The Blood Cell

A Twelfth Doctor Book written by James Goss

This is a rare case of the a Doctor Who novel doing something that the show just couldn't do. Generally these books feel like an episode of the show, albeit one with an extremely high budget. Goss uses the format to his advantage here though and tells a story in the first person.

The Governor of a prison on an asteroid is intrigued by new inmate Prisoner 428- the Doctor. He's a prisoner who keeps escaping and his friend Clara is really quite friendly when she comes to visit. But something is going on deep in the prison and the Governor is struggling to keep things under control.

The first-person narration is great because we get to see the Doctor and Clara through the eyes of a third party. The Governor is an interesting character, almost Doctor-ish in many ways, yet much harder and easily exploited. I also thought the setting was rather good, although the plot itself wasn't great. It's one of those cases where there was a good basic idea but a limited plot to put in it.

The other big problem was that we wait half the book to find out why the Doctor is in the prison and who the Governor really is but it's an underwhelming reveal and lessens the pace. I would have much preferred it if this had been done at the very start of the book- it would have been an intriguing start and would have set up the context of the prison much better.

Characterisation can often be an issue in these tie-ins. Clara is great here, although she barely appears in the first three-quarters of the book. This book was written before any Twelfth Doctor episodes were aired, so presumably Goss had only a few scripts to get the idea of the newest Doctor's character. Whilst there are some obvious Twelfth Doctor traits, it's a watered-down version of the Doctor- any of his incarnations could be shoved in here with little change to the dialogue.

I really enjoyed the book but it's a fairly middle ground when it comes to Doctor Who tie-ins. It's by no means one of the worst, but equally a fair way from the very best too.

The Wheel of Ice

I love Stephen Baxter's books and I love Doctor Who so it baffles me that I've not read this book before now. The Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe arrive on the Wheel of Ice, a mining facility around Saturn. The TARDIS thinks something is wrong there and not just the increasing dissatisfaction of the residents and the way they are treated by the mining company. Blue creatures keep being spotted and there's a desperate intelligence at the heart of it all trying desperately to achieve it's aeons old mission: Resilience, Remembrance, Resolution.



As ever, this has the usual scientific accuracy you can expect from the author. It feels fairly plausible for a future society mining around Saturn. However, it has that element of fantasy that Doctor Who so often contains, something not really based on any science but works excellently for the story. 

Baxter's weakness is so often his characterisation but he's given the lead characters of the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe already. Each is characterised really well and he delves well into the minds of Jamie and Zoe, making them more well-rounded characters than they were often written for the show. His supporting cast is also unusually strong, from the villain of the piece Florian Hart to MMAC, a Scottish robot. I really think it's the best characterization I've ever read from Baxter. 

The story feels fairly like a story from it's era, but there's something about it to make it a bit faster and more engaging than many of the stories feel now. It manages to fit its era yet feel modern at the same time. It's also really steeped in Who mythology. As well as loads of minor references to the Second Doctor's adventures, one of the characters has a direct link back to The Ice Warriors and in many ways the book is a prequel to Zoe's debut story, The Wheel in Space. The Silurians also make an appearance, sort of. Plus, for Stephen Baxter fans, this book can genuinely be considered part of his Manifold series- Bootstrap Industries is the company involved and the Doctor mentions having met its founder once- Reid Malenfant presumably! 

This is everything you want from a Doctor Who story really. It is lots of fun and has strong characters, a decent and interesting plot and feels like it has some genuine depth. I really hope Baxter gets to do another Who novel at some point because I'd love to see what he does with other incarnations of the Doctor!