Review: Doctor Who Time Lord Fairy Tales by Justin Richards

A stunning illustrated collection of fifteen dark and ancient fairy tales from the world of Doctor Who.

These captivating stories include mysterious myths and legends about heroes and monsters of all kinds, from every corner of the universe. Originally told to young Time Lords at bedtime, these twisted tales are an enchanting read for Doctor Who fans of all ages.

I am a lifelong fan of Doctor Who and as a child/young teen I spent may an hour reading as many of the Target novelisations as I could get my hands on (as ever, the local library did not let me down). However, somewhere along the way I stopped reading Doctor Who fiction - I wonder whether it was due to the sheer volume of books that were being published, especially after the show was cancelled by the BBC back in 1989 and writers/published filled the gap with New Adventures and Missing Adventures. I intend to remedy this in 2016 as a friend has recently recommended two books that I really like the sound of: Harvest of Time by Alastair Reynolds and The Wheel of Ice by Stephen Baxter.

But I am getting ahead of myself. A couple of months ago I had a lovely surprise package in the post, courtesy of those lovely people at Puffin. Said package included a copy of Doctor Who: The Dangerous Book of Monsters (devoured in a single sitting btw), and Doctor Who: Time Lord Fairy Tales. It was the latter of the two that really piqued my interest - it is an anthology of fairy tales, each of which has a Doctor Who twist. Most of the classic tales they are based on are instantly recognisable (including Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, Three Little Pigs, Three Billy Goats Gruff and many more) but writer Justin Richards has very cleverly twisted them around to make them tales that just might be told to Gallifreyan kids.

I have to be honest, it took me a couple of stories to really get into the book, as it was aimed at a younger audience than I had originally presumed, and the tone of the stories is most definitely fairy-tale-ish in nature. However, once I had got my head around this I found myself really enjoying most of the tales. A number of the stories do not even feature the Doctor himself (and even when he appears it is usually little more than a cameo role to help save the day), but many of the classic Whovian monsters are there in one form or another, including Sontarans, Cybermen and Weeping Angels and some of the less well known to modern viewers, such as the Nimon and the Wirrn. 

Each story comes with its own wonderful illustration by David Wardle, all produced in a classic wood block printing style that perfectly matches the fairy tale theme of the book. Adult readers may recognise the style from the cover of Essie Fox's The Somnambulist, which Wardle also created.

For those of you who love audio books, a little googling has revealed that all of these tales are available to purchase as downloads from iTunes and Amazon, read by the likes of Paul McGann, Michelle Gomez, Sophie Aldred and even Tom Baker. I'm not a big fan of audio books (I have attention span problems), but these sound cracking so I might have to have a listen in the future. It also looks like there is a planned CD release for April, for those of you who prefer a physical copy.

Time Lord Fairy Tales is great fun and deserves a place on the shelves of any fan of Doctor Who, young or old. It has certainly whetted my appetite for more Doctor Who fiction, so if any of you have any recommendations they would be very gratefully received.

Doctor Who 50th Anniversary

edit: Rather embarrassingly, this is now a day late, and I've only just realised. Thanks a million Blogger and your occasionally rubbish scheduling facility! However, it does give me the opportunity to say I totally loved The Day of the Doctor. I think that Steven Moffat got it exactly right (for a change) and it was the perfect celebration of a TV series I have been watching since I was five or six. And Tom Baker too as the Great Curator - genius! 

Anyway, what follows is the post I wrote to be posted on the day of the 50th Anniversary:

Happy Anniversary Doctor Who! You have been a part of my life for nigh on 36 years (give or take, and apart from the wilderness years following Michael Grade's and Jonathan Powell's assassination of the show, when my only fix was the few episodes I owned on VHS) and whilst occasionally you have disappointed, I have been more than happy to stick with you through thick and thin.

I'm really not sure how old I was when I first started watching Doctor Who as in those days there must have been many reruns on BBC2, as I have definite memories of watching episodes featuring William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton (both first broadcast before I was born) and Jon Pertwee, whose episodes were first shown when I would have been too young to watch them or remember them. Tom Baker, then, was MY Doctor and I have very vivid memories of many of his episodes, probably starting around 1976 (I definitely remember watching and possibly being a little scared by The Talons of Weng-Chiang). After that, it was pretty much must-watch TV in our household for many years after (yes, even through the Bonnie Langford years *shudder*) and I have memories of scaring the bejesus out of my little brother on many occasions following the final episode of The Keeper of Traken, as my sister and I would sister and I would jump out on him from dark rooms at any given opportunity, repeating The Master's words: "A new body... at last!".

However, not only did I watch a lot of Doctor Who, as a 9+ year old I was an avid reader of the books that were published at the time by Target. I had quite a collection (usually picked up from jumble sales), and I thought they had been lost/given away long ago until I found a pile of them in a box in my mother's loft last year (a few of them are pictured above). I would also regularly borrow piles of them from my wonderful local libraries, and chain read them, ready to take them back a few weeks later in exchange for more. I decided to celebrate the 50th Anniversary in my own way this weekend, by watching a couple of my favourite Tom Baker episodes, as well as reading a couple of these books. 

Do they stand the test of time? Well they date pretty well: Doctor Who and the Cybermen only falls a little flat because when compared with the amazing books written for kids today it is all action and no characterisation, but then again that is  how Gerry Davis wrote his Doctor Who books - his intention was just to recapture the story that had taken place on screen. Next I turned to one of my all time favourite Doctor Who stories, both on TV and in print - Doctor Who and the Daemons - and it still does not disappoint. Next, I'm going to dive into another favourite - the aforementioned The Talons of Weng-Chiang.

If you have an aged  9+ child who loves Doctor Who then you could do a lot worse then get your hands on some of these books. = In 2012 BBC Books re-released a good number of these classic Doctor Who stories that featured the first four incarnations of The Doctor (I'm not sure if they re-released any of the Peter Davison era books). These can each be bought off Amazon for less than the price of a couple of pints, and would make excellent Christmas stocking presents for young fans. Doctor Who books, both classic and more recent, are especially great for fans who are reluctant readers, as they aren't too challenging, but are invariably action-packed, fun reads that Under 14s will love.

There are a huge number of Doctor Who books published these days, and I have to admit that I stopped reading these some years ago. However, I was very excited recently to receive a wonderful volume of short stories, published by Puffin to celebrate the 50th Anniversary. It's called Doctor Who: 11 Doctors, 11 Stories and features shorts by the likes of Malorie Blackman, Eoin Colfer, Philip Reeve, Alex Scarrow and Derek Landy, and I am really looking forward to reading it over the next few weeks, as I dive in between other books.

Before I sign off I just want to make a quick mention about a very special project that is taking place in the Uk at the moment called Target Who. Target Who are a group of lifelong Doctor Who fans who bought 11,000 Target Doctor Who books in an ebay auction. This wasn't 11,000 different titles, but actually multiple copies of 36 titles, including classics like Doctor Who and the Daleks and Doctor Who and the Cybermen, which had been discovered wrapped up in some warehouse or something. Target Who did not purchase the books for themselves - they bought them in order to send free copies out to schools around the country. You can read more about the project here. So far they have sent out more than 4000 books to school libraries, and in doing so have inspired individuals to get involved, and so others around the UK (and possibly the world) have been donating individual copies to school libraries, thus ensuring that these classic stories live on. You can follow their amazing work on their blog, and also follow them on twitter as @targetwho.