The moon might be an unusual place to set a story, in most series other than Doctor Who, of course. But even by the series’s often bizarre standards, Revelation is weird…. (Photo by NASA/Newsmakers)
The Wilderness Years gave us so many great Doctor Who novels. Perhaps one of the best is the strange and imaginative Timewyrm: Revelation by the legendary Paul Cornell.
Be in the Doctor Who fandom long enough and you will eventually start hearing about the novels. Good things, bad things, you’ll hear it all from anyone who realizes that you want to listen. Continue being in the fandom and you will start noticing the novel Timewyrm: Revelation being brought up more and more. Not in hushed tones like it was some mystical artifact or a copy of Lungbarrow for less than one hundred dollars, but just that it’s a pretty darn good book. One I hope I can convince you to seek out and read.
To set up for anyone who doesn’t know, after Doctor Who was canceled in 1989, the Doctor’s adventures continued in, among other things, the Virgin New Adventures line of books from 1991 to 1997.
The line started with a four-novel saga, Timewyrm: Genesys (breasts and curse words? In a Doctor Who story? Scandalous! Story’s fine), Timewyrm: Exodus (by Terrance Dicks and is like a knife cutting through butter: unbelievably smooth, hasn’t aged a day), Timewyrm: Apocalypse (uh, you have to read this one to get to Revelation), and finally concluding with Timewyrm: Revelation.
It’s possible you may have even heard about it (or read it but humor me for a bit). I know I learned of it fairly early when I first started getting into the fandom around 2011. Highly regarded, emotionally investing, and even (technically) a multi-Doctor story, at the time if you were in the right place, you’d hear about it a lot. Not so much now, almost all the novels are out of print, and the audios are a thousand times more accessible, both in terms of content and actually being able to get your hands on them.
But even back in 2011 it was all very intimidating for someone who was already having a hard-enough time just getting all the Classic Doctor Who DVDs before they also went out of print forever. (I wasn’t able to. Ghost Light and The Two Doctors remain out of my reach to this day, until the eventual Blu-Ray release, anyway.) So lucky for me, I just happened to find the majority of the Virgin New Adventures at a thrift store for a buck each one day, and as soon as I finished the original TV run, I dived straight in.
A very unique story
The story starts with a companion of the Seventh Doctor, Ace, getting hit in the head with a brick as a young child, killing her. The bully who did it later meeting a man in a police box who takes him away.
It’s a very shocking way to start, but is actually more respectful of Ace than a lot of the future novels end up being. (Mark Gatiss shaves her head, brainwashes her, and makes her walk around naked surrounded by a cult that crucifies kittens later. It was a different time.) This sets the tone for what’s to come perfectly. The first three novels in this range weren’t sure if their demographic was for kids, family, or adults – despite the breasts, they were very unsure of themselves. Revelation knows exactly who its content is for, and it’s you.
What follows is equally interesting and unique, unlike any previous Doctor Who story yet fitting the series like a glove. Even before the main conflict fully realizes itself, we have things like the Doctor gifting a random couple a baby for seemingly no reason, or Ace (who isn’t dead despite the opening – it makes sense in context) being terrorized by a child sized astronaut only to find herself on the moon.
One of my favorite moments is literally a few sentences describing the Doctor being able to disintegrate a humanoid construct by speaking in a language that sounds like glass breaking. As far as I know he never does it again in anything, but with the Seventh Doctor it just feels like something he’d always been able to do. You don’t question it, and I certainly never forgot it.
An astronaut, a church and a dancing with Death on the moon. Timewyrm: Revelation definitely stands out.
(Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)
Concluding the Timewyrm arc
I don’t want to do you a disservice by describing the whole book. I would much rather you read it yourself, and after all it doesn’t seem to be $40 on Amazon anymore. But to pepper you with some details, Ace finds herself dead and in Hell, while at the same time the Doctor dances with Death on the moon while a living Church watches on. The covers of the Virgin Novels, if nothing else, don’t lie.
Eventually, and again this will make sense in context, Ace and the Doctor start traveling through Hell, meeting various mysterious men who you may or may not be familiar with. A librarian tending to his roses; a cryptic ferryman who isn’t just reused footage for once; a blond embodiment of conscience tied to a tree where he cannot influence; a prisoner being tortured who is more worried about who a man in a framed picture was after his visit into an alternate universe. You probably get what I mean, and I have probably said too much.
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Conversely, I notice I’ve said nothing about the actual Timewyrm despite her technically being the main villain of all four volumes, one of which includes Hitler in it. She is the reason all of this happens though, and her end is satisfying (although I hear she shows up in a later volume I haven’t read yet, I guess I’ll tell you when I get to it).
A love letter to the franchise
Calling something a love letter to a franchise is old hat, but that’s precisely what this is. An old hat. Wait, no. A love letter. A love letter written at a time where this could possibly be it, the final Doctor Who story not featured in Doctor Who Magazine.
Written by Paul Cornell, who you might have heard of, it remains one of his best novels (I still have two more of his novels to read which is the only reason I don’t just outright say this is his best work). It’s bold, it’s filled with references that come naturally, and it’s actually one of the best Science Fiction novels I’ve ever read, even outside Doctor Who.
So it’s a shame it’s impossible to recommend to anyone not familiar with the Classic Series.
What do you think about the Virgin New Adventures? Did you feel the same way about Timewyrm: Revelation as I did? Do you think I’m insanely wrong and that I should have written about Dancing the Code where Jo Grant drops a bucket of pee on someone’s head instead? Let us know in the comments below.