Doctor Who: Twice Upon a Time (Target Collection)

This is a novelisation of the Doctor Who Christmas special from 2017, which was Peter Capaldi's final episode at the end of which regenerated into his first female incarnation played by Jodie Whittaker. My interest in the TV show had ebbed considerably during the Capaldi era and I had considered giving up on it before his last season, but I found that season an improvement and this was a good special to end his era. The Doctor encounters his first incarnation in the snows of Antarctica, at the very end of his own life after defeating the Cybermen for the first time in the story The Tenth Planet. They are taken out of time by a mysterious glass woman and encounter a First World War British army captain taken from the trenches just at the moment of his death. The glass entity is taking people from the point of their deaths, and recording their memories before returning them to their fates. The Doctor's former companion Bill Potts, whom he believes to be dead, is also present, but the Time Lord is not sure she is the real deal. The Doctors grapple with the dilemma over not being able to save the Captain (whose surname turns out to be Lethbridge-Stewart), which they resolve by rolling time forward to the Christmas Truce of 1914, thus saving his life. The story is good and satisfying, though some of the dialogue is banal and there are perhaps too many continuity references (e.g. the Doctor owning a VHS recording of the Daleks' Master Plan!). The depiction of the 1914 Christmas Truce owes somewhat more to myth than historical reality, but this is a suitably heartwarming conclusion to a Christmas episode.

Paul Cornell does a terrific job with this book. The twelfth Doctor gets the send off he deserves, and it's a great pleasure to read. While there is a good plot - escaping from the Glass Woman, saving the captain - this is really a character-driven book, for us to do t the first and twelfth doctors, especially now they interact with each other. But this isn't just for.fans, delighted to see their favourite characters meet; this is a genuinely well-written book, and anyone would enjoy it. This was an excellent episode and Paul Cornell has really done it justice.

A nice little read. Like the other books set in the Moffat era this one is not afraid to get into the Doctor's head. Given that there are multiple Doctors in the story, this is a welcome decision. A great deal of effort is put into characterizing the Doctors in this story and their motivations, as well as explaining some of the more unfortunate characterizations from the episode itself. I think the First Doctor comes across much better in this book than he did in the televised episode itself. In terms of the story, if you've watched the episode you know what you're getting and there are no real deviations or edits that change the narrative. A solid and respectful adaptation.

As Doctor Who stories from 2005 onwards start to be released as novelisations it seems a tad ironic that the first Twelfth Doctor story to receive this treatment is actually his last onscreen appearance. However, it is easy enough to see the appeal of including a multi-Doctor story in the (re)starting of such novelisations. It also means, of course, that after all these years the First Doctor receives a new Target style novelisation; something that wouldn’t have seemed likely a few months ago. A slight drawback with this novelisation is that it makes it more apparent than the onscreen version that there isn’t a particularly strong storyline here and that the aired episode relied more on the fun of interaction between two Doctors. However, the novelisation compensates for this by making things more personally orientated, concentrating on character rather than plot. As such it does a good job of capturing the Doctor’s sense of frustration concerning his regeneration. In a similar way the novelisation suggests that the First Doctor’s reluctance to regenerate is due somewhat to his desire to see Susan again in the body she is familiar with. It gives the reluctance from each a bit more basis. Events are orientated at times, particularly early on, around the perspective of the First Doctor more. This allows the author to lessen the onscreen digs at the First Doctor for being sexist (something that was done more to create humour than being strictly accurate) by the suggestion that the First Doctor makes sexist comments as his way of winding up the Twelfth. It is also used to provide some humour as the First Doctor begins to think of the Twelfth as a ‘fop’ echoing his classifying of his Third and Second incarnations as ‘a dandy and a clown’. Working from each Doctor’s perspective also provides a nice dovetailing of the mutual respect that grows between the two incarnations. Bill’s life with Heather is expanded upon and there is some material from the point of view of Archie, both of which enrich the story. It is, perhaps, not the most exciting of Doctor Who stories but, like the onscreen version, it works well as a bit of a tribute to both Doctors. It is also written in such a way to give it a somewhat more melancholy atmosphere that benefits a story that features the last moments of two Doctors. And on top of all this, the novelisation gives a first insight into the mind of the Thirteenth Doctor.

Livre Intéressant

Paul Cornell was the first "fan" writer hired to write for the Doctor Who: New Adventures novels in 1991, and rapidly became known as one of the best writers in that line. He then wrote three of the best-received episodes of the revived 2005 TV series: "Father's Day", and the "Human Nature/Family of Blood" two-parter (based on one of his own New Adventures). And now he's back to write for the revived Target novelization line, adapting "Twice Upon a Time", the year-2017 Doctor Who Christmas special, and the swan song for Peter Capaldi's 12th Doctor. Not surprisingly, as a fan who grew up reading and worshiping Terrance Dicks' Target novelization output in the 1970s and '80s, Cornell has written an extremely faithful Target pastiche. He adapts Steven Moffat's scripts (retaining the opening "709 episodes ago" caption for the text), but adds several familiar expressions from the heyday of the Target line which would not have been in the script, but which come directly from the pen of Terrance: "Through the snowy emptiness of Antarctica strode a man who was not a man"; "He drew himself up to his full height"; and, who could forget, "The Doctor, now in his twelfth incarnation". The First Doctor "wheezed and groaned" while climbing a flight of stairs. Oh, and a chapter titled "Escape to Danger" (every other Terrance Dicks novelization, ever), and many chapters end in exclamation points! The episode that Cornell is adapting is, unfortunately, a typically overwritten bit of Moffat ADHD: a First/Twelfth Doctor team-up, a Christmas special, a chance for Moffat to write one final role for Mark Gatiss (playing the ancestor of a beloved character from the Who universe), and, somewhere in there, an elegaic meditation on death and memory... as well as a final send-off for Twelfth Doctor companions Bill and Nardole. That is an awful lot to cram into one slim book, as it was to cram into a single hour of TV, but Cornell is the man to do it justice. Cornell works in his typical wicked fandom wit, implying that the largely lost 1st Doctor epic "The Daleks' Masterplan" survives on VHS inside the TARDIS ("They'd dearly love to get that back, having lost their own copy centuries ago"), and referencing other Who print efforts like the "Doctor Who Monster Book". And, although it's not Cornell's most lushly written work or personal work, he still works in gorgeous passages of prose, seemingly without trying, as is his special skill. The moment when the Doctor realizes who Mark Gatiss' character is, is particularly gorgeous. The one disappointment for me is that Cornell reproduces Moffat's vision of the First Doctor -- a forgetful misogynist -- rather than doing more to rehabilitate the monumental and inventive work that the late William Hartnell put into that First Doctor. The First Doctor had some misogynistic aspects, yes, delivering lines written solely by white TV writers in the mid-'60s, but his era was largely progressive for his day, and Hartnell gave a dynamic performance characterized by far more than fluffed lines (his era was recorded live to tape, a burden not shared by most later Doctors) and misogyny. Most of the novelization is told from the Twelfth Doctor's point of view, with straw-man mental tirades launched at the earlier Doctor, because that was the way Moffat scripted it, so you won't find much more insightful about the First Doctor than the TV version offered. There is an implied reconciliation between the First Doctor and his granddaughter, after their on-screen parting in 1964's "The Dalek Invasion of Earth", but this relevation is buried in mid-paragraph. On the whole, though, this book is much fun to read, and particularly rewarding for old-school fans. The Doctor observes, in a twist on a famous line from 1964, "History, after all, could not be changed, not one line. Except on the tiny number of occasions when, apparently, it could". Many lines from the classic series are worked into the prose, from "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" among many others, and the new Thirteenth Doctor's first thoughts, are, fittingly, drawn from the First Doctor's final words and the Second Doctor's first -- Cornell narrates the Doctor's most recent regeneration by bridging it directly back to the first. Now that's some fan. "Twice Upon a Time" closes out the year-2018 batch of revived Target novelizations. It comes from one of modern Who's most prolific and successful writers, and pays homage to the entire Target line and to much of Classic Who's history. Hopefully, many more New Series episodes are novelized in the years to come, and begin their own new traditions for the coming generation. This long-time fan of the Target novelizations is glad to add this one to his collection.

Always wondered what was going through the First Doctor's mind, when he regenerated, the storyline was great, World War I, a distant relative of the Brigader, a villain that wasn't even a villian...amazing...

I got this book because of Paul Cornell. Between the cancellation of Classic Who in 1989 and the revival of the series in 2005, we sustained ourselves on the New Adventures series of books with original stories of the Doctor. And Cornell's were some of the best. And while this is a novelization of the final televised story of the Twelfth Doctor by Steven Moffat, Cornell does a marvelous job of getting into the heads of the characters and letting us know things not in the script. His grasp of the personalities of the First and Twelfth Doctors is amazing and their thoughts are pitch perfect. He also throws in little details from other stories that connect beautifully with this one and give us further insight into Twelve's reluctance to regenerate. Even if you have watched the episode many times this book is worth reading and savoring.

I've pretty much given up any hope with these new Target books.