Alrightreads: Novelisations

Usually either a cheap cash-in or a way to 'rewatch' a favourite film or TV serial before videos came along, novelisations are a much more interesting and worthwhile endeavour when they're written by the original writer/s, taking the opportunity to embellish or improve on their scripts free from budget constraints and with the benefit of hindsight. Some of them even end up among my best books evar. Let's see how these ones get on.


David Renwick, One Foot in the Grave

1992 / Ebook / 224 pages / UK

****

It's been a few years since I rediscovered and thoroughly loved this series, long enough that most of the contrived crescendos and exasperated exclamations were new to me again. It may be a sequence of episodes knitted together by flimsy segues, but so are most novels. This has the distinct advantage of knowing which episodes work in advance.

If the cover and blurbs hadn't given its origins away, the snappy dialogue might, which is much too vigorous to be bound up in a book. But then there's the world-weary narration that paints each scene in such rich sardonic tones, you wonder how they'd get by without it. And as if the stuff with dead animals would have been allowed on a television "comedy" anyway! I don't believe it.

Better than the episodes?: The cast swings it.

Steven Moffat, Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor

2018 / Ebook / 224 pages / UK

****

I've always liked the episode, which is just as entertainingly over-complicated as a non-linear time travel story with three protagonists who are all the same person interacting with himselves should be (not counting his further guest roles and cameos). The book doesn't tamper much, but it's all a bit slower so you can really take it in. Of course, it does have the additional comical complication that you can't see or hear the actors to distinguish between Doctors, but it's a safe bet that anyone reading this has watched it enough times to know who's Who. And if not, the blurring together is sort of the whole point.

Steven, bless him, clearly has anxiety that he's gone too far, writing explanatory in-character introductions to every single chapter that are unnecessary and slightly patronising, but he makes up for it with some nicely pretentious literary wank and cheeky gags that are only as canonical as you want irascible fans to be forced to accept them to be.

Better than the episode?: In a way.

Rob Grant and Andrew Marshall, The Quanderhorn Xperimentations

2018 / Ebook / 480 pages / UK

***

I had realistically average expectations for Rob "Formerly of Red Dwarf" Grant and Andrew "Never Watched Your Sitcoms" Marshall's cross-format sci-fi parody, and was relieved when it didn't turn out to be actually bad. That was all I asked.

Compared to the radio series, the novel has more introspection and observations from multiple viewpoints, but it's mainly just the scripts reformatted into proper sentences. That means it's a relentless sequence of six distinct, equally-portioned escapades running into each other, generally improving as it goes on. Your basic novelisation.

Better than the episodes?: Not enough.