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20090803 Monday August 03, 2009

BLOG The extended Doctor Who universe

If you call yourself a Doctor Who fan, do you keep up with all the books, comics, audio stories and more? Blogger John Cooper realises there's a whole universe of adventures going on out there:

Fan-o-meter

You can't move for conventions at the moment, and for the second year running I've been asked to compere a small but perfectly formed Doctor Who convention in Manchester. The name of this event is 'NovelCon' and the theme of the convention this year is, surprisingly, the Doctor Who novels. Everything from the Target novelisations of the original TV adventures, which flesh out the narrative in all different directions, to the Virgin New Adventures, and the new BBC Books range.

On the Doctor Who fan-o-meter I like to think I'm about a seven. I know the television show inside out (both modern and classic), dip into the audio adventures, own toys and will happily discuss Matt Smith's choice of bow tie and braces at length given the chance, but I'm concerned that in the current heady days of runaway success I'm losing pace with my favourite show.

Looking over the vast library of spin offs, books and audios I'm not familiar with I recently got the daunting sensation that I'm merely touching the tip of a large multimedia time-travelling iceberg and know a lot less than I thought I did. I know that Charley Pollard is travelling with the sixth doctor, but used to travel with the eighth, Majenta Price has a big secret that the tenth doctor is trying to find out, Sarah Jane fancies Nigel Havers and John Frobisher from Torchwood's 'Children Of Earth' is not a shape-shifting penguin. All this and yet the show's having a gap year.

If I started tomorrow, it would take me over a year to read the 60(ish) seventh doctor New Adventures books alone, by which time I'd probably have broken my tongue trying to roll my 'r's out loud. Instead, I'll just stay happy knowing what I do know, and not getting too caught up in a completist's frenzy.

Now excuse me while I go and watch 'The War Games' for a second time, just to enjoy it.

This is a personal article by John Cooper, one of our twelve bloggers.

Where are you on the Doctor Who fan-o-meter? Are you up to date with every single adventure that's been documented off-screen? Your thoughts welcome as always, in the comment thread below or on our forum.
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Posted by Dave Bradley [Blogs] ( Monday August 03, 2009 )



Permalink | Comments [12]
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Comments:

Yeah, I know what you mean. I'm a major, major Star Wars buff - and the Expanded Universe is getting too big to keep up with, keeps contradicting itself, is losing consistency...

I don't know. Maybe less IS more, after all?

Posted by 127.0.0.1 on August 03, 2009 at 12:50 PM BST #

It was fine whilst Doctor Who was off-air. A couple of books and an audio a month. I'm about at the level you are - I recognise everything you've got in your post and lurk on Gallifrey Base but I've lost track of the "whole". So I guess that puts me at a "7" as well.

Posted by Paul Oldroyd (127.0.0.1) on August 03, 2009 at 01:00 PM BST #

All of which is why to an extent some franchises have almost become sub-genres in and of themselves which themselves have sub-sub-genres. So there are people won't touch anything other than stories set during the Pertwee era or Tom Baker era. I swear by the Eighth Doctor stories -- he's my Doctor -- and have only listened to the 6th Doctor stories with Charley and because of the way it is structured, that's ok, you're not missing anything.

Posted by Stu (127.0.0.1) on August 03, 2009 at 01:22 PM BST
Website: http://feelinglistless.blogspot.com/ #

In case you query my use of the word 'genre' -- each of these eras can quite happily be given a listed set of tropes which mark them out as separate from others. In addition, Doctor Who stories all tend to be structured in the same way and as with the semantic look of westerns, if there's a slightly strange looking bloke and a police box you can quite definitively say that its Doctor Who.

Posted by Stu (127.0.0.1) on August 03, 2009 at 01:25 PM BST #

I have little truck with the DOCTOR WHO and STAR TREK novels: they are non-canon and can be totally invalidated by the TV writers any time they want, so why bother getting involved with the characters and stories?

STAR WARS is a bit more interesting, simply down to the semi-canon status of all the books and comics. However, I lost patience a bit with the setting after the New Jedi Order. That series did a good job of setting up a new situation in the Galaxy, but they immediately went back to rogue Jedis, superweapons and Sith afterwards. Great. The new stories set 150 years after Return of the Jedi and involving a fresh relaunch of the setting are quite interesting, however, as are some of the Knights of the Old Republic stuff. STAR WARS' history is so huge that any time one particular era gets bogged down in miniutiae, they can jump to a new era and start up again.

The most interesting expanded universe is BABYLON 5, where the novels and comics are as integeral to the story as the episodes, and events in the comics and books were sometimes referred to on-screen.

Posted by Adam Whitehead (127.0.0.1) on August 03, 2009 at 02:06 PM BST
Website: http://thewertzone.blogspot.com/ #

Surely it should be Whoniverse?

Posted by Simon Perrins (127.0.0.1) on August 03, 2009 at 02:07 PM BST
Website: http://www.hftf.co.uk #

@adamwhitehead Well, that's true of Star Trek (though the canonicity of more recent novels particularly DS9 is in flux), but Doctor Who's a special case since the show itself contradicts itself all over the place. You'd do well to read this:

http://teatimebrutality.blogspot.com/2009/07/canon-and-sheep-shit-why-we-fight.html

Essentially that boils down to there not being a canon anyway in Doctor Who -- not the tv series, not the books, not the comics, making everything within the mythology relevant or not. I see from your blog you're a very big fan of printed sci-fi -- you're missing out on a hell of a lot if you are a Who fan and haven't read any of it. I'd certainly recommend you have a look at The Dying Days:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/ebooks/dyingdays/index.shtml

For which the new series owes a huge debt. For many fans (and Doctor Who Magazine), the novels were the proper series between 1989 and 2005.

Posted by Stuart Ian Burns (127.0.0.1) on August 03, 2009 at 06:04 PM BST
Website: http://feelinglistless.blogspot.com/ #

Check out History by Lance Parkin.
From Event One to Event Two...
Mind you it only goes to about 2005...

Posted by 127.0.0.1 on August 03, 2009 at 10:03 PM BST #

the latest set of tenth doctor novels are pretty damn good in a kid friendly kind of way. That keep me happy as well untill the new episodes as well haha

Posted by Son Of Solo (127.0.0.1) on August 04, 2009 at 10:55 AM BST #

I struggle to keep up with the various print and audio Doctor Who spin-offs, but a good story is still a good story regardless of the medium used to tell it and whether it contradicts a previous one or not.

I gave up on the Star Wars expanded universe novels years ago. So few of them seemed to capture the spirit of the movies. I do watch The Clone Wars, though - even though continuity between the two series seems hopelessly broken.

Posted by Bob (127.0.0.1) on August 04, 2009 at 01:13 PM BST #

Ahh and then you add in all the Alternative Universeses and Torchwood and SJA... there must be a point out there where the Tardis is going to appear on the bridge of the Enterprise and Harry Potter is going to come out married to Rose and Sarah Jane is his Mother!

Posted by Dave Cross (127.0.0.1) on August 04, 2009 at 05:55 PM BST #

I read the New Adventurs up as far as the one where the Seventh Doctor meets the Ice Warriors on Peladon. Written by the guy who was editing DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE at the time. It was pretty good, but by that point I'd given up on trying to keep up with the books. Too many coming out too fast. Keeping up with them was almost a fall-time job and would have severely restricted the number of other books I could have read.

Posted by Adam Whitehead (127.0.0.1) on August 04, 2009 at 08:14 PM BST
Website: http://thewertzone.blogspot.com/ #

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