Books: Doctor Who: Blood Cell By James Goss (2014)

"The Governor is responsible for the worst fraudsters and the cruelest murderers. So he's certainly not impressed by Prisoner 428, the man they're calling the most dangerous criminal in the quadrant. Or, as he prefers to be known, the Doctor. What does impress the Governor is the way the new prisoner immediately sets about trying to escape. And keeps trying. Finally, he sends for the Doctor and asks him why? But the answer surprises even the Governor. And then there's the threat -unless the Governor listens to the Doctor, a lot of people will die. Who is the Doctor and what's he really doing here? Why does he want to help the Governor? And who is the young woman who comes every day to visit him, only to be turned away by the guards? When the killing finally starts, the Governor begins to get his answers."

James Goss is one of Doctor Who’s better writers and this tale set in the –what else- the Expanded Universe of the franchise is a fast moving, dark, yet interesting and sometime humorous. Depending on how you view which Doctor you like or watched, Goss captures The Twelfth Doctor pretty well here (but if you’re a Tenth Doctor fan, I can see where might get a bit confused, still Goss does capture Capaldi’s voice), with Clara only really contributing towards the end. While not a huge fan of first person narratives, especially with a media tie-in like this, it worked for me here. The Governor is a bit of an unreliable narrator, but he’s also clearly out of his depth here.

It’s a dark book, fast paced, and a reminder that this series can sometimes out grown its children’s style origins and give us a creepy story that also has some humor (the Doctor’s continual escape from his cell and his ability to be several steps ahead of everyone else, a hallmark of the TOS later years). It takes a bit to fully understand why the Doctor has come to The Prison asteroid, and everything gets neatly tied up rather quickly, but over all, if a lot of these tie-ins were this good, I would read them all, instead of jumping around from site to site reading other peoples reviews. I’m cheating, of course, finding the titles that most liked and ignoring the ones with bad reviews, but if there was one thing I learned trying to read Star Trek and Star Wars books over the decades, only a few are really worth the time and effort.

Books: The Pirate Planet By Douglas Adams and James Goss (2017)

As I noted 2 years ago, when Target Books ended its run of publishing novelizations of Doctor Who serials in 1990, only seven stories remained unwritten in book format. Three of those tales were by the legendary Douglas Adams (who spent a year as script supervisor of the show) and while the writer always planned to eventually get them out in book format, his death in May of 2001 left their fate up in the air. While Evil of the Daleks and Power of the Daleks would see a prose version via through Virgin Books, the publishers who were handing the original Doctor Who novel line in the 1990s and early 2000s, script editor for the show during the last few years the original series aired, Eric Saward’s two serials remain unwritten as novels to this day (Eric Saward asking price to adapt them, along with the always complex licensing issues the BBC has with Dalek creator Terry Nation’s estate seems to be the best reasons why). But with the publication of The Pirate Planet, the three stories the late Douglas Adams wrote now exist in novel format. 

You see, Target Books had a long standing policy that allowed writers of serials to pen novelizations of their stories for around £600. Some writers took it, and others passed, allowing novelist like the prolific Terrance Dicks to do the job. But when Douglas Adams penned The Pirate Planet, the second serial of the sixteenth season of Doctor Who, the Target Books offered him a chance to adapt it. However, he declined (probably rightfully so), saying: “I don't want to be embarrassing but I do have a tendency to be a best-selling author”. Which, of course, translated as: Target Books would fear other authors would demand a higher paycheck for adapting their stories, so The Pirate Planet would remain a “lost” book within their line-up. He would do the same with City of Death and the unfinished and unaired Shada that would be part of season seventeen of the series. 

The Pirate Planet, the first of three tales Douglas Adams penned for the show, was his first official sale for TV, and it came about the same time the BBC was commissioning additional scripts for the audio play version of what would become Adams legacy, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. But this story, like many Doctor Who serials, would go through much iteration before being made. 

“Adams brought several ideas to the table. Predominant amongst these was the notion of a planet which is being mined by the Time Lords, who use a giant aggression-sapping machine (disguised as a statue) to pacify the natives. One Time Lord becomes trapped in the statue and absorbs all the aggression, inducing him to turn against his people. He causes the mining devices to hollow out the planet and now plans to make it dematerialize and reform around Gallifrey. Additionally, Adams had conceived a drug addiction allegory, about a company which preys on people who fear death by offering machines which can slow time for them -- but at an exorbitant price. The company goes bankrupt, however, leaving one old lady in need of a source of fantastic energy. Although none of these concepts were viewed as capable of supporting a story by themselves, it was agreed that some combination of them might be more viable. The aggression-draining subplot was dropped (because of perceived similarities to the Season Fifteen serial The Sun Makers), but Adams mixed the remaining elements together to produce a very complicated plot (which may have been titled The Pirates). Nonetheless, (script editor Anthony) Read was sufficiently happy with the result that he commissioned Adams to develop it into a full storyline called The Pirate Planet.

“As Adams refined his ideas for The Pirate Planet, the slow-time subplot became deemphasized. The Time Lords -- who would be appearing in the Season Fifteen finale -- were also excised, including the villain (whom Adams had envisioned as a Time Lord stuck in the slow-time field, in the midst of his last regeneration). At the same time, he came up with idea of the air car; this was a device he could employ to avoid scenes set in corridors, which he detested. Adams also concocted the Polyphase Avitron to make the Captain's scenes more interesting.”

The televised plot became: “The Key to Time tracer points the Doctor and Romana to the cold and boring planet of Calufrax, but when they arrive they find an unusual civilization that lives in perpetual prosperity. A strange band of people with mysterious powers known as the Mentiads (these were changed to the Mourners in the book) are feared by the society, but the Doctor discovers that they are good people but with an unknown purpose. He instead fears the Captain, the planet's leader and benefactor. After meeting the Captain on the bridge he learns that they are actually on a hollowed-out planet named Zanak, which has been materializing around other planets to plunder their resources.”

While James Goss was give much access to the papers of Adams stored at Cambridge for his adaptation of The City Death, there was only limited amount of notes Adams had on it - then again, that serial was never planned as one of his scripts). But fortune favored him for The Pirate Planet, and he found a treasure trove of notes, dialogue and alternate scenes. So instead of basing his novel on the rehearsal script like he did with Death, he was able to adapt The Pirate Planet using Adams first drafts of serial. 

Much like what he did on City of Death, Goss captures the spirit of Douglas Adams' writing in this novelization. While one still wonders what Adams could’ve done with these stories had he lived, this new take on a nearly 40 year-old tale resonates with the original writers ingenious, complex, and overtly sardonic love of science fiction.  

Books: Doctor Who: City of Death By James Goss (2015)

When Target Books ended its run of publishing novelizations of Doctor Who serials in 1990, only five (well, seven, but Evil of the Daleks and Power of the Daleks were well on their way to being adapted and even though Virgin Books would release them, they still fell under the Target Books mark) stories remained unwritten in book format. Three were by the legendary Douglas Adams (who spent a year as script supervisor of the show), and two were by former story editor Eric Saward.

You see, the Target had a long standing policy that allowed writers of serials to pen novelizations of their stories for around £600. Some writers took it, and others passed, allowing novelist like the prolific Terrance Dicks to do the job. But when Douglas Adams penned The Pirate Planet, the second serial of the sixthteen season of Doctor Who, the Target offered him a chance to adapt it. However, he declined (probably rightfully so), saying: “I don't want to be embarrassing but I do have a tendency to be a best-selling author”. Which, of course, translated as: Target Books would fear other authors would demand a higher paycheck for adapting their stories, so The Pirate Planet would remain a “lost” book within Target Books line-up (for now). He would do the same with City of Death and the unfinished and unaired Shada that would be part of season seventeen of the series. 

The other two stories, Resurrection of the Daleks and Revelation of the Daleks (season twenty-one and twenty-two respectively) faced similar issues, with writer Eric Saward asking a higher price to adapt them, along with the always complex licensing issues the BBC and Target Books had with Dalek creator Terry Nation.

But getting back to City of Death, which I noted aired during season 17. Originally, this was not a Douglas Adams script at all. David Fisher had been assigned the story A Gamble with Time, which was about a very rich, suave Count and Countess who were rigging tables at a casinos to fund their time travel experiments. The story was to be set in the 1920s and 1970s with some very limited filming scheduled to be done in Paris (the first time the series would leave the UK to film).

But series producer Graham Williams and Production Unit Manager John Nathan-Turner (who would go on to produce the series from season eighteen to its demise) figured out a way to spend more time in Paris than originally planned. This meant a bit of a re-write on episodes, especially the fourth part of the serial. As according to BBC policy, David Fisher was offered the chance to polish up his script. But, as author James Goss notes in his afterword, “…Fisher was in the middle of an interesting divorce at the time”, and was unable to re-write his story. Thus, it fell to new script supervisor Douglas Adams to type out a new script, with aide from producer Williams and the director Michael Hayes. The four-part adventure would eventually be credited under a pseudonym of David Agnew. 

City of Death, despite its production history, became one of the most popular and most watched Doctor Who shows during its original 1963-89 run. Part of the reason was rival broadcast network ITV having a strike, which led to repeats which led Doctor Who to be one of the only TV stations airing new episodes. But City of Death is actually very good. Oh sure, it has plot holes like most Doctor Who serials, sure the plot was a bit wonky, but what made it shine was the script, the witty dialogue and performances from series stars Tom Baker, Lalla Ward and guest-cast Julian Glover, Catherine Schell, and Tom Chadbon. They all seemed to be having fun.

But like Shada, the legend of City of Death grew. Douglas Adams always said he had plans to eventually adapt these two stories and The Pirate Planet, but they were way far down his “to do list”. Sadly, of course, Adams would die of a heart attack in May 2001 leaving a large cadre of fans in mourning. He remains, in my opinion, one the most creative, most genius authors, of the late 20^th Century. Had he lived longer, he could be have been called the funniest humorist since Mark Twain. And yes, many fans like me also mourned the fact that his three Doctor Who stories would never be seen in print (though Adams never saw a good idea he could not steal, even from himself, and reworked a lot of elements from both City of Death and Shada into his novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency). 

Eventually, though, BBC Books would work with Adams Estate to have Shada adapted into a book, which was written by Gareth Roberts and released in 2012. For Roberts to write the book, he drew on the latest versions of the scripts that were available, as well as adding new material of his own to "fix" various plot holes and unanswered questions of Adams original script.

Author James Goss does same here when adapting City of Death. He’s added a lot his own material here, but he’s incorporated notes left by Adams, in particular those on the rehearsal scripts for the episodes; it was here he discovered the Countess Scarlioni had a first name, Heidi. But the book, like all the novelizations of Doctor Who, follows the transmitted version (another-words, there are no additional subplots that were deleted during production). But, like Gareth Roberts before him, Goss fixes some of the serials plot holes –like cliffhanger to episode one where Scarlioni (for unknown reasons) removes his fake face to reveal his true visage. Of course, on TV that makes for a great fright, but in book format, it needs to be explained. And surprisingly, Adams made note of that, as Goss discovered. It seems the twelve splintered versions of Jagoroth, who are working through time to save his race, are not aware they’re aliens at all. This new wrinkle adds some great depth to Scarlioni. 

The novel also breathes life into secondary characters like the tour guide at the Louvre, and creates more background information on the artist (which includes his name) who draws Romana with a cracked clock for a face and the two art gallery lovers (played by Eleanor Bron and John Cleese). 

While Goss is a capable writer, and he’s done a fine job adapting this book, like Shada and The Pirate Planet, I feel Adams could’ve made those into wonderful books, if only because he saw things more differently than others. He found humor and meaning in the absurd and there is not many people in this world today who can do that. 

Finally, James Goss will adapt The Pirate Planet, which BBC Books will release next year. It will be interesting to see what the author will do with that story, as it is one of the oddest, funniest, and wholly weirdest serial Doctor Who made.