by Tom Bradman)
The multiplicities of Doctor Who, with its ever-expanding universe of TV series and spinoffs, novelisations, audiobooks, websites and galaxies of merchandise (Tardis phone case, anyone? Dalek pyjamas?), threatens to overwhelm reality. The first question in my mind on opening this title was therefore simple – why bring us closer to apocalypse by creating yet another Doctor Who book?
Perhaps it's a plot by the Master – after all, the concept for this particular story collection exhibits the kind of cunning that comes as standard in the CVs of Whovian villains. The Doctor has regenerated 11 times, so why not ask 11 authors to write a story featuring their favourite Doctor? It's a neat wheeze, brought out to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the first episode.
If the Master was behind it, however, his plot has backfired. Anthologies can be patchy affairs, but this addition to the Whoniverse is very good, a tribute to the skills of the writers involved. But then the contributor list does read like a first XI of children's fiction, all of them prizewinners and/or commercial galácticos: Eoin Colfer, Michael Scott, Marcus Sedgwick, Philip Reeve, Patrick Ness, Richelle Mead, Malorie Blackman, Alex Scarrow , Charlie Higson, Derek Landy, and one author who would make a pretty good Doctor himself, Neil Gaiman. They're all clearly enthusiastic and knowledgeable fans of the Doctor too.
I have my favourites, of course. Sedgwick's "The Spear of Destiny" (featuring the third doctor, Jon Pertwee) has a Viking-age setting and includes Norse gods, temporal anomalies and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart in an action-packed plot, a combination which makes it exactly the kind of story that had me on the edge of the sofa in the early 1970s. Reeve's clever "The Roots of Evil" (featuring the fourth Doctor, Tom Baker) features an immense tree that is also a space station, and which doesn't like the Doctor. "Tip of the Tongue" by Ness (the fifth Doctor, Peter Davison) is set in a US high school and involves a strange device that tells the truth – however brutal – when fitted to your tongue. Blackman's "The Ripple Effect" (the seventh Doctor, Sylvester McCoy) is brilliantly original: the Doctor damages the fabric of time, creating a universe in which the Daleks are – gulp! – rather nice.
Every story has the genuine stamp of individuality. Again and again I found myself thinking that each writer could only have written his or her story in that particular way – Ness exploring teen relationships, Blackman finding the potential for goodness in a species that's been written off as evil, Gaiman focusing on the darkness and strangeness at the heart of it all – yet every story also feels wholly Whovian. Maybe there's a clue in that to the Doctor's longevity; he is always different, but always the same, and each of us sees him in our own way.
That sounds a tad serious, the kind of line the ninth Doctor might have spouted in one of those complex episodes most of us didn't understand. All you really need to know is that this collection is a good introduction for newcomers to the Whoniverse (are there any left?), and won't disappoint existing fans.
• Tony Bradman's Young Merlin is published by Barrington Stoke.
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