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.

[Author]

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