Doctor Dwarf: The Books

[International Debris]

I’ve been working my way through all of the Doctor Who novels, novellas, novelisations, and other things beginning with ‘novel’, and have, I think, finally come across a Red Dwarf reference (it’s possible there are others I’ve forgotten).

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the book is written by Robert Perry and Mike Tucker, he of Making Stuff For Red Dwarf fame. The novel, Storm Harvest, features a character who has written a book called ‘Androgum Cookery for Novices: How to Master the Boomerang Spoon’.
It’s possible that Mike Tucker came up with the name Boomerang Spoon without any relation to his working on Red Dwarf, but I also think it’s exceptionally unlikely.

I’ll make sure to keep you all updated should I find more as the journey continues. Perry and Tucker wrote a series of four books as a sort of unofficial season 26b, between the end of the TV version and the beginning of the Virgin New Adventures novels, so I’m quite a long way in now. The only other thing that may be of note here is that one of the books – can’t remember which right now – pretty much canonised Blackadder the Third in the Whoniverse.

[Flap Jack]

All?! Now that is an impressive endeavour! I’m not sure I even have the time to read the titles of all of the published Doctor Who novels, let alone the content.

Seriously, if anyone at BBC Books, IDW, Big Finish etc. is reading this, could you maybe just… stop? Come on, just give me a few decades to catch up. It’s only fair.

[International Debris]

Including the spin-offs, there are nearly 700 official Who and Who-related novels and short story collections. I’m near the 300 mark at the minute, it took me two years of reading nothing else. I am now alternating, a few Who novels then a few fucking-hell-anything-but-sci-fi-please novels.

Once I’m done I’m doing every Big Finish. That’s around a thousand including all the spinoffs.

[Plastic Percy]

If it helps, the novel ‘First Frontier’ by David A. McIntee has Ace saying Smeg a lot.

[Hamish]

Ace and Doctor?! You sound like a kids’ TV series about a girl and a man who stuffs live ferrets down his trousers!

[Hamish]

Or should I have just gone with plays the spoons?

[Plastic Percy]

Also, Lister is mentioned as using a sonic screwdriver when repairing Kryten in ‘Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers’.

[International Debris]

I never noticed that line in IWCD. I’m so overdue a re-read of the Dwarf books.

Just on Mike Tucker’s Prime Time. He’s introduced a character called Reg Gurney, whose 30 years in the Space Corps have given him the perspective that the key to efficiency is a pair of well-polished boots. He called The Doctor ‘fella-me-lad’. This character is played by Chris Barrie in my head.

[cwickham]

Currently listening to the second Big Finish War Master set, and the third episode is entirely given over to one of the characters slowly going insane whilst stranded on a space station, and there’s a real Series I/Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers vibe to it. I’d be very surprised if Dwarf wasn’t at least vaguely on Guy Adams’ mind whilst he was writing it.

[Seb Patrick]

There’s a “smegging” in The Dying Days.

[International Debris]

If it helps, the novel ‘First Frontier’ by David A. McIntee has Ace saying Smeg a lot.

Just on another McIntee novel, White Darkness, and along with saying “Smegging hell”, Ace also calls someone “molecule mind”.

[Warbodog]

I know the feeling of going through something contemporaneous to Red Dwarf and keeping an eye peeled for overlap that turns out to be less than you hoped (especially if you’re getting a bit bored and need a side quest to keep things interesting).

There was disappointingly little when I went through all of The Comic Strip Presents…, but ‘Space Virgins from Planet Sex’ (1993) had Sara Stockbridge chained up as a sacrificial offering by French and Saunders in an inverse of her scene in Terrorform (1992).

Not worth its own post, barely worth a thread derailing. Peter Capaldi doing Doctor Who memes in ‘Jealousy’ 20 years before he was cast was more noteworthy.

[Taiwan Tony]

Today I read in a Blackadder-based book that the joke about making the earth a full stop was a joke/plot originally thought of by John “QI Etc.” Lloyd in an sci fi sitcom pilot.

[Warbodog]

I read that book earlier this year, it’s very good. Jem Roberts got in there just before the cast started dying. I thought something similar for Red Dwarf would be nice, but we’re getting all those documentaries to supplement all the other documentaries, so probably not necessary.

[Taiwan Tony]

Probably not.
I’m going to buy his Fry & Laurie one.

[(deleted)]

Page 267 is the best page of Soupy Twists.

[Taiwan Tony]

That’s disgusting

[International Debris]

Ace says smeg to herself in Kate Orman’s The Left-Handed Hummingbird. I don’t think it’s ever stated when exactly she was taken from Earth, although some of the novels have her taste in music including The Stone Roses, so she could have been a Red Dwarf fan and just be quoting it.

[Plastic Percy]

Ace has a rather eclectic taste in music, depending on who’s writing. The TV series has her buying a Courtney Pine jazz cassette and turning her nose up at U2, but the novels either have her listening to classical music or a gamut of eighties pop music: The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and The Cure all get mentions at one time or another.

[International Debris]

She had a Brett Anderson poster on her wall in the last book I read, and she’s also hinted at a taste for anarcho punk in an earlier book. There does seem to be a bit of a “Ace is cool so she must like the music I like!” theme.

[Plastic Percy]

Character continuity was never a strong point in the BBC Doctor Who novels. Anji Kapoor, companion to the Eighth Doctor, managed to come from a liberal, middle-class family that was also conservative and devoutly religious. And depending on who was writing, she was either Indian or Pakistani.

[Ben Saunders]

Definitely got that vibe from that one episode that’s all about jazz for some reason (Silver Nemesis?), there’s also a bit of it in Happiness Patrol. The production team really thought jazz was really cool, didn’t they.

[International Debris]

It’s what all the ’80s teenagers were listening to.

[By Jove its holmes]

Ace didn’t swear on TV and didn’t seem willing to use her Nitro-9 on non-robots.

“Come on, Mr. Liberal! We’re the only kids in the country who never say fu-“

[Plastic Percy]

I follow Andrew Cartmel (Script Editor, 1987 – 1989) on Twitter and he’s a Jazz enthusiast, posting about his latest vinyl finds. I figure the Doctor and Ace enjoying Jazz and meeting Courtney Pine is a bit of an ‘author avatar’ moment.

On a book tangent, I do reccomend Cartmel’s Vinyl Detective book series. The series follows an unnamed narrator who hunts down rare vinyl records for money. Some of his clients take his business card a little too seriously and he finds himself investigating murders and other serious crimes.

I’d also reccomend Nev Fountain’s Mervyn Stone trilogy – Geek Tragedy, DVD Extras Include: Murder & Cursed Among Sequels. Mervyn Stone is a washed-up Script Editor mostly famous for his work on cult 1980s sci-fi series ‘Vixens from the Void’. Making a living attending discusion panels at fan conventions, he finds himself turning his Script Editor’s eyes for plot holes and inconsistencies to solving murders.

[International Debris]

Final Frontier does indeed have Ace smegging about. Barely read any Who this year so this was a nice reminder that I made this thread. Halfway through the Virgin New Adventures now. Will I ever be done? Who knows. Happy new year.

[International Debris]

Benny just smegged as well.
I think it’s fair to say your enjoyment of the Virgin New Adventures depends on whether you find the word ‘smeg’ funny or not.

[Spaceworm Jim]

I really love the covers to quite a lot of the VNA. Some are atrocious, yes, but the best of them are so evocative. The Doctor dancing with death with a spacesuit and church behind him on the moon, for example. It’s my favourite. I’ve just had a glance at the rest of them and they’re all shit. I must’ve been thinking of the Deep Space 9 young adult books with Jake and Nog.

EDIT: Checked them, they’re shit too.

[Ian Symes]

I think it’s fair to say your enjoyment of the Virgin New Adventures depends on whether you find the word ‘smeg’ funny or not.

This is a brilliantly obscure thing to be referencing in 2021.

[si]

I like it when they say Smeg.

[International Debris]

More smegs from Benny in Sanctuary, as well as The Doctor keeping a copy of The Junior Colour Encyclopaedia of Space in the TARDIS escape pagoda.
I think it’s fair to say at this point that David McIntee is a Red Dwarf fan.

[Warbodog]

A bit generic, but still:

Eleventh Doctor Titan Comics, 2014 (all-British creative team)

[International Debris]

“Do you think he’s capable of murder?”

“Yes,” said the Doctor without hesitation. “I think he’s capable of ripping someone’s arm off and beating them to death with the wet end.”

Ben Aaronovich’s NA The Also People. There’s also been two Blackadder references, in terms of a huge celebratory pie in the shape of a huge pie, and the heart of a concrete elephant.

[Warbodog]

Worth bumping a thread after 10 months for, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Twelfth Doctor Titan Comics, 2015 (all-British creative team)

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

its going to be one of those things where its just enter the lexicon isn’t it? Grant Naylor coined the term and now 30 years later people use it without really knowing the origins.

Although I’d wager someone writing a Doctor Who comic probably would.

[International Debris]

Alongside the Eighth Doctor books I’m also reading the Benny Summerfield continuation of the New Adventures series (which is so utterly superior to the EDAs so far it’s not even funny), and Dave Stone has just written “managing to rhyme the ‘gentleman’ with ‘scum’,” which immediately made me think of a certain Rimmer line. Given that Stone has also written a Doctor Who book which is partially set in what is basically Springfield, I wouldn’t be remotely surprised if it was intentional. 

I suppose I forgot to mention that there have been a few books by Steve Lyons, too. They’re all good.

edit: next chapter there’s a hard light reference.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

I emailed Dave Stone once.  Strange bloke, very jumpy.

Incidentally, Heart of TARDIS was not what I went into it expecting.  Anyone thinking of reading it, don’t go in expecting your traditional multi-Doctor story… or in fact, any Doctor Who story.  If anything, it reads like someone trying to write like Jasper Fforde after slugging a pint glass of cheap wine laced with LSD.  The story, if you can call it that, is three equally non-compelling narratives lovingly crowbarred together with all the care and precision of brain surgery with a fourteen pound lump hammer, and I’m amazed to this day I managed to reach the end of the book.  It really didn’t do anything for me.  If you like off-the-wall writing, irreverent humour, lots of references, and a fair scraping of body horror and cosmic horror, then it might be just what you’re looking for.

[International Debris]

I like all of those, which might explain why I really enjoyed Heart of TARDIS. I tend to really like Dave Stone as long as he stays in the real world. When he allows himself passages based in unfathomable settings then it all becomes incomprehensible mush and I hate it. When it’s daft stuff contrasting with the real world, I can’t get enough though. Ship of Fools is one of my favourite New Adventures.

[clem]

https://metro.co.uk/2022/06/13/doctor-who-new-villain-is-fluffy-white-rabbit-beep-16819245/

Possible inspiration for the GEAP Smegazine strip? Both cute but deadly little white creatures, plus the rhyming names.

[Jonathan Capps]

I saw that on Twitter yesterday but thought it was some hilarious joke. It’d be weird if RTD pulled two villains out of the comics when I don’t think he’s ever done that before…

But anyway, good catch!

[Dave]

Talking of the comics, I’d never seen this one until the other day.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

New Doctor Who villain is a cute, fluffy white rabbit who will battle returning Time Lord David Tennant

Possible inspiration for the GEAP Smegazine strip? Both cute but deadly little white creatures, plus the rhyming names.

we’re being trolled right??!

Or perhaps a cross over with Donnie Darko confirmed?!

[Warbodog]

Looks like that unambiguous Rimmer reference was from the 2011 IDW comic by British writer Tony Lee, who seemingly wrote for every licensed sci-fi franchise comic going but still needed to sneak Red Dwarf references in, good lad.

[Warbodog]

Reading that IDW comic run. From a different issue: how many Red Dwarf references/allusions can you fit in one panel? (They’re in a Wild West simulation).

[Warbodog]

[International Debris]

Why did he combine three things into one extended speech bubble, though?

[RunawayTrain]

Why did he combine three things into one extended speech bubble, though?

That’s the phased complexes merging already.

[Rudolph]

The villain has a few Red Dwarf Hot Wheels to play with in Doctor Who: The Heralds of Destruction (2016).

[Warbodog]

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

That happened to me with another DYD book!

[Author]

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