My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The last Doctor Who novel I read was extremely disappointing (Doctor Who: The Coming of the Terraphiles). I was worried that someone creating a novel from a TV story by Douglas Adams would fall short and disappoint me again. I could not have been more wrong. Where the Michael Moorcock story completely fails to capture the character of the Doctor, James Goss nails it. Of course, it helps that he had access to early drafts, full scripts and a bucket load of other stuff from the Adams Archive. It is difficult to see where Adams ends and Goss begins; an astonishing achievement. I will be looking for more James Goss soon to see what else he can do. I’ll finish with a couple of (non-spoiler) quotes that to me say Douglas Adams but could be James Goss. What do you think? Can you see the join?
Quote 1:
Romana still had a lot to learn about the universe. How could a planet have a soul? Well, she had yet to see an English country garden on a summer's day.
Quote 2:
‘Doesn’t matter. We’ll never get in!’ Last time, she’d had the element of surprise on her side. And had landed an air-car on them. This time, they were pinned down.Update
‘Never?’ The Doctor looked hurt. ‘Never say that to a Time Lord.’
‘Never say what?’
‘Never.’
‘Never what?’ asked Romana.
‘Mind,’ the Doctor sighed.
‘What mind?’
‘Never mind.’
‘Never mind what?’
‘What?’ Now the Doctor was thoroughly confused.
‘What?’ Romana heartily hoped someone would shoot them. The Doctor first, though.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ the Doctor said. ‘We’ll get in somehow.’
‘We can’t!’
‘Never say that to a Time Lord,’ the Doctor beamed.
‘Oh, you’re impossible.’
‘No, just very, very improbable.’
Famously, Adams was writing The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy while working on Doctor Who. The links between the two are clear in this book (for example, the “very improbable” quote above) but it is particularly clear in the section at the end where James describes some of the material he had access to from the Adams archive. My favourite from the archive is in the appendices where James reproduces Adams’ thoughts on who might be behind the Key To Time. There, at the end of a list of possible villains, Adams had handwritten a single word: “Mice”!
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