Doctor Who in Wonderland

"You'd be best off forgetting all about your rationality."

Writer: Paul Magrs

Format: Novel

Released: July 2024

Series: Puffin Classics 06

Featuring: Fifth Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan, Turlough

Synopsis

The Doctor and his companions visit the dreaming spires of peaceful Oxford, hoping of a brief respite from their travels.

But when Lewi Carroll appears at a garden party and their fellow guests transform into animal, they realise that everything is not as it seems...

An unknown cosmic foe has trapped them in a twisted version of Alice's Wonderland. Separated from the TARDIS and from each other, their only hope of escape lies in cryptic clues teased by fan-favourite characters from Carroll's classic tale.

Verdict

Doctor Who in Wonderland was a great novel to keep me up to date with Puffin's rather unique and quirky classics crossover range! I have been a big fan of what this range has been doing because it does not take itself seriously and quite frankly it's just a lot of fun. I think Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a fine story to push Doctor Who into a crossover with and this was actually one of the more familiar stories from this range for me personally. I haven't actually read the book which is a shame but it's been an eternity since I read a book that wasn't Doctor Who or written by my very talented partner. There are just too many in need of blogging! But I have seen both of the Alice in Wonderland films that were released over the last decade or so and very much enjoyed them. I'm not sure how true they are to the books but this was actually quite different to what I was expecting. The idea of the Doctor and his companions going into Wonderland is marvellous but the version we got here was almost like a mixup of fiction and reality. It was an intriguing dynamic and I think it worked despite my different expectations. I really loved the role of Turlough in the story and having this set between Mawdryn Undead and Terminus was an excellent choice in hindsight. He is incredibly new as a companion and Tegan is at the absolute height of her suspicions regarding Turlough. That makes for brilliant reading and it's interesting to read how even Nyssa was showing some level of concern. He was clearly shady and this makes it a fun way for the Black Guardian to be the villain without having to give him another return. This is set within the Black Guardian trilogy and just perfectly slots in. Having the Black Guardian as the evil Queen of Hearts was quite the image, but it's fair to say the imagery described in this book was off the charts! It was an amalgamation of so much with people having whiskers and tails and the Doctor and his companions not always noticing! I like the idea of Tegan having a favourite childhood book and it certainly seems like good advice to Nyssa to relax by reading something fun rather than scientific. Her desire for the book in a non-physical form was excellent and something I found ironic as I was reading on the Kindle. However she had even located the book in liquid form and Turlough (under the Black Guardian's guidance) would see that cause havoc with the TARDIS systems. The arrival in Oxford was fun because from there things got whacky. The Doctor and Tegan were sent as caterers to the Dean's party whilst Turlough took Nyssa for her first experience punting. Their accidental kidnapping of the Cheshire Cat was quite hilarious! I thought the threat of the Jabberwocky was very good and the way a couple of chapters just concluded with it eating Lewis Carroll and then the Doctor was extraordinary. It was so emphatic! I thought the use of the March Hare and the Madhatter alongside Tegan was a little reduced compared to what I was expecting, and Alice being an older woman from the 1930s was different altogether! I quite liked that dynamic though and her holding the manuscript that was in flux was fascinating. How could fiction be fluid as a fixed point in time? Was time really moving here? That would play into the resolution well as the Doctor realised that if the clocks resumed then time would flow and Wonderland wouldn't be able to exist anymore. That came quite suddenly but it was certainly impactful in providing a resolution to things! Overall, this was a fascinating take on the crossover as it didn't wholly feel like that we entered the fictional world of Wonderland but that was absolutely fine. No Master or visit to the Land of Fiction was involved and with the story's placement in televised continuity, I like how the Doctor is unaware of the culprit. This was all about Turlough for me and having a new story placed so early on in his chronology worked wonders for me. I'm a fan! A terrific little read.

Rating: 8/10