9 Reasons Doctor Who Hates Cats

3. The Cats Cradle Trilogy

The BBC canned Doctor Who in 1989, partly because it was seen as niche entertainment. Luckily for its fans, the New Adventures book range started shortly afterwards. Dense, uneven and packed with outlandish theories, they personified the fan base the corporation feared and attempted to put the show up alongside Frank Herbert and Arthur C. Clarke as cerebral science-fiction. The result would have been fine if the novels had been as good as Dune or 2001. Sadly they fluctuated in quality and publisher Virgin didn't do the NAs any favours by anchoring them to trilogies and massive story arcs from the outset. The Cats Cradle cycle started with Time's Crucible by Ghost Light writer Marc Platt. That blew up the TARDIS and saw Ace wandering in a bizarre landscape watched over by a massive slug. It's a bit like that episode of The Simpsons where Homer eats the forbidden chilli and hallucinates himself into oblivion, only less fun. Just as he received help from a coyote voiced by Johnny Cash, and subsequently Ace became guided by a mysterious silver cat. As it happened, the cat wasn't a cat, but a manifestation of the TARDIS, one of a welter of ideas making the casual reader yearn for the simple pleasures of a man eating chair, or a Yeti on the Underground.