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APRIL 2010

With each season comes a new trio of Doctor Who novels, and this spring brought the first batch to feature Matt Smith’s eleventh Doctor. In accordance with the series rebranding, the novels have undergone a redesign, now sporting the new logo and insignia, images of the new Doctor and Amy Pond, and even a little tagline (“Houston - we have a problem…” reads the front of Apollo 23). The dimensions of the volumes have been altered too, which will undoubtedly irritate the sort of fans that like their bookshelves to look all nice and uniform.

Apollo 23 is officially the first of the range (or thirty-seventh, if we’re counting the ninth and tenth Doctors’ run; even more if we’re counting the audio books) and is authored by Justin Richards, former BBC Doctor Who range supreme and apparently on a mission to reach a Terrence Dicks-level of Who novelising. Richards always provides a solid and enjoyable - if often unremarkable - story, and Apollo 23 is no exception. It’s a thoroughly engaging, well-paced read, albeit one that does little new with the range. He captures both the new Doctor and Amy perfectly, and provides simple, appealing secondary characters that each fulfil useful roles in the story, keeping things moving briskly and entertainingly.

There’s plenty of interest in the set-up for the story - a man drops dead in a park, while simultaneously a woman and her dog appear on the Moon, and an astronaut materialises in a burger bar. All intriguingly incongruous, and leading swiftly into an engaging plot that provides just enough complexity for a younger readers’ book of this length. The Doctor and Amy soon end up investigating events at a secret US Moonbase, crewed by all the recognisable US military stock characters and utilising a unique form of quantum-entanglement based transport system - one that has started to play up. Soon they are separated, with the Doctor arriving via entanglement at a Texan military base, while Amy must stay and deal with yet more complications on the Moon.

None of the plot developments really surprise, but they keep coming quickly enough to keep the reader from ever getting bored with the mixture of chase, capture and intrigue. Before long, unethical medical experiments, mind-scrubbing, body-snatching and an alien invasion are all part of the story, while the Doctor gets, in third Doctor style, to offer scientific advice to the military, before suiting up and piloting a space rocket - the eponymous Apollo 23. Events only start to take on a disappointing turn right at the end, when the invaders arrive, sadly turning out to be a rather sad, feeble bunch of blob men who can barely stand up to a poke with a sharp fingernail.

There are plenty of enjoyable Doctorish lines on offer, and a host of little television and novel references for the fans, none of which ever become conspicuous or feel shoehorned in. All in all then, Apollo 23 provides a solid, fairly satisfying start to the eleventh Doctor’s adventures on the printed page.