Second paragraph of third chapter:

She finally had a name.

I wrote of the two TV episodes that this book is based on:

The Legend of Ruby Sunday summoned back lots of old favourites – UNIT, Mel, the recurrent character of Susan Twist, and most of all, Gabriel Woolf – another actor over the age of 90! – as Sutekh. It looked good, sounded good, and had a good twist, but there wasn’t a lot of substance; it was running around for the sake of running around. I hoped this would be put right this weekend.

And I’m afraid it wasn’t. Empire of Death was a real mess. The visuals were superb (as we have come to take for granted, now that we are Disneyfied), and the lead performances were great as usual. I also loved the explicit throwbacks to Pyramids of Mars, one of my favourite Old Who stories.

But the plot was very weak. As soon as people started disintegrating into dust, I knew that they would all be resurrected. Why should Sutekh care about Ruby’s unknown mother? (And indeed why could he not use the available technology to find her?) What was the point of the devastated future world with one inhabitant? And I missed the explanation of the snow, and of various other things.

I do have sympathy for the narrative of finding Ruby’s parents by DNA… one part of my own real life that I have now seen brought into a Doctor Who plot; and it could have been done much worse.

Still, I had been hoping for better.

I ranked them sixth and eighth out of last year’s eight episodes,

As sometimes happens with novelisations, the written word is capable of fixing some of the flaws of the televised story. The sillier special effects are lost, thank heavens, and we do get some more background to Susan Twist and indeed to Ruby. But it remains a fundamentally messy story, privileging spectacle over substance. Not Handcock’s fault, of course: it’s a good novelisation of a disappointing story. You can get Doctor Who: Empire of Death here.

I wrote of the TV story that this book is based on:

I was in Glasgow planning the Worldcon for the showing of 73 Yards, and a bunch of us clustered together to watch it in someone’s room. This too was tremendous, a Doctor-lite episode that called on Gibson (who turned 20 last week) to portray her character aging through the decades, with one of those timey-wimey plots that can actually go awry rather easily but in this case didn’t.

This time the old school actor who I cheered for was Siân Phillips, who was of course Livia in I, CLAVDIVS, almost half a century ago, but has done some more recent Big Finish work as well. She too is in her nineties but clearly in her element as the sinister old woman in the pub.

Watching it again, one is stunned especially by Millie Gibson as the aging Ruby. Apparently these were the first scenes that she filmed for the show.

Second paragraph of third chapter of the novelisation:

For an hour, it seemed her expedition would never end. Step after countless step, her feet were cold and damp, icy snowflakes soaked into her collar, and her ragged breath formed misty clouds in front of her face.

I am slightly surprised that this is Scott Handcock’s first Doctor Who novel, possibly his first book-length work at all; he has been writing, directing and producing for Big Finish since 2006. 73 Yards was one of my favourites of this year’s stories anyway, and Handcock has done it justice, focussing necessarily on Ruby’s story (since the Doctor is hardly in it) but also giving some neat extra bits – back-stories for the people in the Welsh pub, a scene with Ace, the ultimate fate of UNIT revealed. Very enjoyable. You can get it here.

Just to add, as I commented on social media soon after the story was shown, that the fictional Robin ap Gwilliam looks eerily like the real prime minister of Georgia.

Irakli Kobakhidze, prime minister of the Repulic of Georgia; and Aneurin Barnard, who played the fictional prime minister Roger ap Gwilliam, in last weekend’s Doctor Who episode, “73 Yards”.

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— Nicholas Whyte (@nwhyte.bsky.social) May 27, 2024 at 9:17 AM