Who is your favorite writer of the doctor who novels who wrote for doctors 1 through 8

Who is your favorite writer or writers of doctor who novels doctors 1 through 8?

Joseph Goebbels.


Sorry, I read the question wrong. Steve Lyons is probably my favourite writer for that range.

Honestly I've never managed to get through near any of them. I bought my first NA novel, Transit when I was 11 (with school book tokens) back in 1993.

I still haven't got past chapter 6 or have a clue what it was about.

The two I did manage to finish, I didn't like. War of the Daleks was a load of ridiculous fanwank, and Blood Heat was more morally skewed and warped than even Warriors of the Deep was.

I was definitely the generation of young child fans who were very much 'left behind' by the NAs. On paper I should have liked them because I liked Seven and Ace from what little I'd seen of them (though not to the point I wanted the books to turn into her personal angsty soap opera).

But overall I get the sense they were largely either for fans who took the show far too seriously, or who desperately wanted the show to be something it's not. I just felt they were continuing the 1980's degeneration of the show into a cult.

At the time I would have said Cornell but he's turned into such a cunt...

I actually have a fair few favourite writers in the novel range, some of them being my favourite writers of all time.
Steve Lyons is my favourite writer in Who History. He's got such a wonderful writing style in terms of analysing characters. But the thing that I love about his writing style is his constant themes about Free Will. One of my favourite Who stories, The Crooked World (basically, Doctor Who crossed over with Warner Bros Cartoons) and it's theming is about existentialism and whether life truly matters if you're always in a constant state of monotony. And it also talks of themes of how far can someone take Free Will before abusing it. It's truly a mature and dark matter in what is otherwise a lighthearted and funny story, and yet Lyons manages to balance it the two tones together without it clashing together or ever seem disjointed, but rather united. And that's just one of his Brill stories.

Jonathan Morris is also a fantastic writer, just for his imagination and his excellent use of different tones and direction in each of his stories. Like, his story, Anachrapohbia is perhaps the most terrifying Who story ever just for the sheer detail of elements such as a person quickly accelerating into dust or The Doctor almost being exposed to Mustard Gas. Then his next novel, The Tomorrow Windows, has Morris attempt to homage to Douglas Adams in terms of humour and wit, and pulls it off effortlessly without the story ever feeling patronising. He's also highly experimental, with stories like Max Warp, Flip-Flop and Festival of Death feeling ever as creative as a 60s Who story, perhaps even more so.

Special honourable writers go to Justin Richards (while his plots can be a bit safe, he more than makes it up for wonderful characterisation), Kate Orman (her characterisation for all characters, especially the 8th Doctor, feels so intricate, unique and detailed, and her stories are highly experimental), Lloyd Rose (hugely experimental stories with a wonderful blend of Lovecraftian sci-fi and cosmic magic imagery and it's a shame that she hasn't written more), Trevor Baxendale (pure detail when writing pure horror and can always send shivers down my spine because of his detail, I fear wasps because of his story, Eater of Wasps) and Nick Wallace (I've only read one story of his, but the one story just happens to be my favourite Doctor Who story of all time, which is called Fear Itself, and there's multiple reasons that I can't articulate without doing a full review of it)

Man, I need to do a full EDA Book retrospection on this forum, people may not have read nearly as much (or even care), but me expressing my love for the era out loud would be nice to do for myself.

Looking just at the tv adaptations as the non-tv ranges never really interested me.

Ben Aaronovitch for Remembrance. When i read it i hadnt seen the tv episodes. It reinvigorated my interest in the show.

I also really enjoyed the Ian Marter books - especially Ribos Operation.

Hulke's and Dicks' books have a nice nostalgic feel although some of Dicks' later offerings are really basic "Younger Reader" efforts - e.g., Destiny, Fendahl and Invisible Enemy - but he also wrote some great classics like Spearhead, Abominable Snowman and Time Warrior.

Barry Letts' Daemons is another favourite of mine.

I always felt Hichcliffe's Marinus was rather poor. Bored me to tears - even though I like the TV version. As a basic record of the show before it was released on video / DVD it was okay but it doesn't stand up to scrutiny as a stand alone book. Very much a "He said / She said" effort.

Yes.