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Queen Angvia wrote:burrunjor wrote:So what happened to that "Great book" you were telling us about, Burrunjor? Wink
Well I was a bit premature in saying it was great. I was only through the first bit which is excellent. It is such a good idea too. The idea of Scratchman being a monster that travels from universe to universe eating them, and the previous universe he destroyed are great ideas.
Its one of the darkest stories in the shows history, with the Doctor failing to save an entire universe at the end.
Its just a shame that they had to turn it into fan fiction. Its a shame Tom didn't write more books.
Finished Scratchman and, tbh, I wasn't that impressed. I don't exactly know why, I should really love this book - Tom is by far my favourite Doctor and he has an absurdly morbid writing style, but somehow I was left cold. Maybe I expected too much (one fan review described the book as 'Doctor Who Meets The Wicker Man' - how cool would that be?), maybe it was the inclusion of Jodie friggin' Whittaker's incarnation (who appears twice in the book, though isn't actually named as the 13th Doctor), or maybe it was James Goss' input, or most probably because there aren't many startlingly original ideas in the whole book (well, apart from the giant pinball machine scene). Not original to a reader in 2019, at least. Back in the mid-'70's when it was first conceived, I dare say Scratchman would have been a delightfully barmy new kind of Doctor Who story (movie) but reading a book version of the film script in 2019 now only reminds me of other stuff we've seen before...
*Spoilers*
The Doctor on trial by his own people - The War Games and The Trial of a Timelord.
Killer Scarecrows - Human Nature/The Family of Blood and the 1998 BBC book 'The Hollow Men'.
The Doctor, companions and local residents trapped in a church while monsters try to break in - The Curse of Fenric and Father's Day.
The Doctor encounters The Devil (or a version of him, at least) - The Daemons and The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit.
Plus, while there are certainly many grim/nasty scenes of horror in Scratchman, the book also contains the distinctively NuWho 'soppiness' that the old series rarely had - the Doctor is often presented as an impossibly silly, yet wonderful, kind-hearted, Space Father Christmas (I bet those bits were Goss' contribution).
Disappointed (though I did appreciate the George Formby references in the first part of the book!).
Sorry to bring this up again, but one part of the book I liked with Charon as a cockney London cabbie had also been done before. In The Mighty Boosh LOL.
To be fair every idea has been done by now. I still enjoyed the fantasy surrealist aspects of the book, but yeah all the New Who mawkishness ruined it.
