In the Blood

The Tenth Doctor and Donna return! Here an alien virus that spreads through the internet is increasing the natural anger in people and killing them. But can the Doctor and Donna find out who is behind it and how to stop it?

Obviously this is very topical, dealing with internet trolls and people being horrible online. I like that the phenomenon now has a Doctor Who explanation because it's hard to accept it's just human nature. I did feel it was just a few years too late to be contemporary to Donna though but I'm happy to let that slide.

With any Doctor Who book there are two big things which affect it's quality. The first is does the author capture the incarnation of the Doctor and his companion? The answer here is a resounding yes. The narrative focuses much more on Donna and often delves into her head in a way that obviously can't be done on TV. Donna is a unique character in Doctor Who and I felt Colgan captured her perfectly. I also thought the Doctor was well portrayed, as was the feisty relationship between the two.

The other question is does the book do something Doctor Who couldn't do on TV? That's also a yes as Colgan has the Doctor and Donna involved in some massive scenes on a plane and then on a train and sends the action from London to Seoul to the Amazon rainforest. OK, in theory it could be done on TV but it's far more than the budget of a typical Doctor Who episode would allow. I also like it when the extended media allow the Doctor to visit places on Earth he doesn't usually get to go.

For me there were a couple of issues. One is that a revelation of this book relies on you having listened to Colgan's Big Finish Doctor Who adventure. I haven't and it really lessened the impact for me, and I suspect that this will be the same for many readers. I also noticed that characters in this books were constantly blinking as a reaction to things. It's fine occasionally but particularly towards the end of this book it's happening at least once a chapter. It's not Colgan's fault as such because I know authors end up repeating things like that but surely someone at BBC Books should have spotted that?

It's great fun to have a new Ten/Donna book and it's another cracking Doctor Who story by Colgan and one which has more relevance to everyday life than most do.