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In this week's instalment of Lara's Ramblings, Christopher Bulis becomes the first Wilderness Years writer to write a novel for each of the first eight Doctors, as we return to the EDAs to dig into Vanderdeken's Children.
Vanderdeken’s Children is the ninth full-length Doctor Who novel by Christopher Bulis. More than anything, it is that basic fact which colou
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White Noise (Don DeLillo) "White Noise tells the story of Jack Gladney, his fourth wife, Babette, and four ultramodern offspring as they navigate the rocky passages of family life to the background babble of brand-name consumerism. When an industrial accident unleashes an "airborne toxic event," a lethal black chemical cloud floats over their lives. The menacing cloud is a more urgent and visible version of the "white noise" engulfing the Gladneys—radio transmissions, sirens, microwaves, ultrasonic appliances, and TV murmurings—pulsing with life, yet suggesting something ominous."
City at World's End (Christopher Bulis) Synopsis: "The Doctor and his companions land in the city of Arkhaven, the last bastion of civilisation on a doomed world. The inhabitants of the city are pinning all their hopes on a final desperate gamble for survival. Behind the scenes there are jealous factions at work, secretly contesting for the chance to shape the destiny of a new world. Beneath its ordered surface, Arkhaven is a city of secrets and mysteries where outward appearances can be deceptive.
Is the thing they call the "Creeper" really at large in Arkhaven's eerie outer zone — and is it beast or machine? What is the hidden force at work that has acted so strangely upon Susan? With Barbara lost and the countdown to doomsday drawing to a climax, the Doctor must discover the true nature of the final enemy — or is that enemy simply fear itself?"
Why it's Extinction: Without getting into too much spoilery detail, there's a lot in this novel that concerns the replacement of humanity and the hollowness of civilization, as well as the ultimate farce of hope in the face of the Extinction.
Extinction Leitner Redemption Bracket Round 1 Bout 4
White Noise (Don DeLillo)
City at World's End (Christopher Bulis)
Round One, Group Seven
Mark Gatiss vs Christopher Bulis
Mark Gatiss
Christopher Bulis
City at World's End (Christopher Bulis) Synopsis: "The Doctor and his companions land in the city of Arkhaven, the last bastion of civilisation on a doomed world. The inhabitants of the city are pinning all their hopes on a final desperate gamble for survival. Behind the scenes there are jealous factions at work, secretly contesting for the chance to shape the destiny of a new world. Beneath its ordered surface, Arkhaven is a city of secrets and mysteries where outward appearances can be deceptive.
Is the thing they call the "Creeper" really at large in Arkhaven's eerie outer zone — and is it beast or machine? What is the hidden force at work that has acted so strangely upon Susan? With Barbara lost and the countdown to doomsday drawing to a climax, the Doctor must discover the true nature of the final enemy — or is that enemy simply fear itself?"
Why it's Extinction: Without getting into too much spoilery detail, there's a lot in this novel that concerns the replacement of humanity and the hollowness of civilization, as well as the ultimate farce of hope in the face of the Extinction.
The World Without Us (Alan Weisman) "The World Without Us is a 2007 non-fiction book about what would happen to the natural and built environment if humans suddenly disappeared, written by American journalist Alan Weisman. Written largely as a thought experiment, it outlines, for example, how cities and houses would deteriorate, how long man-made artifacts would last, and how remaining lifeforms would evolve. Weisman concludes that residential neighborhoods would become forests within 500 years, and that radioactive waste, bronze statues, plastics and Mount Rushmore would be among the longest-lasting evidence of human presence on Earth."
Extinction Leitner Bracket Round 1 Bout 2
City at World's End (Christopher Bulis)
The World Without Us (Alan Weisman)
Alright but really though BBC Books, can we stop with the "barely-developed love triangle/jealous romantic rivalry involving the companion and assorted guest stars." I wasn't sold on it in The Murder Game or The Bodysnatchers, why do you think The Ultimate Treasure will be any different?
Book #126 of 2026:
Doctor Who: Shadowmind by Christopher Bulis (Virgin New Adventures #16)
I’m surprised this 1993 novel has such a poor reputation — including a 2.85 average rating on Goodreads — since I’ve found it to be a generally enjoyable time myself. A lot of the reviews complain that it reads more like Star Trek than Doctor Who, but I personally don’t think it’s that much of a stretch, and I tend to appreciate when the franchise tries different things, anyway. In my mind, that’s kind of the whole appeal of this particular fictional universe: you never really know what sort of story or genre the protagonists are going to find when they open up the doors of the TARDIS next.
In this case, the Seventh Doctor, Benny, and Ace are attempting to celebrate the latter’s birthday (which she’s apparently been tracking subjectively via her fancy “wrist computer”) on a distant future planet when they stumble into a paranoid conspiracy plot of the bodysnatcher variety. It turns out that furry little aliens are kidnapping and cloning people, linking the copies to their original minds with Avatar / Hoppers-like technology, and then secretly steering them while these sleeper agents don’t even realize they’ve been turned. Later on, the heroes discover there are multiple factions of the creatures, and that the enemy ones are in fact being controlled themselves by an even more shadowy threat.
The action builds nicely, with several great moments of immediate escalation, and the various species feel imaginatively distinctive in their designs. Author Christopher Bulis also manages to neatly encapsulate the series ethos when one character objects that a certain process would be highly unlikely to develop in nature, and the Doctor coolly responds with, “It’s a big universe, Professor. Anything that’s not impossible is merely waiting to happen.” All that, and a crisis for Ace over how she’s getting forced into a pragmatically ruthless killer soldier role again, too! It’s honestly one of the better VNA entries, in my opinion.
[Content warning for gun violence and gore.]
★★★★☆
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It's time for the penultimate Fourth Doctor novel, and the last to not be written by an absolutely horrible human being - to my knowledge, at least. Here's Christopher Bulis' A Device of Death.
It’s rather surprising, but A Device of Death represents our first extended engagement with the Hinchcliffe Era in quite some time. Although
‘Your society is of no importance to us. Why should we trouble you again?’ ‘Because it is in your nature. I have heard a little of your history over recent days. You wish to rebuild your Empire, and empires only grow by conquest. With such a tool as the Helm, what else would you use it for?’
Christopher Bulis, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
