purplecat

The cover for the first Virgin New Adventure. I read this when it came out and haven't read it since. I recall very little about what I thought on that first read, which is probably informative. I get the impression from views I've heard expressed since that it hasn't necessarily aged well, embodies the fair criticism of the New Adventures that they often interpreted "more adult" as meaning "more sex and nudity", and that the "more sex and nudity" mostly manifests as a slightly creepy attitude towards Ace and other young female characters.

Paul Cornell has been talking through his experience as a Doctor Who writer one gig at a time in his weekly news letter, in a surprisingly frank fashion. Despite being a member of rec.arts.drwho in the 1990s, a position from which it felt rather as if one had a ring side seat on what certain Dr Who authors were doing, it transpires I was relatively unaware of much that was happening behind the scenes. That said, I imagine there is still much he is missing out. He's just reached the first of his novels for the BBC books so it feels fitting to post the cover of the last of this Dr Who New Adventures (though he wrote the first Benny novel in between).

Happy Endings is a funny book. When the Dr Who Book Club read it they noted that it was almost impossible to understand without a fairly encyclopaedic knowledge of what had gone before. It's about Benny's wedding to Jason Kane, a romance I was never all that fond of, though its major crime (like much of the New Adventures, frankly) is inconsistent character development across books.

You can sign up for Paul's newletters from his website though I should note that this week's newsletter is somewhat atypical since it is dominated by a recent family bereavement (consider this also a content warning).

The Pit is widely regarded as the worst of the Virgin New Adventures novels. I only have dim memories of the one time I read and I recall mostly being a bit bemused and feeling that William Blake was underused. I recently listened to the Doctor Who Bookclub podcast discuss the book and they certainly didn't like it much. Their final conclusion was that there were some potentially interesting ideas in there, but that the execution failed to explore them in a way that brought anything much to life, and the structure meant the whole story ultimately felt rather pointless with the Doctor, Benny and Blake making no real impact on the events.

I can't quite put my finger on what it was about Timewyrm:Revelation, Paul Cornell's first novel, that was so exciting, because I can completely understand the criticism that it is basically too wierd. But I think it was the first time official Doctor Who canon (even if this is a branch of canon that has since been side-lined) served up something that was from a fan of the show being explicitly fannish about the show.

I'm inclined to say this was the moment that the inmates began to take over the asylum. Although arguably that happened in 1988 when John Freeman took over DWM.