Doctor Who: The Stone Rose by Jacqueline Rayner

Genies are tricksters. Be careful what you wish for. In some tales, the actual wording of the wish you make begats unforeseen consequences. You wish you were rich...and the bill collectors show up. You wish you had a new car...and it's a car belonging to some wealthy drug lord...You wish you were famous...and it turns out you are that wealthy drug lord, pursued by bounty hunters...in that new sportscar you wished for. Nice.

And that's three wishes, already. Some tales hint about wishing for more wishes...others say ixnay on the 'wishing for more wishes'. Next Master, please.

And there's the character of the Djinn, or Genie. They rarely ever look like Robin Williams or Barbara Eden in these stories. The genie of 1001 Arabian Knights has more in common with Jafar when he became a genie in Disney's Aladdin. The business of Tony Nelson marrying 'Jeannie' was inspired by Bewitched, which was inspired by the movies I Married A Witch and Bell,Book and Candle...which might be inspired by the farcical "romance" scenes with Titania the Fairy Queen & Bottom in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream...that theory is entirely mine..though I don't think it's an original conclusion; I haven't checked if anyone else saw that.

There is a genie of sorts in Doctor Who: The Stone Rose, but the selling point of the novel was the 10th Doctor & Rose investigating the origin of a stone statue dating back to ancient Rome resembling Rose Tyler residing in the British Museum in London. Yes, this predates the episode revealing that the 11th Doctor's sidekick, Rory Williams, was working at the same museum as a security guard, so there's some wibbly-wobbly overlap for a potential future "Past Doctor Who Adventure" for Gareth Roberts or James Goss to type up if they want...they'll just need to have an icebag ready to deal with resolving continuity headaches. I'm not going to do this, so I can keep mulling over it.

The genie in Stone Rose is a Genetically Engineered Neural Imagination Engine. Described as a small, scaly creature, a cross between a baby dragon and a duck-billed platypus.

And...this "Genie" talks like Flintstones character The Great Gazoo. The best stuff in Stone Rose is the stuff with this G.E.N.I.E., but he appears in the last quarter of the book, so it's all plot denouement rather than plot & character  development; it becomes a Saturday Morning Doctor Who...with animation by Filmation, likely, but the concept of this magical creature, particularly the dragon-like description and Gazoo-esque personality, stayed in my brain years after reading the book.

It reminded me of other characters from other places. The best example is the wish-granting, genetically-engineered lab experiment resembling a dragon that appeared in an issue of World's Finest, featuring Superman & Batman, in a story written by Dennis O'Neil. Doesn't that sound like a likely inspiration? There are plenty of fantasy stories about a stopwatch that stops time, for example. Stories about magic dragons granting wishes, in summantion, sound more frequent than one would think. While preparing this post, I remembered Figment, the magic dragon from Epcot Center at Walt Disney World who had his own comic book series from Marvel Comics a few years ago. There are also Pocket Dragons, Smurf-like plastic figurines of cutsey baby dragons that even had their own cartoon show at one point. I'm absolutely convinced that G.E.N.I.E could've been based on one or any of these things.

So..in time for the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who, original novels like The Stone Rose were reprinted..in this case, because it counted as an historical adventure  (everyone seems to just remember the David Tennant Doctor facing a lion in the arena, go figure). And..according to Wikipedia, it was the best-selling of the Doctor Who novels from the current series, so that's something, although maybe those Douglas Adams-branded novelizations of Adams' Who scripts might've bumped that down a few notches by now.

So the newer edition of Stone Rose came with an introduction by the author, Jacqueline Rayner. Would she bring up the G.E.N.I.E character? Yeah, she did. Should I buy this book? Yeah, I did. Did she confirm all that you thought inspired the character? No, she didn't - she claimed she was inspired by the severed monkey's paw from "The Monkey's Paw", which, to my knowledge, does not feature any dragon-platypus hybrids. Maybe she gave that answer because the plot mechanics in that last quarter do echo the story, but the reference that inspired the visual of the G.E.N.I.E is not there, so that may be her way of dodging any concern about copyrights and trademarks.

It's like this: I think I solved a puzzle, but the answer key provided to check is some kind of nonsense, so I'm just left with a gathering of stray observations that fit into something that made the book more-appealing past it's sell-by date, but will just stay scattered in the air...be careful what you wish for..

4 Doctor Who Novels: "Beautiful Chaos" by Gary Russell, "The Coming of The Terraphiles" by Michael Moorcock, "Dead of Winter" by James Goss, "The Crawling Terror" by Mike Tucker

Four Doctor Who novels. Three featured boilerplate storylines, though one purportedly had an original idea, only it's author wrote it on a whim, resulting in boilerplate execution. As such, I felt all four books deserved to be written up in a single review..with good quotes for your viewing pleasure, of course. Onward...

Beautiful Chaos by Gary Russell: Among Doctor Who villains, the Mandragora Helix - a malevolent, sentient constellation with mind-controlling abilities - is not unlike the Great Intelligence from "The Snowmen" and "The Bells of St. John", and his/it's scheme has the same m.o. to it. The big difference is the Doctor and companion highlighted. The Tenth Doctor  is more fun to read about than The Eleventh Doctor, but Donna Noble, in retrospect, has nothing interesting to say..I don't think she ever did; her whole "arc" consists of her becoming better-educated/worldly via her travels with the Doctor before receiving a "Flowers For Algernon"-style I.Q. boost that allowed her to save the universe and serve as deux ex machina ( by typing, very fast, nonsensical technobabble onto a random computer keyboard ), before having to give it all up and become "Uneducated Get-To-The-Toe Donna" again ( this is certainly no Clara Oswald )..Thankfully, Gary Russell has her granddad Wilfred play a larger role here. The subplot about Wilfred's girlfriend coping with Alzheimer's is clearly trying too hard to echo Russell T. Davies' faux-TV style sentimentality, and Mandragora has more in common with The Wire from " The Idiot's Lantern " in it's ineffectiveness as a compelling villain, plus I don't recall Donna's mother really regarding the Doctor with contempt onscreen, so that bit seemed phony, but the Tenth Doctor characterization is just right, so it made the book a breeze to read. The book balances between fanfic and potboiler - Average.

The Coming of The Terraphiles by Michael Moorcock: The hype/backstory behind this book is more interesting than what we got...I recall that the original plan was for Moorcock to introduce a new status quo for Captain Jack Harkness as commander of a ship that traveled through a route between alternate universes and have him meet the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond for the first time, but the launch of Torchwood: Miracle Day likely derailed that idea, so he has the Doctor & Amy meet a new incarnation of his character, Jerry Cornelius, instead, and introduce his take on the application of parallel universes in Fantasy-Adventure fiction...sounds intriguing...but what we got was a potted, rambling, shaggy dog mess. Eleven and Amy weren't really complete characters at the time Moorcock was writing this, so they read like complete ciphers, here; he would've been better off using the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith, although BBC Books was still shy about relaunching a line of Past Doctor Adventures in the wake of the new series until the novelization of Shada in 2012. The strongest passage in the book has nothing to do with any high-concept stuff: it's a P.G. Wodehouse-esque pastiche with a Bertie Wooster-like character attempting (i.e., failing) to steal a ghastly hat and clumsily take credit when it disappears. Everything else feels like it was just Moorcock typing away unconsciously...lots of incoherent nonsensical descriptions of ships encountering ships and traveling through spatial matter...I do remember THIS book was hyped up just as much as it's faded away into obscurity. - Pure Drivel **

Dead of Winter by James Goss: Of the four books featured in this post, this novel had the strongest character work, featuring character development we didn't get from the show, because the writers became increasingly preoccupied/distracted with hashing out River Song's paradoxical backstory. Her absence from this book allows Goss to offer insight on the relationship between The Eleventh Doctor, Amy and Rory that confirms suspicions  ( that Rory and Eleven tolerate eachother's presence to keep Amy happy, while Amy sees her husband as consolation for the unattainable and forever enigmatic Doctor, who seems to be trying to recreate the relationship the Tenth Doctor had with Rose Tyler, but frustrated that Amy would have feelings for someone else* ) and plays on expectations with a brief amnesia/role-reversal subplot for the trio. The main story - about a seaside clinic ridded with doppelgangers - is given some snap by Goss's decision to used a mixed 1st-person narrative; most of the characters featured narrate several chapters in rotation. Never dull, though lacking surprise, I was disappointed that the scene depicted on the cover does not occur in the book...an attractive zombie woman wielding the Doctor's sonic screwdriver sounds epic to me. - Not bad

The Crawling Terror by Mike Tucker: The author probably noticed the nod to Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor when Peter Capaldi's initial costume for the Twelfth Doctor was revealed, so he fashioned an adventure fitting the Third for Twelve. Giant bugs are ubiquitous in two of the 3rd Doctor's best-known stories ( The Green Death, Planet of The Spiders ), along with misguided wealthy British meglomaniacs delving into mad science abundant during that era. Technically, I thought this the best-written book of the four in this post - the suspense is genuine, the atmosphere has the right mix horror and sci-fi/adventure, and the Twelfth Doctor & Clara are depicted right, so it felt authentic, and the pace is just right for an adventure about English villagers possessed by colonies of giant aliens resembling Earth insects. It risks bad taste by putting a baby in danger in one scene before coping out. Clara gets her mind swapped with the leader of the alien spider bugs, so we get more "Evil Clara", which is fun. The only drawback is a personal one: giant alien bugs aren't an appealing menace to me; I picked this up because I had already read the other two novels featuring 12, but it is a well-written adventure - I would've preferred alien foxes or mummies..if Paul Magrs can have the Eighth Doctor encounter alien dogs..plus, I liked the passage about wild foxes in the village being regarded like wild raccoons...and then Tucker drops a suggestion/hint about a possible rejected idea that he might recycle someday: UNIT soldiers fighting robots emerging from a volcano in the Canary Islands...a sequel to The Fires of Pompeii ?!! Mike Tucker! - when Moffat finally gets around to answering the question of why The Twelfth Doctor chose to look like the same man his Tenth incarnation met in Pompeii, may we PLEASE see THAT story?
- Okay

*That last bit about 11 wanting his own Rose Tyler for a companion was my pet theory; once Billie Piper left, Tennant's Doctor became increasingly angst-ridden and melancholy, which soured the acting chemistry the actor had with his later co-stars; perhaps Moffat was trying to casually recreate the same dynamic with his launch as showrunner?...

**I'm keeping this one - I'll try it again some other day...it's like they say: "Some books are just for having."

The Magrs Method of Book Reporting: "Doctor Who: Prisoner of The Daleks" by Trevor Baxendale

Encapsulate the book in one sentence?

The Tenth Doctor deduces that the Daleks are planning to use time travel to destroy the human race and teams up with a group of bounty hunters to stop them.

When did I buy it?

Last year - in a comic shop.

What year or edition?

First edition, 2009. These were those curious "mini-hardcover" editions: paperback-sized, but with a hard cover...like a children's book. 249 pages.

What's your verdict?

Fantastic - it has a fast pace, a simple plot, lots of twists and turns,  with the Doctor and Daleks in top form. This adventure is very hard-boiled; the kind of story arc Robert Holmes wrote for the old series, but with a Terrence Dicks-esque structure with the beginning, middle & end, combined with Holmes' penchant for building everything up to a particular moment, add to that Russell T. Davies flair for dialogue when writing showdowns/standoffs between the Doctor and the villain.

Why is it something you stashed away?

It was a decorative prop in previous blog posts and instagram photos I had taken in the past; it was a matter of just finally reading it. I had brought it last year because those editions aren't easy to find in great shape often...and I usually preferred the books in the Quick Reads range.

Did you finish it?

Yes. It worked better than I imagined it would.

What surprises did it hold for you - if any?

This whole adventure feels like canon...something that must have happened - the strongest of the original Doctor Who novels work that way...there are times where the Doctor can seem awfully thin in print - Baxendale gets the characterization right, but it's fueled by echoes of David Tennant's performance delivery.  He does fare better than other incarnations of the Doctor in print, though. Other Doctors that survived the transition from film to novel would be Jon Pertwee's Doctor in Verdigris and Tom Blake's Doctor in Heart of Tardis and Gareth Roberts' Shada novelization.

The Dalek Inquisitor General - aka "Dalek X", is an excellent character who drives the final third of the book. He's in good company with other unique Daleks introduced in the shows last few years (Dalek Sec, Dalek Khan, Dalek Clara) and will probably appear along with the Gold Emperor Dalek on fan petitions for an appearance on the show in the future. His showdown with the Doctor did remind me of Fenton Crackshell's battle of wits with MEL the malevolent alien supercomputer in the Ducktales episode "Money to Burn", but maybe that's just my frame of reference butting in and not something Baxendale is familiar with.

What will you do with this copy now?

It's a keeper.

Is it available today?

The book is available on Kindle in a new edition that includes a new cover and introduction by the author. It also appears in a trade paperback as part of the Doctor Who: The Monster Collection reprints of Doctor Who novels released last year.

Give me a good quote.

Sure - check out the gallery below. :)