Review by Chlo Hickson
Doctor Who fans normally like to start at the beginning. If you’re into Classic Who then you’ll go to an ‘An Unearthly Child’ or with New Who you’ll start with ‘Rose’. So when it came time for Virgin to publish their own Doctor Who novels, the closest thing the world had to an official continuation of the show in the 80’s, not only did they have to give a good first impression and convince the already existing fans that this was a brilliant idea, they also had to make something that was acceptable for new fans that hadn’t seen the show before and further push Doctor Who into the future.
But did they succeed? I’ll be taking a look at each individual book and then doing an overview of the Timewyrm saga at the end to answer this very question.
One of the goals of these new books was to elevate Doctor Who to an adult audience, on paper this is an alright idea. Doctor Who was and still is a family show but these books had two demographics in mind: The hardcore fans and people who might be interested. Children weren’t who they were thinking about. One of the lines on the back of the books describes the range as full length science fiction novels, stories too broad and too deep for the small screen.
I’ll be coming back to the words ‘broad’ and ‘deep’ a lot in my reviews as each author seemed to have their own idea of what these words mean.
After hearing about the upcoming Virgin New Adventures range John Peel became determined to write the first novel. The problem is he didn’t like the 7th Doctor. It’s ok to not like certain eras of the show as its always changing, but that just tells you how much Peel wanted to be the first published.
If I’m being honest, I was generally shocked by the Doctor’s characterization in this book, this is a genuine quote ‘It’s an acceptable thing in this culture’ when he’s talking about Gilgamesh’s relations with a literal child. I mean, seriously? The Doctor? This is something that Peel genuinely thought the Doctor would say. The worrying thing about this is that it’s often logic like this that is used in the real world to try and excuse the behavior of paedophiles.
I’ll come back to this later though.
It’s obvious that Peel didn’t like the McCoy Doctor but that didn’t mean that he had to inject so much of his hate into his writing.
The Doctor is described as wearing questionable clothing; including shoes that hadn’t seen polish for at least a decade, baggy trousers, a floppy coat of some unsavory brown hue, a paisley tie which was badly knotted, and a sweater adorned with question marks.
I mean, it didn’t just stop with the Doctor as he took his time to take shots at Ace as well. At the beginning of the book the Doctor accidentally erases Ace’s memory, so we read it as she wakes up ‘On the back of the chair was a jacket of some sort. It looked well used, with a couple of burn marks in several places where the fabric had been gashed and then repaired and it had tonnes of badges on it. Nothing made any sense to her but with a shrug she put it in and examined her reflection again. God what a mess! Did she normally dress like this?’
I also don’t understand why the Doctor had to erase some of his memories to make new ones. I understand for plot convenience but as a Time Lord who is practically immortal, surely, he wouldn’t need to do something like this. I’ve heard that Peel did this to explain any continuity mistakes. I don’t know why he couldn’t have forgotten things normally instead of having this explanation.
When Ace questions him if he’s changed any of her memories, he replied that he would’ve made her a lot less rude than she is. She’s all her again, for better or for worse. Yet another instance where the Doctor is out of character.
I’m not going to say the Doctor has never been a jackass to his companions. There have always been different times, especially with the 6th and 12th Doctors, but the 7th Doctor isn’t that kind’ve Doctor. In spite of him being the darkest Doctor, this is down to his enemies, we’re talking about an incarnation that bird whistles at babies, likes to listen to jazz and knows how to play the spoons. His relationship with Ace was that of a father figure. The Doctor in this book is honestly just awful to Ace.
Remember he doesn’t like this Doctor; he probably didn’t have an interest in understanding this version of the character. I’m so glad that Timewyrm: Genesis was the only time he wrote for this incarnation!
Seen as this technically would’ve been the first adventure after ‘Survival’, I was surprised to find how much disregard the Doctor has for Ace. For example, when the group get to the inn, Ace is understandably uncomfortable about sharing a room with Gilgamesh, to which the Doctor just brushes off Ace’s concerns. Doesn’t really sound like the 7th Doctor I know.
This book also manages to completely ignore all the development that was given to Ace in the final season of the show.
Ishtar is an interesting villain. She doesn’t have grand motivations; she just wants to rule and to inflict pain on as many people as possible. She’s insane, but she’s methodical and determined. She brings out a determined and fatalistic side to the Doctor which is rarely seen, he is more than willing to kill himself and Ace to stop Ishtar.
This book assumes a lot from the reader, seen as it’s the first book of a new range it is definitely not a book for beginners in Doctor Who lore. While there are some brief explanations of things such as the TARDIS, it can’t be considered as easy reading; explanations are good for only the minimum necessary knowledge, and might leave a new person with more questions than answers.
There is an excessive number of references to other stories. I love references, but it’s definitely over the top here. There is a good reason for it, as the Virgin New Adventures were the only continuing legacy of the series at the time, they had to establish that this was the successor of the show. Seen as the show returned in 2005 that defense isn’t really defendable now, but at the time this was Doctor Who, the only Doctor Who that fans got.
I’m surprised how long the New Adventures lasted when I discovered that the very first book has Gilgamesh fondling an underage girl with some rather explicit descriptions from Peel … Was this necessary? If it definitely had to be included, could we have done without knowing he licked wine off of her (you know what’s) or that he was literally groping her? Explicit images (bare breasts) are written about multiple times throughout the book and it’s disturbing.
I will admit that I enjoyed some parts of the book but I can’t look past the bigger, more shocking problems. The disgusting, constant presence of paedophilic description along with the bastardization of the 7th Doctor renders the bulk of this novel hard to read. The multi-Doctor elements with the 7th Doctor receiving the warning about the Timewyrm from the 4th Doctor in the TV story ‘The Invasion of Time’ and the 7th Doctor needing to ‘reawaken’ – I still don’t even know what the hell this scene was even trying to do – the 3rd Doctor to win the battle was cringy.
Timewyrm: Genesis is probably one of the worst soft reboots that Doctor Who has made. There honestly isn’t anything interesting about Peel’s blurb, it’s definitely not something you want when you’re starting a brand-new range of all new adventures.
Honestly read a re-cap online and skip to the next book in the series Timewyrm Exodus.