Books: Doctor Who: The Return of Robin Hood by Paul Magrs (2022)

 

"Gold had come to the greenwood . . .Robin Hood is disenchanted. Maid Marion has disappeared, and the legend of the Doctor has retreated into the shadows of Sherwood Forest. But the Doctor is back! (Although this is his first visit - time travel does strange things to a story.)And the timing couldn't be better. A new Sheriff of Nottingham is in town, out to get the Outlaws, and behind the scenes, the mythical Mother Maudlin has designs on the realm that are not of this earth. With the Kingdom in peril, it's time for the return of the Lionheart."

Set just after the 12^th Season serial Revenge of the Cybermen and before The Terror of the Zygons, The Return of Robin Hood has the Fourth Doctor meeting Robin of Locksley for the first time, but not the first time Robin has met the Doctor. As with modern Doctor Who, the story is takes on some timey-wimey aspects, as its set about twenty years after the Twelfth Doctor and Clara met the Prince of Thieves in the episode The Robots of Sherwood.

Magrs remains a witty writer, and he captures the voice of the TARDIS cast from season twelve very well, especially Harry Sullivan. But I sense this would’ve actually been a better story had it featured K9 and Romana, and set around season seventeen of the Classic Series. Unlike most tales dealing with Robin Hood, King Richard the Lionheart and his brother King John (the pretend King), we get a more realized, more truthful historical version of era –Magrs goes out his way to point out how bad both King Richard and King John were (and despite his awfulness, King John did sign the Manga Carta). Still, there are some historical flaws within the story, including setting it two decades after the Twelfth Doctor story (reality is Richard was King from 1189 to 1199, ten years, so how does this timeline work?). Also having the Doctor referred by the name Doctor Who is distracting –as much as it was when WOTAN called the Time Lord that in the First Doctor serial The War Machines.

As the third book in this Penguin Kids series, it’s still a fine, easy to read tale. It’s always nice to read a Fourth Doctor story, even if the story has some glaring plot holes which left me slightly frustrated.