A pink cover, with a smoking, drinking poodle? THIS is the 100th Doctor Who novel? Where are the Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, Ice Warriors, past companions, the Master, the Brigidier and/or UNIT that deserve to be in a milestone novel like the 100th?
This book looks so bad that I'm not even going to check it out, because this is what makes Doctor Who fans look dumb and several levels below Star Trek and Star Wars.
What a bleedin' embarrassment!
Thanks for nothing, Paul Magrs!

Now, now, it's all just good harmless fun. (The cover, that is. The book itself isn't quite such fun.) Plus the fact it's the ultimate test of one's devotion to Who - would YOU be seen on a bus with it? (Well, obviously YOU wouldn't. But _I_ don't let minor matters like embarrassment get in the way of spreading the Whovian word.)

Personally, I feel that a rehashing of old friends and enemies isn't necessarily the best way of celebrating an anniversary. It's too predictable, and was done (and waaaay overdone) in Happy Endings, anyway. If you want an anniversary book, The Adventuress of Henrietta Street is it. Never mind the lack of enormous gold letters all over the cover saying so, but it WAS the fiftieth EDA (at least if you count one of the Interference books as a PDA, as originally marketed) and it is the *ahem* 'Wedding Day Special'. It blows your mind in several new and interesting ways, and for traditionalists there's even the return of a well-known old enemy...

Doctor Who has never looked dumb and below the level of those shows, it's just something that snobbish Trekkies and mainstream Star Wars fans say to affirm their own self-important (and geekish) sense of superiority.

Unfortunatly, Luke, on first glance, Who DOES look dumb and below their level. It is once you actually sit down and watch the show that it draws you in, and you realize just how very good it is.

Sorry, I was nasty to Who fans in general, but that bloody book just FREAKED me out! I hold my Who novels up with pride, not caring who's noticing them, when I'm on the bus, but I am NEVER going to hold such a 'book' in public! It'd look like I'm holding The History Of Revlon, or
Chanel No.5 And Me! What drugs was the publisher and artist on when this was approved?? What was REJECTED in favor of that monstrosity? I don't have the guts to buy it and then sell it, and I'm not even homophobic.

I pity you for reading that book, Emily; you're tougher than me. I'd like to clarify my original statement about; 'this is what makes Doctor Who fans look dumb'. I'm talking about someone looking at a Who fan reading a book with this specific ridiculous cover, and not Who literature in general. If I saw the same cover or something similar on a Trek or Star Wars novel, I wouldn't come within a mile of it, or buy it, either. Sci-Fi fans are ridiculed enough by their taste in books.
The fact that this is the 100th Who novel just annoys me even more.

Don't waste your pity, Matt - I'm a hardened veteran when it comes to suffering through Who books. Yes, you're looking at the woman who read Rags and Ghosts of N-Space _in the same week_ - and survived. Compared to that, zipping through probably the fastest read of my life was a doddle - even if the cover did have pink poodles on it.

Oh, oh. Amongst other Who novels, "Rags" is on my book shelf as we speak, whispering to me, "Read me...read me..."

It's quite simple. You pick up Rags. You put a match to it. You watch it burn. Voila! Problem solved.

You could mangle your face with a cheese grater to get the feeling of having read Rags, if you'd like to.......

Or you could pump up the punk rock and read it with glee

Yeah, but only if you were insane. (And if you weren't when you started, you sure as hell would be by the time you'd finished.)

bubba-bubba-gah-gah...

Now you've done it; now I'm terrifed to read the thing, especially after reading Emily's review.
What I want to know, Emily, is just how you were able to keep the guys in the white coats away, if you read the book and lost your sanity? :-)

Oh, it was easy - I've had ten years' practice in dodging anyone in a white coat, ever since I realised that the whole of Africa was rising up in revolution for democracy. It's like being the only person on the planet who's noticed it's not flat - you happen to be right, but with everyone else convinced otherwise, it's you who is going to end up in the padded cell/burnt at the stake. Compared to that, disguising the fact that Rags had turned me into a raving psychopath was a doddle - especially as a) Writing that review had an extremely cathartic effect and b) My murderous inclinations were, luckily, directed entirely towards that filthy perverted pile of scum Mick Lewis, rather than the human race in general. Had Lewis shown his disgusting maggot-ridden pustulous face at the Tavern, of course, I wouldn't have been responsible for my own actions, but mercifully such a situation has not yet arisen.

Mama Mia! Now I really AM scared to read that book! Maybe I'll put it off in favor of watching the paint dry in my bathroom.

I'm really kind of disappointed in the number of people afraid of this book's cover. Why should you care what anyone else thinks?

I'm about halfway through it, and I'm rather enjoying it. It's a nice change to be reading an EDA that isn't 90% torturing the Doctor.

Okay, I'm done. A somewhat charming book that, in the last 1/4, absolutely collapses into confusion. I'm all for a fun book, but things should still make sense. For example:

--How does the time travelling Coward merge with his past/future selves?

--How can the dying Coward tell his past self how to change the past?

--How can Iris sing "Hey Jude" in a 1960 Vegas nightclub without changing history?

--If the poodles only come up to your knees, why don't the Doctor and co. just kick them away (even if the dogs are armed)?

--Why is Fitz still having problems with his memory?

--If John Fucchas gets killed before filming "The True History of Planets", why is his name still on the credits?

Woof!

Um...um...um...dunno. The only one of those I feel remotely competent to deal with is the Fitz memory thing. With Gallifrey not just blown up but having ceased ever to have existed, I suppose it's quite natural that one of the very few people in the universe to know it HAD actually existed would be getting a bit confused. I mean, EVERYONE had their brains rewired and their history changed (not much, just enough to include magic by the look of it) when Gallifrey went boom, it's understandable that the (new-ish) realities of the universe would be fighting and overcoming Fitz's actual memories of being there. Especially as so much of Fitz's 'memory' is a fake copy anyway.

Oh my this is lovely (and that's just the cover) but I think some of the characterisation is a bit too broad for it to work. Iris, for instance, might be better off as an idea of Cleavis's than making a botched full-blown appearance. The various caricatures aren't quite all there, particularly Tyler...

At one point we're told that Tyler isn't a religious person (or rather "if he were a religious man") whereas Tolkien was devoutly Catholic enough to stick anachronistic Christian references into Lord of the Rings to assuage the sense of sin he'd created. MD&E also misrepresents The Lord of the Rings/The True History of the Planets as the summa of Tolkien's work, when it was actually just a chip off The Silmarillion (here reduced to a series of general notes).

I'm also having problems identifying who 'Freer' is supposed to be. Best guess - Dennis Wheatley, but that doesn't seem right. I thought he might be Ian Fleming at one point!

And I must say I love the idea of John Waters doing Lord of the Rings with Bette Davis and Joan Crawford as Sauron and Gandalf respectively!

Where are the Christian references in Lord of the Rings?

In the sequence where Denethor is attempting to kill himself and Faramir on the funeral pyre. As a devout Catholic, Tolkien regarded suicide as just about the most awful crime imaginable and has Gandalf refer to the practice as 'heathen', even though that word only has meaning in a Christian context.

Or something...

As an aside, I'm now tending to believe that Freer is meant to be Charles Williams, with a smattering of other writers. Williams was indeed a member of the Inklings with a strong London connection. He dazzled Lewis but aroused Tolkien's suspicions (at least according to Tolkien's recollections) yet still had a huge influence on the writing of The Lord of the Rings. He was a popular writer before he joined the Inklings and his books have the requisite and populist whiff of sex and brimstone about them. He wasn't a Satanist but he was a Christian mystic and former member of the Order of the Golden Dawn (or at least Arthur Waite's splinter group thereof).

Unfortunately he was also thoroughly engaged with the Inklings, really enjoyed everyone else's work, never ran off to Jamaica with Tolkien's wife (this seems to be an allusion to Ian Fleming, who was Noel Coward's real Jamaican neighbour) and probably wasn't in love with an evil alien poodle. On the whole, I think that Freer is meant to be Williams but that this weakens Paul Magrs already rather hazy argument - Williams just isn't the composite modernist bogeyman that he needs for the story to work.

A pink cover, with a smoking, drinking poodle? THIS is the 100th Doctor Who novel? Where are the Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, Ice Warriors, past companions, the Master, the Brigidier and/or UNIT that deserve to be in a milestone novel like the 100th?

I have to admit that...SPOILERS for our Glorious Fiftieth Anniversary...my first reaction on discovering there are gonna be Daleks in it was disappointment. Pink poodles would at least have been ORIGINAL. END OF SPOILERS

What a bleedin' embarrassment!

OK...original AND bleedin' embarrassing.

Cat-people are just SO MUCH BETTER.

What drugs was the publisher and artist on when this was approved??

I DID hear rumours that there were shrieks of 'WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY SERIES!' from the bloke who was SUPPOSED to be in charge of said series when he spotted said cover...

How can Iris sing "Hey Jude" in a 1960 Vegas nightclub without changing history?

Don't know (or care) but it's hardly an original paradox - similar thing happened with some...Isley...Jasmine...thing at Benny's wedding in Happy Endings.

Why is Fitz still having problems with his memory?

'The Doctor theorises that he tried to erase Fitz's memories to protect his secret but didn't do a good enough job' - Doctor Who Reference Guide summary of Gallifrey Chronicles. Yeah, not entirely satisfactory is it, especially as Fitz's amnesia takes its time to kick in.

Tolkien was devoutly Catholic enough to stick anachronistic Christian references into Lord of the Rings to assuage the sense of sin he'd created.

I don't see how one 'heathen' mention could POSSIBLY be enough to stop Tolkien roasting in the fires of hell eternal. After he'd created this entire wonderful world where NO ONE believed in Baby Jesus (or, indeed, Aslan).

To quote George R R Martin, 'They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to Middle Earth.'

"OK...original AND bleedin' embarrassing."

The Crimson Horror!

Only joking. The cover is fabulous!

You'd BETTER be joking. The Crimson Horror is, of course, the greatest joy I can remember Who bestowing on me for...well...several years, actually. Give or take that godawful final scene with the brats. And the Doctor committing sexual assault on a married lesbian, of course.

Admittedly the Mad Dogs cover is...memorable.

Bits of it are pleasingly New-Who-ish - alien races looking suspiciously like Earth animals, endless film references, flirtatious Doctor, Doctor-speaking-animal-languages, hotel in space faked to look twentieth-century etc - but a lot of it...is just pure Magrs self-indulgence. Which still scores higher than most Who novels, I s'pose.

'I'm too wilfully accepting and delighted by the trash dished out of the decadent Terran subconscious, out of a bastardised genre in a depraved era' - yeah, well, please bear in mind...I'M NOT.

'The elephantine, transdimensional hullabulloo' - well, full marks for effort, I suppose.

The whole 'Sexy would never land on a chair, she was FRAMED!' stuff is somewhat undermined by Resolution ('Well, if you will leave chairs around the place...')

'I think maybe the novelty of new times, new places, might have worn off slightly with them. They send me out first to see what it's like, like a sheep down a poisoned treacle well!' - not a nit just a reminder to try to find something to contradict this claim when rereading the other EDAs...

'Even here in the far-flung future' - far-flung future?! It's one hundred years after the 1940s! *Counts carefully on fingers* It's the sodding 2040s and the Doctor has NEVER regarded THAT as the far future, let alone amnesiac Eight whose earliest memories are having to live through the entire sodding twentieth century on Earth...

'Where mankind has started to build his colonies' - a little less of the MAN and HIS if you don't mind Mr billions-of-years-beyond-our-petty-human-obsession-with-gender...

'I taught some of them to talk' - look, even when Matt is speaking horse, cat or baby they're not talking back...

'"And what is more, by flattening him, you may have sorted out another small problem for us, Doctor..." "Really?" he beamed. "How?"' - should the Doctor be quite so happy about squishing a professor quite so soon? (I mean, we're talking McGann not COLIN.)

'"I'm sure you didn't," purred the Doctor, stroking his beard' - this is the sort of sentence no True Fan should ever be forced to read.

'"You're one to talk about made-up names," Anji smiled. "Ah," he tapped his nose. "But it wasn't me who made mine up, was it?"' - Yes it was! We get that word from YOU! (Good Man Goes To War.)

Amnesiac-Eight can speed-read like a PROPER Doctor? (Again, not a nit, just an aide-memoire.)

'I wouldn't be very surprised, Cleavis, if he wasn't some form of practitioner [of the dark arts]' - um, I think you've got your double-negatives rather screwed-up, which is embarrassing for one of humanity's foremost writers.

'The safe pocket dimension of the TARDIS interior' - do I really have to list all the times Sexy's interior was far from safe?

So, um, Fitz finds an extremely old woman in 60s teen gear covered in cobwebs in the TARDIS library and the Doctor says 'Emily?' in an appalled way and...then she's never mentioned again? (She doesn't recognise him ergo it was a previous Doctor who brought her aboard ergo she should have got blown to smithereens on the several occasions Sexy blew up in the Seventh Doctor New Adventures.)

'Unkind critics have pointed out over the years that what [the space station] most resembles is three washing-up liquid bottles and a broken hair dryer glued together and spray-painted silver' - oh the hilarity of the Fourth-Wall-breaking...

'The Doctor looked utterly enchanted' at the sight of DAWGS? Since WHEN!

'A number of chewable plastic toys had been thoughtfully provided for them by Fritter' - um...from WHERE? No one was expecting any human pets to materialise on this space station that's been host just to two adult dogs for years.

'"I wonder if we've missed the Queen's Speech," said Fitz. The Doctor shook his head absently. "2010, remember." "Oh," said Fitz blankly' - it was 2006 not 2010 when she was on the roof of Buckingham Palace threatening to jump! Also, the Doctor has amnesia since being stuck on Earth (a period which ended in 2001) so this non-royal-appearance must have happened during his post-Earth-Arc travels, all of which occurred WITH FITZ. (Sure, Fitz has a bad memory these days but NO ONE has as bad a memory as the Eighth Doctor, it's the one thing his mutually-contradictory TV, audio and novel adventures all agree on.)

So, um, the film 'proves his legitimate right to rule the whole shebang' AND 'shows him for the treacherous hound he really is'? UH?

The Doctor, Fitz and Anji just LEFT their clothes on the space station? Surely there were a LOT of invaluable things in the Doctor's pockets...

'If the Earth people ever found out that you're not really a dumb and docile pet, they would put you in a freak show, or a zoo. They'd put you on a stage or do experiments on you! Believe me, I should know' - um, when did the post-Ancestor-Cell Eighth Doctor go through THAT?!

Since when does the Doctor look 'strange' or 'exhausted' when the subject of Gallifrey comes up - instead of just not-giving-a-••••?

'And you get a gyppy tummy' - yeah, sorry. You're in a Magrs novel, he thinks TARDIS travel should lead to diarrhoea for some reason best known to himself.

The Doctor's been trying to get Anji home for 'months' - and yet they've just spent a year stranded in 1782 London in Adventuress...

'They were planning on giving me a Chair in something very complicated and grand at one point, but I had to turn it down. Didn't want to make myself too conspicuous' - um, why not, exactly? Who did you think you were hiding from? - 'And then, of course, there was Miranda to look after. We were living in the North. She didn't need uprooting...' - um, didn't you uproot her to LONDON? And since when have you casually (or even non-casually, like when she bloody DIED) dropped your daughter into the conversation?

'She's based on Baba Yaga, the hag in Russian folk tales. The one who flies through the air in a mortar and steers with a pestle. And she lives in a shed that runs around on chickens' legs. And she eats babies for breakfast' - Look, I'm not exactly Iris Wildthyme's Number One Fan (and I'm actually quite fond of Baba Yaga) but that's...really mean.

'"Are you a writer yourself, Doctor?"..."Oh, no," the Doctor said. "Just a humble student. Just a reader"' - aren't you forgetting THE PREVIOUS NOVEL? The one in which the Doctor WROTE A BOOK? (And married a prostitute. And got his second heart ripped out without benefit of anaesthetic. And grew a beard. And you mention THE BEARD BIT. Look, I realise Adventuress is an impossible act to follow, but still...)

'Have you been out boozing all this time, John? I - Oh' - yeah, a convincing picture of someone who'd suddenly noticed his brother had a guest, undermined rather by the fact he'd 'stared at the Doctor and his poodle' FIRST.

To be continued...

'Flossie took the maid's gun and attempted to - as humanely as possible - render her unconscious by clobbering her on the head with it. It took one or two tries to get it right. "It always looks easier than that in the films," he said dolefully' - that's just not true in the Whoniverse, is it. I'm sure one of the novels (EarthWorld?) mentioned how weird it is that people always get knocked-out but in no way brain-damaged by a single light blow...

'We also gave the old duffer the video tape to watch. It had seemed just the right thing to do at the time' - ah yes, that moment (see Tomb of Valdemar) when the author just has to make a character do something so insane they give up trying to think of an excuse for it...

'The Doctor grew defensive of antiquated trains: one of his earliest memories was of waking on just such a train as this' - but it's not a HAPPY memory so it's no excuse for becoming a train-fan.

'The choking fumes of their slipstream' - wait, you never said Iris's bus-TARDIS was so filthily polluting!

Iris not mentioning the Time War to the bloke who BLEW ALL THE TIME LORDS SKY-HIGH is terribly...restrained. And if there's one thing Iris Wildthyme isn't, it's restrained.

'The Doctor leapt up from his seat just before they arrived. The man clearly had no need to sleep or to rest. He looked as fresh as a daisy' - how come he fell asleep IN A FREEZER earlier in the book then!

'All of them evincing a very dubious religiosity' is a bizarre view of Lord of the Rings mentioning the word 'heathen' once. Also you make it quite clear this guy is NOT 'of a religious bent' so why the hell should he force all his characters to be?

'And you really can't dress up one world's fact as another world's fiction. It doesn't mix! It's an extremely explosive combination!' - what about the aforementioned novel YOU wrote in the LAST EDA?

'We've been together now for sixty years' - well for such a long-running Companion the flippin' dawg doesn't exactly get any mentions I can remember in all the other Iris books and audios...And it's not as if Iris has the same 'Out of sight, out of mind' reaction to her Strays as an Old Who Doc, just look at her obsessing over her lost Panda...

So the younger Noel Coward purposefully advances on his older self and walks into him, leaving just the younger one? And his 'Handy tip...in case you ever happen to bump into yourself at a party' suggests this is how meeting yourself-from-a-later-time should work for anyone in spite of the fact IT BLOODY DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY.

'"Computer-generated effects!" jeered Von Arnim, "They're the devil's work!"' - New Who has proved this a false and utterly pointless debate, you can have models AND CGI for the SAME MONSTER! (See, for example, our dear Slitheen.)

'There's nothing more dangerous than a man armed with knowledge and no respect for the web of time' - how would you know, amnesiac loser? How would you even know about any 'web of time'?

It's really awful of Our Heroes to just leave Fuchas tied to that chair. Like punching Von Arnim in the face, it's really uncharacteristic. Hell, even characters who barely know him are commenting on the Doctor's uncharacteristic behaviour, apparently in lieu of the author actually having to think up an EXPLANATION.

'I thought if you could manage to bump each other off en route, I might be spared the expense of actually paying you' - but you're not paying them anyway!

'"Martha!" gasped Brenda. She clutched her pearls' - since when has IRIS WILDTHYME been the type of person to clutch her pearls? I realise (THANKS COLIN) that an incarnation can be drastically different to their other selves but Iris is about as likely to clutch her pearls as THE DOCTOR. (I'd say the Master too but I CAN actually imagine Missy having great fun acquiring some pearls and then clutching them...)

Oh, and Iris has spent the last sixty years being the unwitting pawn of...a poodle. Again, SERIOUSLY uncharacteristic.

'I've helped you rise to the top of your chosen career. You would still be no one without me. You'd still be singing in the bars down in Leith Docks* if it wasn't for me' - that's not true either, she's a famous singer in that stupid Wormery audio with no bloody poodle in sight. (Admittedly that's a different incarnation, presumably some of them have better singing voices than others, certainly Pertwee's better than Hartnell in this regard.)

'This is a world organised and run by dogs. It was much tidier than he would have expected. In fact, it was much tidier than anywhere he had ever lived' - um, why the drastic change from the dogworld spacestation that was covered in dog-••••?

'"Oh Noel," Brenda sobbed, "I think we've all been pawns"' - again, this is about as likely as THE DOCTOR displaying this sort of behaviour. '"Oh Noel," Brenda sobbed, "I think we've all been pawns"' - what, AGAIN? FOUR PAGES LATER?! 'She wanted to run to the Doctor...to fling herself on to him for protection' - ARE YOU ••••••• KIDDING ME. (I mean, even aside from the fact that he's not very good at protection what with blowing up all the OTHER Time Lords.) 'A tear rolled down Brenda's face' '"Oh, bugger the web of time," Brenda Scobie sobbed' - she's YOUR character, why have you turned on her like a rabid dog? (Also...the Brenda incarnation of Iris is black. It's pretty low to regenerate the feistiest character in the universe and turn her into a whimpering pathetic half-witted coward the moment her skin-tone gets darker.)

'The Doctor looked miffed at Coward's slight to the vortex. It had become his ostensible home' - er...no it hadn't.

The dawgs have 'slim, shaved legs'? Not on the cover they don't.

Iris stayed with the Doctor for a while in the 1980s? You mean...during his amnesiac-80s-exile rather than any of the other ones? How would THAT work?

'I can't thank you enough, Doctor. I can't thank any of you enough' - er...for what? The Doctor did sod-all and this IS the Emperor who hasn't exactly fallen in love with Our Hero at first sight. ('"Human beings!" he quavered, appalled. "My state room is swarming with human beings!"')

*Doing a quick read-through I discovered I'd typed 'Leith Doctor', there...

Doing a quick read-through I discovered I'd typed 'Leith Doctor', there...

Whoopsie!

It's a miracle I don't type ALL words as 'Doctor', really...