Doctor Who: The Water Thief
by Jacqueline Rayner (BBC, 2012)
Like many Eleventh Doctor authors, Rayner enjoys capturing the superficial interactions between the Doctor, Amy and Rory, yet never manages to portray a convincing threat. The monster of the day is little more than an arbitrarily functioning excuse to explore Ancient Egypt.
Doctor Who: Borrowed Time
by Naomi A. Alderman (BBC, 2011); audiobook read by Meera Syal.
When the Doctor takes Amy and Rory to witness a bank’s collapse, they find it’s been offering more than just money for loan… This belaboured parable of compound interest isn’t without merit; it just takes up more time than it can repay.
Doctor Who: Mawdryn Undead
by Peter Grimwade; dir. Peter Moffatt (BBC, 1983)
Doctor Who’s take on the Flying Dutchman offers up what should have been a staggering moral quandary, played subtly by Peter Davison but undercut by the plot’s bumbling Brigadier resolution. Turlough is a welcome addition, the exuberant synthesiser music perhaps less so.
Doctor Who: Vengeance on Varos
by Philip Martin; dir. Ron Jones (BBC, 1985)
A rare instance of a decent Sixth Doctor script. Colin Baker is still left with little to do but (a) run about and (b) look smugly unconcerned, but Varos at least gives a sign of how good his tenure could have been.
Doctor Who: Doom Coalition
by Matt Fitton; John Dorney; Marc Platt; Edward Collier (Big Finish, 2015)
Doom Coalition introduces one of the most striking and original Who villains ever: the Eleven, a Time Lord with trans-incarnational dissociative identity disorder. Unfortunately, having featured in the first story, he subsequently becomes a background presence à la the Key to Time.
Doctor Who: The Time Monster
by Robert Sloman; dir. Paul Bernard (BBC, 1972)
Roger Delgado is a tour de force as the Master but once again a Pertwee-era story does his character no justice. The Time Monster is overlong and shambolic — its threat false, the scheme pea-brained — with bafflegab and deus ex machina to burn.
Doctor Who: The Return of Doctor Mysterio
by Steven Moffat (BBC, 2016)
The New Series Christmas invasion takes a new twist when the Doctor, through rather comic happenstance, creates a bona fide superhero. Peter Capaldi revels in the light-hearted humour while the Superman homage dovetails nicely with the longstanding dynamic between Doctor and companion.
Doctor Who: Paradox Lost
by George Mann (BBC, 2011); audiobook read by Nicholas Briggs
In an otherwise fairly nondescript Eleventh Doctor adventure, Mann introduces two minor characters with potential for future appearances: Professor Angelchrist, an early twentieth century gentleman adventurer; and Arven, a soft-spoken AI from future London. Of less interest is the dismissively-dealt-with titular paradox.
Doctor Who: The Empty House
by Simon Guerrier (BBC, 2013); audiobook read by Raquel Cassidy
Guerrier’s well-executed Eleventh Doctor novelette puts a new spin on some old Doctor Who tropes. (New to Who, that is; in the time-honoured tradition of gothic homage this one is rather reminiscent of Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others, which incidentally featured Christopher Eccleston.)
Doctor Who: Terror of the Zygons
by Robert Banks Stewart; dir. Douglas Camfield (BBC, 1975)
The Zygons engineer a creature that can withstand nuclear weaponry, but themselves are one of the few aliens not impervious to UNIT bullets. Dynamically directed with plenty of location filming and lush, organic sets, Terror sadly peters out to become Sock Puppet.