Doctor Who: A Big Hand for the Doctor

"Hey; you know what we should do? Get a bunch of famous writers to produce eleven chapters of an anthology, one per Doctor, and then sell them as individual books at a massively inflated price. They'll go for that, right?"

Well, I did, albeit on Kindle, so here follows my verdict on the 50th Anniversary short story collection in elevenish blog posts.

We begin with Eoin 'Artemis Fowl' Colfer's A Big Hand for the Doctor, and damn if I didn't almost stop here as well. I have a lot of time for Colfer as an author (as well as the Fowl novels, I adore his diesel-punk romance, Airman), but I was unconvinced by his official Hitchhiker's Guide sequel and the man should never have been allowed to write the First Doctor.

The First Doctor was curmudgeonly, irascible, irritable, and had little time for his companions' more active natures and cultural digressions. He was an explorer, a dilettante, but not an adventurer and certainly not a crusader, and he had basically no ability to steer the TARDIS. In Colfer's offering, however, we get a Doctor who lost a hand fighting - nay, hunting - space pirates; who has pursued said pirates through time and space in the TARDIS; who references popular culture as if he were his own Tenth or Eleventh incarnation; who uses a wrist communicator to keep in touch with his granddaughter; and who at one point uses one of Colfer's own fairy swear words.

The story might have worked with the Third, Fifth, Seventh, Tenth or Eleventh Doctors, and maybe even the Fourth, Eighth or Ninth. In fact, almost any Doctor but the First would have been a better fit. The overall style belongs purely to nuWho, and shows a dearth of understanding of the First Doctor and his era.

Not a promising start.