Four novels I read recently based in the Doctor Who universe but not all of them feature The Doctor
The Face of the Enemy By David A. McIntee (featuring The Brigadier & The Master)
Rating: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
The Forgotten Son by Andy Frankham-Allen (featuring Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart)
Rating: ❤️❤️❤❤❤
The Day She Saved The Doctor (short stories) by Jenny Colgan, Jacqueline Rayner, Dorothy Koomson & Susan Calman (featuring Rose, Sarah-Jane, Clara and Bill)
Rating: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤
The Legends of River Song (anthology) by Jenny T. Colgan, Jacqueline Rayner, Steve Lyons, Guy Adams & Andy Lane (featuring River Song & The Doctor)
Going through some of the tags here reminded me The Empire of Glass, which I remember reading about in Doctor Who Magazine (I don't know if I ever got to read the book at the time as it wasn't easy to get them in the US). I love that Andy Lane tapped into the same feelings about Steven which so many brilliant fic writers have now, even though there were less Steven episodes available at the time and the audios were likely more difficult to come by. It tells you there is something intrinsic in the performance and stories which draws generations to the character when they find him.
"Sherlock Holmes is a disgraced young man – raw and unfiltered– when he finds himself wrapped up in a murder case that threatens his liberty. His first ever case unravels a globe-trotting conspiracy, culminating in an explosive showdown that changes his life forever." (Prime Video)
Young Sherlock stars Hero Fiennes Tiffin, Dónal Finn, Zine Tseng, Joseph Fiennes, Natascha McElhone, Max Irons, and Colin Firth. Guy Ritchie directs. The series is based on the characters by Arthur Conan Doyle and inspired by Andy Lane's Young Sherlock Holmes book series.
Young Sherlock premieres on March 4, 2026, on Prime Video.
Cracking through the utter avalanche of Doctor Who books in my backlog and rambling about them on tumblr because this site deserves someone who cares to post about the short story anthologies.
The first of Virgin's anthologies uses a pretty standard set-up for its wrap-around segments, entitled "Playback": Seven has lost his memories, stumbled into a private eye's office in the mid-1940s, and together they seek out the help of a psychometrist, whose visions sparked by assorted objects in the Doctor's coat serve as glimpses into interrelated stories from his past. Obviously I can't judge the thing until through with the book, but Stephen James Walker seems to have an alright imitation of period detective novel descriptive language, and it's neat seeing a guileless Seven when one knows a Virgin-era story means there's some overly-convoluted plan in the wings once his memories return.
As to "Fallen Angel" itself, we kick off with as close a crossover as Lane and Virgin can publish without a lawsuit. The narration most commonly sticks to the thoughts and experiences of one Lucas Seyton, a gentleman thief whose shady family history compels him to give back by robbing the world's rich criminality their ill-gotten gains, for both justice and the fun of it. He aliases under the story's title, leaves a calling card with a little stick figure doodle of himself, brushes elbows with working-class friends who enable his adventures, and lives life to the fullest with no apology for his criminality or compunctions as to its righteousness. His voice is also described in tones evoking Roger Moore. In other words, he's a thinly-veiled analog for Leslie Charteris' popular hero Simon Templar, alias The Saint, and the story is basically Lane bumping him against a fellow 60s British telly alumni so they can exchange banter, save each other's bacon, and generally compliment how brilliant they find the other despite differences in philosophy.
S'not a bad thing by any shot. Seyton's an amiably-written perspective character whose blase attitude and observations about the Doctor's eccentricities are amusing, especially opposite so disheveled an incarnation as Two, and Lane uses the homage as excuse for all the classic pulp adventure staples. Rough alleyway encounters, morning after recuperation and pleasantries, high-flying biplane dogfights, desperate manor-bound shoot-outs, the works. Highly amusing to imagine Troughton bumbling and panicking through the best realizations a mid-60s ITV budget could manage, or exchanging quotations from Winnie the Pooh opposite Moore.
The actual plot of the thing is deliberately incomplete, as you're supposed to piece things together through the whole anthology, though I've a complaint all the same. The Doctor accidentally lands the TARDIS in a manor house that's secretly a Time Lord prison for warmongering aliens whose punishment after defeat was confinement in a convincingly faked forever war, and barely escapes the automated security on his lonesome. All the business with Seyton goes down, the Doctor revealing little details all the while, they bust into the manor, and find the prisoners dead, having killed each other over some petty dispute long ago, their robotic guards still viciously attacking any intruders because the Doctor forgot to program their deactivation if their charges died. It's always irksome to me when Wilderness Era stories decide the increased focus on Seven's machiavellian tendencies means all prior incarnations were equally duplicitous and scheming, cause it never fits how One was written or played to imply he was some brilliant Time Lord mastermind with fingers in all their devious little projects. I know we're stuck with it because "Remembrance of the Daleks" is a classic and the Hand of Omega plot point is super memorable, but I'm a stickler for Doctors feeling right, and this bit ain't it.
(Also it's a Jamie and Zoe-era story in which they barely feature, so boo on that too.)
Beyond a bother introduced by the frame story's needs, I'm happy with this self-indulgent fannish runaround. Nice tribute to the then-recently deceased Charteris. I'd say it's pretty solidly...
Irving Braxiatel art for the Empire of Glass by Andy Lane done by Mike Nicholoson. Originally done for the online E-book on the old Doctor Who website.
“We’ve got a problem”, Ianto said as he rushed into the Hub.
“Narrow it down for us”, Owen murmured without looking up from his medical computer screen. “Is it a coffee related emergency? Water not at precisely the right temperature? Run out of Jamaican blue mountain coffee beans perhaps? Or perhaps it’s something to do with that little cubby hole you sit in waiting for visitors who never arrive. Wallpaper started peeling, has it?”
