Doctor Who - Bridging the Mid-Season Gap

We now have a wait until the next episode of Doctor Who hits our screens. But let's put it into perspective a bit. Three or so months may feel like a long time, especially when there is so much of the story-line unresolved. But let me tell you - as someone who first really became a fan of the show in 1988 - three months is nothing. After Survival we had to wait around seven years for a new episode - and after that new episode we had to wait the best part of a decade until the next new episode came along. Trust me, the wait until September is nothing.

But this post isn't just about the curmudgeon in me muttering "they've never had it so good!" The point I want to make is that there are ways of bridging the gap between episodes - a gap that in the past has been far longer than the one we've got now.

DVDs are an obvious way, particularly since the BBC is issuing them on what feels like a frenetic pace at the moment. And if you haven't explored the good Doctor's back catalogue, then you'll be missing out on some true gems. And some utter shite as well, but there's fun to be had in every Doctor Who story - barring, perhaps, Time-Flight. Then there are the spin-offs - and since 2005 we've been blessed with a lot more than one paltry episode of K9 and Company. There's Torchwood, of course, but for me the very best really is The Sarah Jane Adventures. If you haven't had the pleasure then I suggest you go take a look - they are arguably closer to the classic series than much of what is now Doctor Who.

But of you think that Doctor Who ends when you turn of the TV then you're very much mistaken. Big Finish have been producing Doctor Who audio dramas for over a decade now, and while the quality is mixed, there have been some brilliant offerings. Doctor Who and the Pirates (everything The Curse of the Black Spot should have been but wasn't), The Holy Terror, Master, The Chimes of Midnight and The Fearmonger are all excellent stories in their own right, and sit well with the best that the TV series has to offer. But if you only try one of the Big Finish productions, make sure it is Spare Parts - one of the best Doctor Who stories ever written. It helped to inspire Rise of the Cybermen and The Age of Steel, but that really is damning it with faint praise. I can't recommend it highly enough.

And then there are the novels. Sure, some of them are cack-handed fan fiction that spends more time trying to be iconoclastic but ends up being navel-gazing rubbish that never quite gets around to telling a decent story. But others are actually really rather good. Conundrum is a particular favourite of mine - and you can't go wrong with pretty much anything with Steve Lyons on the cover (quite why he hasn't written for the TV series is beyond me - The Witch Hunters would be an excellent, and challenging, addition to any new series of Doctor Who). Elsewhere, The Burning offers what is an clever way of rebooting the show at the same time as maintaining its basic identity, while Eater of Wasps is another example of a story that should make the jump from the printed page onto the big screen. And that is just scratching the surface of what now probably amounts to hundreds of Doctor Who novels out there.

So the point is that there is a whole world of Doctor Who out there waiting to be found. I've been an avid fan for over 20 years and I've barely scratched the surface. A bit of a wait until September? Pah, that's nothing. And if you take a look at some of the stuff mentioned here (assuming you haven't already) then the time will just fly by. Like you were in a TARDIS or something...