By Jenny T. Colgan, Paul Magrs, Jo Cotterill, Steve Cole, Trevor Baxendale & Mike Tucker

BBC Books, out now

 

The Doctor is a shameless name-dropper, no less so than in her current 13th incarnation, and here we get half a dozen tales of the Time Lord’s run in with the great and the famous.

One of the staples of Doctor Who in its 21st Century iteration was the regular inclusion of celebrity historical episodes, from Charles Dickens to Queen Victoria to Agatha Christie. Of course, this is no new thing, with First Doctor William Hartnell meddling with the likes of Nero and Doc Holliday, and this new volume from BBC Books takes this popular form and gives us six new stories.

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say which celebs are featured – their images are on the cover after all – but I will refrain from saying which of the Doctor’s regenerations makes first contact. Chasing the Dawn by Jenny T. Colgan is a lively flashback from the 13th Doctor to help distract Yaz from her monthly cramps, recalling the time when she (he at the time) helped Amelia Earhart get the Electra airborne again, while fighting a parasitic creature.

That’s All Right, Mama by Paul Magrs is a witty tale of Elvis Presley, except that he’s a healthy 82 year old, rather than dying in 1977. He’s still talking to his dead mother via an alien mobile phone, and this short story bounces along at a cracking pace as different incarnations of the Time Lord meet the King at key points in his life.

Einstein and the Doctor by Jo Cotterill is a fantastical tale in Bern, Switzerland, with the genius physicist contending with ill babies, ghost spiders and astral starfish, as well a big Quatermass-style finish in cathedral.

Who-dini? by Steve Cole is a murder mystery centred around the magician and escapologist, told through the first-person narrative of his assistant. As usual, things are not quite as first they seem.

The Pythagoras Problem by Trevor Baxendale takes the TARDIS crew back to Crotone in Italy of 500BC, where the mathematician is concerned that the souls of the dead are not successfully passing on to other humans, and concludes with a link in to Mike Tucker’s Mission of the KaaDok, a cheeky visit to Paramount Studios in 1961, where Audrey Hepburn is filming Breakfast at Tiffanys. Just why is that hooded character trying to shoot her, and what’s a 1980s era Alan Rickman doing on the lot? The explanation is satisfyingly daft, and as with most of the stories here, concerns aliens who are less inclined to do something evil than orchestrating a poorly-conceived, benign caper.

Verdict: While inevitably saddled with the limitation that you can only take a real, historical character to a certain endpoint, this collection of half a dozen celebrity encounters has fun playing fast with the truth, offering amusing, alternate ‘what if?’s. 8/10

Nick Joy

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