Rose was
written by Russell T. Davies, based on his story of the same name. It was the 168th story to be
novelized by BBC Books.
There won’t ever be a
time where I don’t think it odd that BBC Books decided to revive the Target novelizations
with brand new novelizations for the 21st century. Filling in the five missing novelizations
make sense, especially since the three Douglas Adams adventures were expanded into
full length novels and Eric Saward came back for his two Dalek novelizations
(despite their lower quality), but doing novelizations of episodes of the
revival means more than anything there would have to be an expansion unless it
was of a two-parter, yet none of the novelizations have featured two-parters. The first batch of four split themselves between
two episodes novelized by Doctor Who novelists Jenny T. Colgan and Paul
Cornell for The Christmas Invasion and Twice Upon a Time
respectively, while the other two brought back Steven Moffat for a novelization
of The Day of the Doctor and Russell T. Davies to novelize the story
that brought back the revival in Rose.
Now, I wrote a review of the television episode last weekend, noting how
it worked as a similarity to Spearhead from Space as a reinvention of
the show, and the novelization is almost an apt comparison to how Doctor Who
and the Auton Invasion laid the groundwork for the future of the Target
novelizations.
When writing for the television
episode, Russell T. Davies approached Rose specifically for newcomers
with minor references to Doctor Who’s past, but in writing the
novelization he realizes that the target audience is one of fans and not
newcomers. This means there are several
continuity references, both to the past and the future, placed right back into
the narrative. The television script
referred to the enemies as the Nestene Consciousness, but Davies also namedrops
the Autons multiple times during the novelization and that’s just the beginning. The references are essentially expansions of
television scenes: Rose’s search for the Doctor includes appearances of other
incarnations and the scene with Clive includes descriptions of every Doctor
plus a couple of potential ‘future’ Doctors.
There are also potentially new adventures for the Ninth Doctor mentioned,
explicitly giving him a few weeks in between when he blows up Rose’s job and
meets her the next day. The most
intrusive references are genuinely good ones.
First, Clive’s father was one of the soldiers killed during Remembrance
of the Daleks which is what inspires his lifelong obsession with the
Doctor. This also means he’s a bit more
courageous in protecting his family from the Autons in the final battle, giving
him a more sympathetic noble sacrifice.
The invasion sequence of
the Autons is greatly extended, not being restricted allows the Doctor and Rose
to face off against some Auton before making their way down to where the
Consciousness is, Mickey is duplicated a second time with Rose giving up the
Doctor’s plan to the Nestene which feels like a twist mainly for the audience
who has seen the episode, and there are sequences with other characters
including a brief Donna Noble cameo. The
Donna Noble cameo may have been one step too far, but hey Davies doesn’t know
if other stories are going to be adapted.
While Rose’s selfishness and moral nuance is expanded in the
novelization as this is from her perspective (outside of the prologue where
Wilson is killed on-screen), it’s actually Mickey perhaps best served. There’s something more of Mickey here as he
has several friends with whom he is in a band, they get their own little subplot
during the battle fighting off Autons which is cool. While the relationship between Rose and
Mickey is still a little messy, intentionally so, it’s a bit more healthy than
on television and based on trust and care.
Davies’ dialogue is great at softening with very slight tweaks to the
television scripts too. His prose is
also still as engaging as his prose for Damaged Goods. Rose is actually quite long, coming in
at 190 pages, really pushing the length of a Target novel, but it doesn’t feel its
length.
Overall, Rose understands
what it needs to do to properly expand itself as a novelization from the very
tightly plotted television episode.
Davies prose means you can read it in a leisurely afternoon and it draws
you in. While it adds in things from
later episodes and brings in ideas that took a while to come up, these work
because this is a novel and not a single episode of a series with no guarantee
that there is going to be novelizations of the rest of the series, oddly
paralleling early Target novels like Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion, Doctor
Who and the Cave-Monsters, and Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon. 9.5/10.
No comments:
Post a Comment