Nothing O’Clock by Neil Gaiman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Every tv or film series that is even moderately successful ends up having spin-off novels of varying quality. This is particularly true in the sci-fi genre. Doctor Who is somewhat more than moderately successful, so there are quite a lot of them. Because spin-off works in general have a reputation as being quickly produced extensions of the shows they represent, I’ve generally avoided them. But there are certainly stand out exceptions that make you sometimes rethink your preconception (and hopefully adjust your personal level of snobbery). Nothing O’Clock is most certainly one of these.
As part of the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who last year, Puffin released 11 short stories in e-book format; one for each Doctor and written by different children’s authors. (A twelfth story for the new Doctor will be released in November 2014. No word on whether the War Doctor will get one…)
For the eleventh story, they tapped Neil Gaiman, a phenomenal (and phenomenally successful) writer who has some experience both in the genre and in the series. Gaiman penned two episodes of the series in recent years during Matt Smith’s run as the Eleventh Doctor, and so he is very familiar with that iteration character and that of companion Amy Pond. In fact, it’s all too easy to imagine this story playing out on screen. In the audiobook version, which is how I partook of the story, this is aided in no small way by narrator Peter Kenny.
The story is a nice combination of familiarity and freshness. It feels like just another in a long line of adventures for these well-known characters, but everything else about the tale is brand new and very typically Gaiman.
The author introduces a new enemy, the Kin, an alien race determined to take over the Earth. (This is not a spoiler.) They are creepy as anything Gaiman has come up with before, and that’s not faint praise. The author has a real knack for spooky.
The dialogue and characterization of the Doctor & Amy Pond is so good that I found myself googling a few lines to see if they had already been on the show – that’s how authentic Nothing O’Clock feels. This story would make an excellent episode, and so the length of the story feels exactly right.
My only possible criticism of the story would be that it has probably unfairly raised my expectations for other Doctor Who stories. I’ll take that…
