The four short children’s books about K9 written by Dave Martin are one of those things which very few people know about and if they do, don’t spend a lot of time thinking about.

It is a little bit wonderful that K9 has had so many different spin-offs dedicated to him and its clear both Bob Baker and Dave Martin were more than happy to exploit their little tin mutt as much as possible. What with K9 and Company, the K9 annual, these books, the Australian children’s TV show and the aborted K9 vs Omega film, there is plenty to suggest they believed, with all their heart, that K9 was capable of carrying his own series.

I’m not sure they’ve ever been proved right.

K9 and the Time Trap sees K9 come up against Bob Baker and Dave Martin’s other iconic creation. No, not Drax. Not the Mandrels. Not even Axos. Omega, of course!

K9 working for the Rigelians, heads off in his little spaceship K-Nel to investigate the disappearance of numerous ships. He discovers it is the work of Omega who is taking them to create his own battle fleet which he plans to use to attack Gallifrey.

It has to be said that Martin doesn’t really seem to remember (or care) much about what was established about Omega in The Three Doctors. This book was published three years before Arc of Infinity and the year before K9 and Company so is the first reappearance of both its stars.

Here Omega exists within a crimson bubble and clearly can’t create things with his mind anymore, relying on kidnapping various spaceships to create his battle fleet. He can easily cross from his bubble to the rest of space and very nearly succeeds in getting his fleet to Gallifrey were it not for K9’s intervention.

K9 also seems to have close contact with the Time Lords but his loyalty is to the Rigelians who give him a new spaceship (he blows up the original to defeat Omega) with go-faster racing stripes!

Omega’s depiction here is far less impressive than in either of his classic TV appearances (but is infinitely superior to ‘skull monster Omega’ from The Reality War. He does at least retain the helmet and cloak look even if the colour scheme is a little, brash, shall we say.

Weirdly, Omega apparently knows all about K9 because of him belonging to the Doctor suggesting Omega has been keeping tabs on the Doctor since the events of The Three Doctors.

To be honest, Omega here is simply ‘Time Lord out for revenge’ with none of the nuance of either Thorne or Collier’s versions. Reference is made to him being an engineer, creating time travel and being banished but it reads a bit like a wiki entry rather than proper motivation.

Also, in the original book he is called Omegon, not Omega (although in the audiobook version read by John Leeson, he is referred to as Omega).

All told this is a simple, linear children’s book that is far more about painting K9 as a hero in his own right with Omega a camp villain who’s not dissimilar to those seen in cartoons of this era such as Venger in Dungeons and Dragons or Zoltar in Battle of the Planets.

It’s not enjoyable for what it is and, actually, is a much better concept for a K9 spin-off than sticking him in rural England or surrounding him with a bunch of kids in ‘London’. Space, spaceships, robots and aliens just feels more like the sort of thing that works for a supercomputer robotic dog.