'I saw amazing things, out there in space. But there's strangeness to be found wherever you turn. Life on Earth can be an adventure too.

You just have to know where to look.'
4) Invasion of the Bane, by Terrance Dicks
5) Revenge of the Slitheen, by Rupert Laight
6) Eye of the Gorgon, by Phil Ford
7) Warriors of Kudlak, by Gary Russell

These are four short, cheerful books, full of positivity, sticking pretty closely to the first four broadcast Sarah Jane Adventures. It's interesting that the BBC have chosen to go back to the old approach of novelisation of the broadcast stories for Sarah Jane, while instead publishing original fiction featuring the Ninth and Tenth Doctors and Torchwood. I sense a didactic purpose, getting kids into the reading habit with these attractively covered volumes, each of them 119 pages of text in fairly large print (at a cost of £4.99 each, which, alas, is standard these days). I don't think it took me as long as an hour to read any of them.

( Invasion of the Bane )
( Revenge of the Slitheen )
( Eye of the Gorgon )
( Warriors of Kudlak )

Anyway, I'd recommend all of these for the younger Who fan, who might then be persuaded to lend them to older Who fans.

34) Doctor Who [The Novel of the Film], by Gary Russell

This was the novel of the TV movie, written by Gary Russell (two of whose other Who novels I have read; I liked one of them). Not really a lot to say about this; he has stuck fairly closely to the script, padding out the introduction a bit more, wisely not expanding on the Doctor's demi-humanity. I see that I found the visuals and the acting particularly attractive in the broadcast version of the story, and inevitably those get lost in the transfer to the printed page. But it's basically OK.

6) The Scales of Injustice, by Gary Russell

I think the first Doctor Who spinoff novel I read was Gary Russell's Invasion of the Cat-People, long long ago. I was so deeply unimpressed that it was years before I read another one. Since then, of course, I've become aware of Russell as the host of numerous DVD commentaries and as a talking head on Doctor Who Confidential, not to mention being reminded of his activities as child actor in the Famous Five and editor of Doctor Who Monthly. It's not always a howling success when someone who writes about the genre turns their hand to fiction, but after my recent bout of Serious Reading this seemed like a relaxing option, snagged from the BBC website in electronic form.

And to my relief the book is OK. It's basically a boiled together combination of Doctor Who and the Silurians plus The Sea Devils, with flash forward to Warriors from the Deep, plus some back-story about the breakup of the Brigadier's first marriage and what Liz Shaw was really up to in Cambridge. The book also includes a very nicely done farewell scene between Liz and the Doctor, which of course was not shown on screen. The book could pass as an above-average novelisation of a seven-part TV story, which I think is what the author was aiming at, so can be rated a success.

7) Doctor Who Short Trips [2]: Companions, ed. Jacqueline Rayner
8) Doctor Who Short Trips [3]: A Universe of Terrors, ed. John Binns

Two impulse purchases of short stories set in the Doctor Who universe (of the first eight Doctors, ie up at and including the 1996 movie) by various hands. I bought the first one because I am myself fascinated by the companions (though I read very little fanfic); I bought the second purely because it has a story in it by jemck.

As with most themed collections, not every story is good and not every story fits in to the overall theme. But they are very attractively presented, and while I don't think they would convert non-fans to the cause, they will be entertaining reading for the fan.

The Companions volume is the more interesting, though also more variable. The spread of companions across the seventeen stories is interesting - two about Barbara Wright (and others where she features in the background), and another two about Adric. Most take the story of the companions after their time with the Doctor - most effectively, I think, the very first, "The Tip of the Mind" by Peter Anghelides, where the Third Doctor visits Zoe and of course is not recognised, the narrator being one of Zoe's work colleagues on her space station. I also liked the very last story, "The Long Night" by Allison Lawson, one of the Barbara Wright stories, although of course 23 November 1963 was a Saturday which made some of the details a bit unlikely. (But why did nobody proof-read Gary Russell's story, and put in a few more commas?)

Bringing elements of the horror genre into Doctor Who has been done before, if not always successfully. I didn't think that A Universe of Terrors stuck very strongly to its mandate, but I am a Doctor Who fan rather than a horror fan so didn't mind. jemck's story is a case in point - I loved her evocation of the Bodleian Library, which I suspect is one of our shared enthusiasms, but the story itself is sfnal rather than horrific. Two rather interesting tales featuring the First Doctor and Susan here, by Lance Parkin and Trevor Baxendale; some others that rather missed the mark. (And, for some reason, a set of limericks retelling the entire history of the Seventh Doctor; not especially horrific, unless, I suppose, you are one of those who regard that period as the nadir of the programme.)

I have another of these on the shelf - #6, Past Tense - and will probably end up buying the full set.