Lethbridge-Stewart: The HAVOC Files 2

This is the second collection of short stories from the Lethbridge-Stewart series of books.

Ashes of the Inferno by Andy Frankham-Allen: This story links the parallel worlds of  The Schizoid Earth and the Doctor Who story 'Inferno'. It's a nice exploration of parallel worlds and the idea of how they might affect those that find out about them. What I really liked from this story was the hints at how the Lethbridge-Stewart novels work with Doctor Who and why there seems to be more to the Brigadier than we ever saw on TV.

House of Giants by Rick Cross: Another story which deals with the aftermath of a Who story, this time First Doctor story 'Planet of the Giants'. It sees Anne Travers become miniaturized and the Brig attempt to clear things up. It's a lot of fun and sets up an element of The Grandfather Infestation well.

In His Kiss by Sue Hampton: A different style this one, set in 1945 and featuring a young Alastair through the eyes of his friend Jemima. It deals with the aftermath of James Lethbridge-Stewart's death and is really a dark story about a young girl dealing with grief.

The Lock-In by Sarah Groenewegen BEM: Another different style. This is set late in the Brigadier's life and sees an exchange of letters between a woman called Pearl Hammond and the Brig in his care home as she recounts an encounter with the Fifth Operational Corps and aliens. I liked the style but felt the plot didn't quite work. 

The Black Eggs of Khufu by Tom Dexter: Lethbridge-Stewart arrives at the Great Pyramid in Egypt where ancient alien activity has been uncovered. There's an alien body and mysterious black eggs but when a group of Russians get involved Lethbridge-Stewart finds himself racing across the desert on a camel. It's a decent story and I liked the alien explanation for the pyramids. It certainly made good use of the locale although it's never really explained how on Earth Lethbridge-Stewart ending up going there. 

The Band of Evil by Roger J Simmonds & Shaun Russell: An alien band called Totem Pole is brainwashing it's fans. It's a plot that has been used before but done well here. The story also introduces Captain Younghusband who is immediately a great character. 

The Playing Dead by Adrian Sherlock: Sherlock wrote a Lethbridge-Stewart novel set in Australia which I thought was never published but will apparently be next year. This follows on from that future book. Bishop and Anne Travers are in Darwin and find themselves in a zombie apocalypse. Whilst I am a big zombie fan it felt out of sorts with the feel of the series. It worked in a Torchwood novel but I don't think it works here. 

Schädengeist’s First Love by Jonathan Cooper: This is a deleted scene from The Showstoppers. It delves into how Schadengeist/ Mondegreene ended up as the villain of the book. I really liked this and felt it would have worked well in the book. 

Exodus from Venus by John Peel: The original prologue from The Grandfather Infestation. It sees a failed invasion of Venus by the grandfathers. It's a good story but I can see why it was cut as it reveals too much of the aliens of the book. 

The Lost Skin: Episode One by Andy Frankham-Allen: The first part of a longer story which is set parallel to Times Squared. Whilst the Brig is away in New York, Anne Travers, Bishop and Samson have their own problems to deal with. Harold Chorley and Larry Green are investigating the Brigadier so a distraction involved Anne's father Professor Travers is conceived. Travers inevitably finds a myth to investigate... It's a fantastic first part of the story and I am really looking forward to seeing where this goes. 

Overall, I thought this was a great collection. It's great to see how the publisher's have decided to expand it's short stories for this range and experiment with different styles and eras of the character. As with any short story collection some are better than others but I thought generally the standard was very high.

Lethbridge-Stewart: The Grandfather Infestation

Lethbridge-Stewart and the Fifth Operational Corps face their greatest challenge yet!

When a pirate radio ship disappears, the Navy investigates. When the Navy submarine disappears, Lethbridge-Stewart knows something is up. Deep in the sea an alien race known as the Ynir are preparing plans for their 'grandfathers', a species of intelligent killer plants, to wipe out all life on Earth and take the planet over.

This is the book in the series that really captures the era well. It feels like a James Bond movie but with killer plants akin to The Day of the Triffids or Doctor Who's own Seeds of Doom. At the same time it fits in well with the previous six books and Doctor Who in general. Unlike previous books the threat is world-level here and it's interesting to see that additional tension and the way the team deals with it- they are starting to get used to this sort of thing. There's also a great link to the First Doctor story Planet of Giants which I thought was fantastic.

Peel's other strength in this book was the characterisation. For a start he deals with the main cast really well, making Lethbridge-Stewart and Anne Travers feel just like do on screen. He also introduced us to some great one-off characters like pirate radio DJ Mary. The thing that really surprised me was his excellent characterisation of the aliens. So often the idea that aliens have some sort of personality is ignored but Peel addresses it really well and in doing so creates a more believable threat.

My one issue with this book was the ending. It felt a little rushed and much of the solution came from a frustrating deus ex machina, albeit a previously established one. As much as I thought this was clever it felt a little frustrating in terms of the story.

Overall though a stunning read and this series continues to reach a high standard.

Lethbridge-Stewart: The Showstoppers

This sixth Lethbridge-Stewart book again feels different to the previous books in the series. The team commissioning these book is doing a fantastic job at finding great authors and ensuring we get a range of stories. 

This time Jonathan Cooper gives us a tale which focuses on the world of spy-fi TV shows, which were of course massive at the time and many fans of classic Doctor Who loved. Journalist Harold Chorley meets a tramp wearing a tinfoil hat and somehow manages to persuade Lethbridge-Stewart to investigate the making of a new TV show called BLIMEY. It's star, Aubrey Mondegreene, is playing all the main characters and is nearly single-handedly running the show. But he seems to get into character in an extreme way and people are convinced he seems to be in more than one place at once.

The actual plot isn't revealed to the closing stages of the book which means this is largely about the mystery. It's great because as a reader I had little idea in what was going on and frankly when all was revealed I realised I never would have guessed. 

My favorite part of this book was where Anne Travers and new character Samson Ware find themselves trapped by one of Mondegreen's characters, an over-the-top German scientist. Such a ridiculous character was common in the sort of TV shows that BLIMEY is representing but they rarely work as a proper character. Thanks to the context though we can have a ridiculous German scientist and Cooper even manages to give him that brilliant accented quote from The Underwater Menace, "Nuzzink in ze vorld can schtop me now". 

Cooper does a great job at ensuring all the main characters are properly involved with the story and represents them all well- even Harold Chorley, who fits into this book so well. This book also had my favorite epilogue of the series so far for reasons I won't spoil. 

Yet another hugely enjoyable book in the Lethbridge-Stewart series and I look forward to reading the next one.

Lethbridge-Stewart: Moon Blink

This is the first book in Season Two of the Lethbridge-Stewart series. After the events of the previous books Lethbridge-Stewart is becoming more experienced in dealing with alien threats and has a strong team to help him. Here he heads up to Edinburgh to prepare to lead a new unit, the Fifth Operational Corps (a prototype UNIT).

In London, Anne Travers gets a visit from an old friend who announces she has an alien baby from the moon in tow. Lethbridge-Stewart discovers there is a new drug on the streets called Moon Blink which seems to have actually come from the Moon. It's up to Anne, Bill Bishop and Lethbridge-Stewart if they can ever contact him, to protect the alien baby from being used and abused by both the US and the Soviets.

I had my concerns about the publisher choosing Sadie Miller as the author of this book. She is the daughter of Elisabeth Sladen, who played Doctor Who's most popular companion Sarah-Jane Smith. But it turns out that Sadie Miller is a fantastic author, perhaps the best this series has seen so far. I liked her style of writing and she manages to some fantastic details. This book really fits into the series excellently with references back to previous books and indeed into the Doctor Who universe- there are references to everything from The Ambassadors of Death right through to Victory of the Daleks.

I really liked the plot here as it manages to be original and very different from the previous books. Here we have good aliens and it's humans that are the villains. There's a fantastic section where Anne considers that this is more scary which I thought was one of the best moments of any Doctor Who novel I've ever read.

There are a few minor quibbles though. Even more so than some of the previous books, this focuses more on Anne than the title character. It worked well here though and I can totally understand why an author would choose to do this- Anne is more of an interesting character. The ending here is what let the story down a little- it got very exciting and then suddenly fizzled out.

I thought this was probably the best book of the series so far and a strong start to the second series. I hope Sadie Miller writes more books because with this as a debut I can only imagine how fantastic her later books might be.

The Legends of River Song

Like the recent Legends of Ashildr book, this has five short stories featuring River Song. All the stories are from her perspective and are written like they appear in her diary.

Picnic at Asgard by Jenny T. Colgan: Probably the best story of the collection but it's by Colgan so that isn't really surprising. This is one of the last River Song stories that has been mentioned on screen that we haven't seen. It's a fab story featuring a Viking-based sci-fi theme park which is as good as it sounds.

Suspicious Minds by Jacqueline Rayner: River and the Eleventh Doctor team up with an auton Elvis and visit an insect-zoo which is not all it seems. A story that could only happen in Doctor Who which works brilliantly.

A Gamble with Time by Steve Lyons: The Doctor can't cross his own time line so he gets River involved instead. It's a timey-wimey story mostly set in London 2016 featuring a giant alien slug. It's awesome.

Death in New Venice by Guy Adams: My least favourite story. The Doctor is nowhere to be seen in a story about a futuristic rebuild of Venice that goes wrong. Whilst the Venice idea is good I've seen the basic plot before.

River of Time by Andrew Lane: Another no Doctor story but it's steeped in Who mythology anyway. River goes to visit an alien archaeological site where an alien species contemporary to the Time Lords lived. Inevitably they are still there. Very enjoyable.

A good collection and whilst I felt all the authors captured the character well it did mean the style of writing differed a little, as did the format. I felt the authors needed to work more closely together to make the collection a little more coherent. Overall I thought this was one of the best Who releases of recent years. 

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.

Magpies Electricals

Ten years ago today, The Idiot's Lantern first aired in the UK. To celebrate, I thought it would be fun to see all the times Magpie Electricals popped up throughout time and space.

The Idiot's Lantern: Magpie Electricals was the name of the shop owned by Mr. Magpie up until his death in 1953. At some point Mr. Magpie was contacted by the alien entity which called itself the Wire and was instructed to sell television sets cheaply ahead of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. It was all part of the Wire's plan to reconstitute its corporeal body. Mr. Magpie was killed by the Wire but somehow his business survived long into the future.

The Runaway Bride: When the Tenth Doctor flicked through various websites on a mobile phone, Magpie Electricals briefly makes an appearance.

The Sound of Drums: Martha Jones' television was made by Magpie Electricals.

Voyage of the Damned: The space cruise-liner the Titanic had a Magpie Electricals microphone. Wilfred Mott also had a Magpie Electricals television on his newspaper stand.

The Mark of the Berserker: Sarah Jane Smith's PC was made by Magpie Electricals.

The Eleventh Hour: Various aspects of the Eleventh Doctor's first console room were branded Magpie Electricals including the monitor, the typewriter and the keyboard.

The Beast Below: Magpie Electricals still seemed to exist in a similar form to it's original aboard Starship UK as there is a Magpie Electricals store on the ship.

Day of the Moon: River Song's scanner was made by Magpie Technology. She used the scanner a number of times during her adventures with the Doctor.

The Magician's Apprentice: The Twelfth Doctor owned a Magpie Electricals guitar amp which he used in Essex in 1138 on a tank. He kept the amp in the TARDIS and continued to use it (like in Before the Flood).

I am fairly sure that's the lot but there may well be some I missed. The Doctor Who team have a few of these ongoing jokes and I guess it's also a handy way to cover up brand names on electrical items!