Rate the wilderness years spinoff media

What spinoff media did you like? (Multiple choice poll)

Never was a huge fan of the Virgin novels. (Although isolated entries were individually excellent).

You get to cherry pick the NAs though, since they all pretty much stand up as individual stories. The BBC novels were much more hit and miss. For example, I could well have done without the massive and overcomplicated Interference and Ancestor Cell which were OK, but annoying.

And the BBC novels made the cardinal error of making the Doctor Jack the Ripper, which narked me so much I stopped reading them. To put this in context, I was getting them free at the time and reading them on behalf of a mate who was supposed to be reading them all and then basing the purchasing strategy of quite a large chain store on my (and other people's) comments. I turned down free books.

I must have been insane.

Anyway, I think the NAs were more consistently good - The Pit and maybe Lungbarrow being the exceptions - than the Beeb novels.

The Big Finish range amused me greatly. All of the stories that fandom loved, like The Holy Terror, I hated. It also started out relatively inconsistently and then got an awful lot stronger very quickly. There are some simply superb stories in the range, some outstanding performances and some really neat ideas.

I read and enjoyed a number of the Virgin and BBC novels, but mainly fed my habit via Big Finish - from 1999 to 2005 I was a regular attender of BF signings at the late-lamented 10th Planet in Barking. Although, as with everything else in life, the quality of the range varied, quite a few BFs were excellent in my view.


John

This was also a big time for fan projects and stuff that could have sort of been Doctor Who.

I for one know very little about some of this stuff. Would anyone care to comment on things like The Stranger, etc?

Dave Webb wrote:This was also a big time for fan projects and stuff that could have sort of been Doctor Who.

I for one know very little about some of this stuff. Would anyone care to comment on things like The Stranger, etc?

The Stranger began as a very thinly disguised Who continuation and slowly evolved into a bleak, near Sapphire and Steel drama. It was resolutely low budget but ultimately a brave attempt. I'd recommend it if ever you come across it - as I said, especially the later entries in the series.