By Adam Hargreaves

Puffin Books, out now

Dr. Tenth and Donna deal with another Christmas Invasion in the latest iteration of the Doctor Who and Roger Hargreaves mashup.

For a show that has been airing an annual Christmas Day episode since 2005, any sort of branded Christmas tie-ins is surely fair game. And so before we even get his proper introduction in next year’s Doctor Tenth, we get a special festive book to sit alongside the existing eight ‘Dr. Men’ books.

I say ‘alongside’, because it doesn’t quite fit in with the others, being both hardback and slightly bigger in overall size than the others. I suspect this is a deliberate ploy to make the book more appealing as a one-off potential gift for the Doctor Who fan in your life, or as an addition to the Doctor Who Annual on Christmas morning, and is priced at a suitably ‘Secret Santa’ RRP. Why this regeneration? Probably because Tennant’s is the most popular new-Who, and he was the first proper Christmas Special Doctor.

Dr. Tenth himself is olive green, based on Mr Rush’s triangular shape, though Tennant-ised with quiffed hair, tie and Converse trainers. He’s joined by Donna, which makes it a sequel to The Runaway Bride, though I’m not sure which Christmas it relates to, as she’d left the TARDIS before the next year’s Voyage of the Damned – yes, I really am trying to establish Doctor Who canon timelines with a Roger Hargreaves book! As for the story, the Doctor and Donna battle some seasonal foes, which I have no intention of spoiling here – hey, it’s meant to be a surprise!

Verdict: This little treat has ‘Christmas gift’ written all over it, whether read to a child, to be read by a child, as a nostalgic throwback for the Mr Men generation, or your hardcore Doctor Who collector. By my reckoning, that’s a pretty sizeable audience, and this is far more preferable to one of those adult Ladybird books or ironic Famous Five rewrites. Allons-y! 9/10

Nick Joy