awesome) or So Vile A Sin (stupidly hard to find and ridiculously expensive if you do). That said, I'm always suspicious when a company asks for pre-order money without revealing the title, so it might be something like bloody Parasite or Falls The Shadow.

Could be Deceit, I suppose, if they want to have another crack at New Ace then doing her origin story might help give Sophie Aldred some context for her performance.