The Timewyrm

"Full length science fiction novels; stories too broad and too deep for the small screen. Produced with the approval of BBC Television, the New Adventures takes the TARDIS into previously unexplored realms of space and time,"

You have to really imagine what a thrill it was to hold a copy of the first New Adventures novel in my hands, knowing that although the series had been off the air for about a year, it was about to go entirely new places. And I was going along quite willingly. It's not as if the Doctor's adventures had never been on printed page before; without those old Target novelizations when I was growing up I daresay I wouldn't have been able to enjoy the series as much as I did, carrying the adventures beyond the TV screen and in some cases replacing the missing on-screen episodes entirely. But whereas the Target books only novelized adventures we had already seen (or as I say, not seen) on 144 pages or less, the Virgin books were not bound by any regular length and would all run over 200 pages each, some of them with very small text. The rules were simple: do not go against the spirit of the show, do not regenerate the Doctor, do not lose the fan base. And so it began, with a four-story cycle that would define the success of the novel range to come.

Timewyrm : Genesys

A pre-recorded message from the fourth Doctor sends the seventh Doctor and Ace to Earth on the trail of a creature from Gallifrey's myths and legends: the Timewyrm. A creature able to slide through the vortex unchallenged, she could wreak untold havoc throughout space and time. When they do track the creature down, she is masquerading as the goddess Ishtar in ancient Mesopotamia, and the Doctor and Ace meet the epic hero Gilgamesh in his quest to rid the land of her.

We star out very well with Genesys, even if it is penned by Terry Nation's chief ass-kisser John Peel. The Doctor and Ace come across well on the page even after an absence of a year from our screens, and the tone of the novel sets it apart from everything that came before: the Timewyrm is downright vicious, the city of Urak is dirty and Peel is no afraid to tell us how it looks and smells. And then there's the sex. It's not like there's humping going on all around but the slave girls in the palace are described as going topless and Ace catches the eye of Gilgamesh. Someone in the UK capitalized on this and wrote a big scary story in The Sun which managed to get over here to North America and precipitated one of the biggest farces in the history of organized fandom: the high and mighty self-righteous then-executive of the Doctor Who Information Network decided to take it upon themselves to put an insert into their fanzine, Enlightenment, warning the parents of members about the content of these books. I was 20 at the time, and can only imagine if I had been part of DWIN and that came through the letterbox. Idiots. And it wasn't even that bad. What it was, was good. A good start to the series, and even a good book in its own right.

Timewyrm : Exodus


Following the Timewrym's trail, the Doctor and Ace arrive in 1951 England, but in a version of time where the Nazi regime won World War II and had conquered Britain with ease. The Doctor and Ace travel further back in time to infiltrate the Nazi ranks themselves and see where things went wrong and find the sentience of the Timewyrm itself trapped inside the mind of Adolf Hitler, and the War Lords at work behind the scenes giving the Germans the edge to win the war.

Exodus does some good old fashioned storytelling, and who else better to do it than Terrance Dicks; script editor, writer, and novelist for years. I am one of the many who have been critical of Dicks' writing skills when it comes to a lack of description, and oft accused him of just photcopying the scripts from the televised series and throwing "he said" and "she said" after the lines, but here I find there's something good going on, something much better than any of those Target novelizations he put together. Exodus is amazing. Dicks should get it right easily, though, seeing as the War Lords are his own creation from the Patrick Troughton finale The War Games, and they're up to their old tricks in World War II. And it's the first time Dicks writes for the seventh Doctor and Ace, their televised episodes being novelized by the original script authors, and he gets them bang on.

Timewyrm : Apocalypse


The pursuit of the Timewyrm takes the TARDIS farther into the future than ever, right to the end of time and space to the planet Kirith. The Doctor can't detect the Timewyrm but he knows she is there, and in searching for her he'll discover the end of everything is about to come about, and it may be his fault.

Nigel Robinson, former editor for the Target line, steps up with the shortest novel in the Timewyrm series, which was supposedly a rejected script he had put together for the televised series. As Genesys featured a cameo of the fourth Doctor in hologram form, the seventh Doctor comes across his second self for a little chat, and even Polly is referenced for Ace's benefit. Apocalypse keeps it simple this time, with the Timewyrm hardly featuring in events until close to the end, which sets up for the big showdown.

Timewyrm : Revelation


The Timewyrm is ready for the Doctor and sets trap after trap for him, as well as for Ace, bringing a childhood bully into the play to kill her before she even met the Doctor. The stakes are high for both of them, and if the Timewyrm wins, she'll be free to destroy all of creation for her amusement.

New writer Paul Cornell closes the cycle with his book, and it's a brilliant read. Everything gets tied off nicely, but the road to the conclusion is a grim one with the Doctor and Ace separated, beaten, humiliated, almost destroyed. Yes, that Timewyrm is a bitch and a half.

So you'll have spotted that these are not as in-depth as they could be. I simply haven't got time to read them all over again. Some of these novels left better impressions than others, usually because they really pushed the envelope and went somewhere new and did something different with the characters that could never been done on television. As the books would go on, the elements of the supposed "Cartmel master plan" would start to emerge as they might have on television, but in this medium they wouldn't be bound by budget or censors, which was the first real admission that the fans of the series had grown up and needed something more to enjoy the Doctor with. Even at this early point with only four novels on the store shelves, it was obvious that Doctor Who was not going to be back for a long time, if ever, and certainly it would not be able to return in the usual format.

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