Who Reviews Tenth Doctor Novels Volume 4 by Tony J Fyler

Tony’s got his reading-specs on…which is odd, given he’s listening to audiobooks.

Many of the initial Tenth Doctor novels had a slightness to them, a re-running of familiar tropes and concepts that allowed younger, newer fans to immerse themselves in the pleasure of reading their Who, as well as watching it – a pleasure which older fans absolutely used to stoke the fires of their fandom during the high days of the Target novelisations.

By the time we get to Volume 4 of the Tenth Doctor novels though, we’re into a different league. A league which absolutely takes what was on the screen and extends it, deepens it, complicates it, and gives us things and ways of thinking about some of our favourite villains that for one reason or another had never made it on-screen.

Which is why, for instance, there are eight novels in the first volume of Tenth Doctor tales, and only three in Volume 4. What you lose on quantity, you gain in breadth and depth and complexity and all-round enjoyment of the experience though, because the three novels included in this collection are quality from start to finish.

You might just possibly consider this spoilerific information, but all three involve the return of previous TV villains (and all three were shown on their individual cover art) – that the Autons are in Autonomy will surely surprise no one, and likewise, it won’t take too long to identify the returning villains in The Krillitane Storm, but here goes the possible spoiler: the Sontarans are stomping all over The Taking of Chelsea 426. So what you get for your money here is 16 and a half hours of returning-villain joy

In fact, here’s a bold claim for you – The Taking Of Chelsea 426 might just possibly be the best Sontaran story…ever. And that’s coming from someone who believes in the practical perfection of The Time Warrior.

The Taking of Chelsea 426 is more than a standard Sontaran story on many levels, only some of which it feels right to tell you. Here you'll hear Sontarans being more than the usual warmongers you know. In fact, the ways in which their action here differs from the usual grunting, shouty Sontarans of Who-history leads to particular tensions which culminate in an absolutely gripping scene. This is also specifically a follow-up story to the televised Tenth Doctor Sontaran two-parter, The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky. Set on a Saturnian colony, Chelsea 426, a flower show (yes, really, the Chelsea Flower Show), brings dark doings, Especially Suspicious Flowers, and, because David Llewellyn's an exceptional Doctor Who writer, a conflict between conservative, insular colonists and the 'incomers' who come to see the show. And then...then come the Sontarans, conducting an almost Judoon-style police action. While the storyline itself can be seen as linear, there's absolutely no ‘simple Sontaran plan, thwarted by the Doctor’ A-B journey here, it's a far more realistic, scrappy, back and forth power struggle, with the colonists, the incomers, the Sontarans, the plants and the enemy for whom the Sontarans have come searching each playing their parts in the fate of Chelsea 426.

There's every chance this will be among your favourite stories featuring the Sons of Sontar, and having the whole thing read by General Staal actor Christopher Ryan means this will give you a relevant story for the age of Trump and Brexit, plus the Sontarans in one of the most actively, psychologically important stories in their history.

Autonomy, by Daniel Blythe, takes the concept of the Autons and the Nestene Consciousness as a kind of satire on commercialism and writes it on a much, much bigger scale than it’s ever been written on before. Hyperville, the ultimate entertainment/commerce complex takes the Autons into brand new levels of territory, and expands the scale of the satire inherent in them too, as it forces us to look at all the uses we have for plastic, far above and beyond the archetypal show window dummies.

While it would be a shame to spoiler all the new uses for plastic that are turned horrifying and deadly in Blythe’s story suffice it to say there’s a very 21st century version of the ‘creepy chair of death’ from Terror of the Autons which is enough to give you palpitations of trauma. There are theme park rides and ghost trains of unparalleled believability and ghastliness. And there’s a particular Auton in this story that stands almost like a dark parallel of the girl in the red coat in Schindler’s List – you see it, it’s distinctive, and it runs through scenes, bringing trouble, terror, chaos and death in its wake.

While the Pertwee Auton stories each have claim to a particular kind of standout awesomeness, Daniel Blythe gives them an outing which stretches them properly into the 21st century, giving us just enough sci-fi to make the piece believable, but anchoring it in social trends that are real enough right now to show us how we get to Hyperville from here. And more than either of the original Auton stories (or any on-screen uses of them since), he allows the Autons properly off their leash, allowing them to be both as much of a front-and-centre sci-fi threat as they should be, and as hard-hitting a warning to the way we build our societies on disposable, plastic shallowness – including mass-produced pop and reality TV (Ooh, now there’s an idea – The Nestene President?).

Read by Georgia Moffett (now Tennant), the story has a great scale, seeming to really exist in four dimensions – there’s lots of area to the action as well as height and depth – and Georgia gets the right note of playfulness into her Tenth Doctor, while delivering modernity and even youthspeak in some of the characters who add threat and heroism to Autonomy. Her voice for villainy may not be as entirely terrifying as you might want, but after all, the Autons work best by virtue of what they are and what they do, rather than through the threats of those who control them, so overall her freshness and energy sell the story believably, well, and with a kind of tension in the later sections that makes you want to find out what the hell can possibly happen next, all the way to a conclusion that satisfies even the weariest Auton-fan.

And finally, The Krillitane Storm takes the Doctor back to the England of Stephen and Matilda for some additional fun with Krillitanes - the bat-like super-evolving creatures first seen in School Reunion. This is a story that starts off as one thing and - like the creatures at its heart - transforms into two other entirely different types of thing altogether before it's done. Starting as medieval myth and legend, it merges neatly into a turnabout story of the Krillitanes being perhaps not the villains they were in School Reunion, but more sinned against than sinning, and evolves from there into a better explanation of the Krillitanes' fundamental nature than there was ever time for on-screen, what with super chips and child geniuses and Sarah-Jane and K9 to fit in. And finally it transmogrifies into a battle for the heart and soul and destiny of the Krillitanes, a battle between what they've always been and what they might possibly become. If you weren't entirely sold on the Krillitanes on TV (and I wasn't - the ambitious CGI never quite cut it for me), they emerge from Christopher Cooper's novel as a far more believable, rounded race, a race with unique gifts but also unique challenges, poised forever on the knife-edge of being so unique they should conquer everything that stands in their way, and that particular KIND of unique that makes them worth enslaving.

Read by Will Thorp, who's not perhaps an immediate choice as a mimic for the Tenth Doctor, this story could well make some Krillitane converts, pitching its battle among medieval yokels, men at arms and a particularly meddlesome monk (No, not that one). The Krillitane Storm is more than strong enough, atmospheric enough and involved enough to reward any listener prepared to give the Krillitanes another try, and you’ll probably come away feeling like you know them better and understand them better than you did before.

All told, The Tenth Doctor Novels, Volume 4, is probably the best of the four collections, bringing new depth and understanding to three compelling TV villains, and anchoring the storytelling in the cheeky grin, the things that go ‘bing’ and above all the confident swagger of the Tenth Doctor. Sixteen and a half hours is less than a day. Take a day out of your life and go have three impeccable adventures with the sharp-suited clever-specced Time Lord. It’s a good day to have.