Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen

by James Goss

The Doctor (the fourth incarnation), with Romana (the second) and K-9 (Mark II) in tow, heads for the end of the world again. Romana is somewhat miffed to discover this involves attending a cricket match at Lord's Cricket Ground--one of the more spectacular examples of humanity's collective bad taste, made even more distressing by the fact that the humans have no idea. But when the Doctor attempts to confiscate the trophy for the good of the universe, only to see it stolen by killer robots no one has seen in several millennia, he and Romana have to set out on another quest to collect the pieces of a key, this time one that could be used to release the most murderous xenophobes in all of galactic history to continue their ancient mission to wipe out the rest of the physical universe.

In this quest, the Doctor and Romana fail. But they do start to realize that some of the recorded details of galactic history, and even the memory Matrix of the Time Lords, don't quite add up. Why was the planet Krikkit so very isolated in the first place? Where did the wrecked spaceship that shattered their isolation come from? How did they achieve the capacity to travel in space and wage interstellar war so quickly? Who could be behind it all--and could there be someone behind them?

Sounds familiar, I know. We thought we knew about Krikkit: It was the failed pitch for a Doctor Who story that Douglas Adams, a lifelong inveterate repurposer of his own ideas, reworked into Life, the Universe, and Everything, the third Hitchhikers novel, the first one not based directly on the radio series, and the one that (I now think) holds up best as a coherent novel (for some definitions of coherent, anyway). Little did we know that before that happened, Adams had spent four years working on the idea as a script for a proposed Doctor Who movie, and he left enough material in his papers for James Goss's novelization of that version to hold up pretty well too.

The two novels start and end in more or less the same place (at Lord's, naturally), but they take very different paths to get from one end to the other. As they would have to, considering that Ford Prefect was originally conceived as the Anti-Doctor--the hyper-knowledgeable alien character who, given the choice between saving the universe and sloping off to a party, will choose the party every time--and Arthur Dent, while well-meaning and (as a later Doctor would observe) a nice man, is rarely depicted as competent at much of anything--though in this novel he does at least manage to learn to fly, and figures out exactly how to get rid of an angry Thunder God. The Doctor and Romana are much more active protagonists than Ford and Arthur ever manage to be; indeed, the Doctor's role in Krikkitmen is mostly assigned to Slartibartfast and Trillian in LtU&E, with Arthur and Ford tagging along in varying degrees of reluctance and haplessness--though Arthur does get his moment on the pitch at the end.

So even if you think you've read this story and you know where the plot is going, Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen is still well worth a read. Only a few scenes are essentially the same, the whole central quest narrative is completely different, and even the ending had a surprise in store.

Shada

Original script by Douglas Adams, novelization by Gareth Roberts.

The Doctor (4th incarnation), with Romana and K-9 in tow, returns to England in response to an urgent message from an old friend, an elderly Time Lord living in quiet retirement as a Cambridge professor. It turns out Professor Chronotis brought some things with him from Gallifrey that he technically isn't supposed to have, and one book in particular has the potential to be appallingly dangerous...and that book was among a handful borrowed by a grad student who means to use it to impress a girl.

It seems my theme for my week off was humorous science fiction. Where Redshirts obliquely evokes Star Trek, this is a direct tie-in with Doctor Who, but it's the Doctor Who of the 1970s, not the current version.  I may as well admit up front that Tom Baker was, is, and always will be my Doctor. When I was in high school the local PBS affiliate ran a half-hour episode of the show every weekday at 6:30, and it was the Tom Baker stories that were airing when I first tuned in.  

But the first Doctor Who story I ever saw was actually "The Five Doctors," which used footage from the unfinished "Shada" to shoehorn Tom Baker into the story when the actor declined (or was unable, I forget) to return for the anniversary special. So the Doctor's first appearance in this book was remarkably familiar to me!

About the same time I was memorizing the names of the Doctor's companions in order from 1963 to the present, I was also discovering The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, both the books and the radio series, and memorizing those through pure repeated exposure. I have not brought myself to read And Another Thing, the sixth Hitchhiker book by Eoin Colfer, but I couldn't pass up a new old Doctor Who story. And I think Gareth Roberts did a pretty good job of capturing Douglas Adams' tone; it's a very funny book. My boyfriend, who loves Douglas Adams but has never watched Doctor Who, also approved.