By Jenny T Colgan

BBC Books

With the Doctor tucked up in bed following his regeneration, it’s up to the Tylers, Mickey and UNIT to take the lead against the invasion of the Sycorax.

Over the years we’ve somewhat taken for granted that Doctor Who is part of BBC1’s Christmas Day line-up, and it all goes back to Russell T Davies’ 2005 The Christmas Invasion, which not only had to introduce a new Doctor to the fans, but also be easy enough for casual or first-time viewers to follow. This is a great subject for a Target novelisation, which is written here by Jenny T Colgan (what’s with these middle name Ts?).

It’s more common than not that Target books are scribed by someone other than the original  writer – just take a look at how many Terrance Dicks dashed out – and Jenny T is a great choice. She wrote the best of the stories in The Day She Saved the Doctor and her Tenth Doctor novel In the Blood is a chilling look at social media. Oh, and according to the PR notes, having won a fan competition at 11 to meet the Doctor, she was mistaken for a boy by Peter Davison. That’s some admission – and give the man some glasses!

At 20 chapters and 164 pages, the story rattles along with the sort of language and weight of an old school Target book. In the Author’s Afterword, Jenny references how important these books were to get, with the downside being how quickly you could read them (there was no way you could stretch the quota of four Targets over a week), and in fairness you could probably crack though this book in a couple of return commutes or dinner breaks. But I think that’s kind of the point. It’s a punchy one-hour romp and this is perfectly summed-up in this breathless run at it – I made it in one session.

Jenny is very good at embellishing Davies’ raw dialogue with insight into Rose’s thought processes, and equally isn’t afraid just to let the conversation run down the page as speech, without the need to tell us ‘she said’, ‘he replied’ and so on. And by the time the Doctor makes his grand entrance on page 126 – ‘Did you miss me?’ – we’re all cheering.

Verdict: Don’t you think she looks tired? Harriet Jones maybe, but certainly not the bouncy Jenny T Colgan, who has taken Russell T’s dialogue and delivered a Christmas cracker. It’s over far too soon, but at least next time you don’t have to get it from the library or wait till December 25th. 8/10

Nick Joy

Click here to order The Christmas Invasion from Amazon.co.uk