Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Novels #1 Ten Little Aliens, By Stephen Cole
The Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Collection. Eleven Classic Adventures. Eleven Brilliant Writers. One Incredible Doctor. The first Doctor novel to be selected for reprint as part of Doctor Whos golden celebrations is Stephen Coles Ten Little Aliens from 2002, which sees the Doctor, Ben and Polly arrive on a hollowed-out moon where they discover the corpses of the ten most dangerous criminals in the universe, all frozen in time. The new introduction gives a brilliant new insight into this novel, with Cole admitting he was obsessed with Agatha Christie at the time of planning (he was then editing a Christie part-work magazine) and thought Christie meets Starship Troopers would be a smash hit. And reader, he was right. As we witnessed at Christmas, the Eleventh Doctor can do a mean Sherlock Holmes impersonation, but William Hartnells Doctor IS Hercule Poirot. He sits at the back of the room, not making much of a fuss as he deduces what is going on and thats exactly what the Doctor does here. He was, admittedly, underused a lot and didnt get many heavy scenes, but I felt I had to let that pass as it definitely fits with the first Doctor during his two series four adventures. Cole has perfectly written this version of the first Doctor, as he nears the end of his life. The only thing, thankfully, missing, was a last minute collapse from William Hartnells stunt double before losing the character for a week. This is a novel where the author gets to show off how clever he can be, leaving you annoyingly trying to guess everything until the final forty pages as well as making you suspect everything. He then goes one further and writes in a make your own destiny chapter, yet somehow writes it in a way that fits within the narrative. Whilst I didnt enjoy the interruption of this chapter, and it became hard to go straight back into normal prose, it was a worthy and ballsy attempt which I salute Cole for. One bonus of Doctor Who novels is we get to look inside the characters thoughts. We get more of an insight into Polly and her cancer research attempt as well as finding out more about Ben, who thinks in Cockney, of course. I love getting these small glimpses into the back story of the Doctors companions and it makes reading the novels more worthwhile. A slight downfall of this novel is the opening fifty or sixty pages, which feels like Part One of Earthshock, where we follow a bunch of strangers in a cave, dont get any real action and only get a minute or two at a time with the TARDIS crew, which is very jarring, as you just get excited to be with the Doctor and were back to the unknown characters again. I feel this did work in the long run, however, as we got to know these strangers more, but it doesnt make up for the loss of the characters I was reading this novel for. On the whole, this is a fantastic opening to the 50th novels, a worthwhile choice to reprint and if you love any of the Doctors, this is a must read. Cole delivers throughout the entire book. The Doctor returns in... Dreams Of Empire by Justin Richards.