Doctor Who In Wonderland

👍🏼(7.3) = GOOD!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

In Wonderland begins like any other adventure, as the TARDIS takes our friends to London in the 1860s to go to a tea party with Lewis Carroll, the Queen, and people looking a lot like various animals.

Paul Magrs demonstrates a great understanding of the Season 20 TARDIS team; he effortlessly introduces readers to Five, Turlough, Nyssa, and Tegan as if this were a lost story from that season.

It's interesting that this simply isn't a retelling of Alice in Wonderland with Doctor Who elements; it’s a Doctor Who story with distinctive Alice in Wonderland (and Alice Through the Looking Glass) elements.

What's fun is that this story is almost as wild as Carroll's books. You meet strange characters in surprising situations, and the narrative twists and turns and keeps on moving all the time.

Eventually, the story changes a bit more as Tegan begins interfering with the established story and the Doctor suddenly meets the real-life elderly Alice on a cruise liner to America in 1932.

We slowly learn that whatever is going on is connected to Alice, Carroll, and the original Alice in Wonderland script.

The story does fall off a bit towards the end, and the companions don't do much.

The Black Guardian is the villain, but he mostly acts through others. The Jabberwocky and the Red Queen don't quite feel villainous.

Despite being a kids' book, In Wonderland isn't too naive in its language, and it flows effortlessly.