James Goss

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/december-books-16-first-born-by-james-goss/

I was not disappointed. Although the plot itself is a pretty straightforward cut-and-paste from The Midwich Cuckoos and Children of the Corn, Goss puts together a very compelling story of creepy children in a village where nothing is quite right, with the added factor of Gwen Cooper and Rhys Williams and their very small baby trying to work out what is going on and also incidentally not get killed. I have been show more generally enjoying the Torchwood novels, which as a series are some of the hidden gems of Who fiction, but this is one of the best. The audio brings us Kai Owen's voice to do a warm, confused but courageous Rhys, with Clare Corbett doing a convincing interpretation of Eve Myles and carrying her chapters extremely impressively (she is really good at accents). Apart from the basic horror of the story, there's some bleak office humour about the bureaucracy of atrocity, and some tough teenagers who are central to the story. Very strongly recommended. show less

We waited forty years for this?

This story began as a film treatment by Baker and then-co-star Ian Marter in the 1970s, but nothing ever came of it and it was forgotten by all but the most loyal Whovians. I suppose the popularity of original Doctor Who novels was the incentive for its resurrection (or regeneration?)

I don't know what the original story was like, but this iteration is a mess.

The Doctor, Harry and Sarah Jane arrive at a coastal Scottish village to find most of the inhabitants show more have been turned into scarecrows. Some kind of...scarecrow virus? Nanomachines? Something? Don't think about it. Especially don't think about the stupid, stupid supermoths.

After holing up with the few remaining survivors, Harry and Sarah Jane are spirited away to the realm of Scratchman, which seems a lot like Hell. Why do these things so closely resemble human mythology? Don't think about it.

Once the Doctor enters the dimension of Scratchman to rescue his friends, any remaining logic (there wasn't that much to begin with) flies out the door. Literally anything can happen, because the place is governed by people's thoughts. Doctor Who was never a hard science show exactly, but this is complete fantasy so why bother? When anything can happen at the whim of the authors, there is no suspense or investment on the part of the reader. It's like reading a long dream sequence, which I hate.

Cybermen appear for no reason other than to offer a deus ex machina rescue late in the story.

The story is told in the first person by the Doctor which is a bad choice because it crushes any of the mystique that is an essential part of his character. It also requires a contrived explanation about how he knows what happened when he wasn't around. (Something TARDIS telepathic time travel something... at the very least it means he's poking around in his companions' thoughts which is creepy.) The framing story, in which the Doctor is put on trial and has to justify his actions to the other Time Lords, is unnecessary and unconvincing.

Honestly, the whole thing comes off as a thinly-veiled religious screed, which is extremely odd as Baker is an atheist. I don't know who James Goss is; maybe it's his fault. The book is also written at a level for young children, like the old Target novelizations. I was hoping for something more mature along the lines of the BBC original novels that came out in the 90s.

The only good thing about this is that the characters from the show are faithfully depicted, so there are a few brief moments now and again that are nice. And there's a reference to Worzel Gummidge that made me chuckle.

For a much better adventure involving sinister scarecrows, read [b:Doctor Who: The Hollow Men|814513|Doctor Who The Hollow Men|Keith Topping|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1469477931l/814513._SY75_.jpg|800437].

For a much better recreation of the Fourth Doctor era, read [b:Doctor Who: Festival of Death|71405|Doctor Who Festival of Death|Jonathan Morris|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1530834145l/71405._SY75_.jpg|69149]. show less

James Goss is the most reliable of the current crop of writers tackling the standard BBC Doctor Who books right now. Whereas others will work to the formula of their idea of Doctor Who, relentlessly ploughing the same furrow, Goss at least attempts to do something different each time, to play with what can be achieved with Doctor Who in print.

Here his trick is to present the book as a first person narrative, a retelling of what happens when the Doctor investigates a prison by becoming a show more prisoner. The narrator’s the prison governor and, needless to say, he’s not quite as straightforward as he appears. What this device does allow is for some well-worked comedy of exasperation with the Doctor flagrantly disregarding that this is meant to be an ultra-secure, inescapable prison. It’s this comedy which forms the bulk of the novel with much of the plot not getting going until roughly halfway. Fortunately the idea’s good and Goss’s execution of it’s so deft you don’t mind. He nails Capaldi’s Doctor too, all eyebrows, glower and subterranean tolerance for fools and manages to draw up some nicely memorable characters of his own. They’re distinct and clearly have their own desires and agendas, no mean feat in relatively short books so dependent on action. Even more refreshing is the ending, which by Doctor Who custom is heading a certain way but doesn’t quite end up there. The new series adventures have rarely felt as ambitious as the ranges which preceded them; more standard tie-ins subservient to their parent series, but Goss has consistently managed to be quietly subversive and striven to produce books with some of the ambition of the peak Virgin or Eighth Doctor ranges. His name on a book’s cover continues to be a recommendation. show less

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/the-fourteenth-doctor-novelisations-the-star-bea....

It’s no secret that I rate James Goss as one of the best Doctor Who writers currently in business (eg here, here and here), so I awaited his novelisation of The Giggle with eager anticipation.

I have to say that my high expectations were more than exceeded. Goss tells the story from the perspective of the Toymaker (first-person Doctor Who books are very rare and not always successful), smooths off the show more edges, throws in some extra pinches of emotion and also some shifts of genre and format – at one point the book becomes a choose-your-own-adventure for Donna, and there are other puzzles throughout. I suspect that the paper version will be even nicer and it’s the only one of the three that I plan to get in hard copy. It’s a real tour de force. show less