The Fourteenth Doctor #05

'Wild Blue Yonder' (2023) from Target Books.

Despite being an incredibly faithful novelisation of the televised story, with only a select moment or two here adding new details, less even than the previous The Star Beast novelisation, I actually thoroughly enjoyed this. Whereas The Star Beast is a story that I already mostly enjoyed in televised format, and a novelisation didn't do much to add onto it, here with Wild Blue Yonder being a story I didn't enjoy very much televised, it sure worked in prose significantly more for me. The grotesque descriptions of the Not-Things' contortions and of the liminal feeling of the Spaceship worked much better for me here than with not-very-good CGI. It doesn't feel goofy when written, it feels scary, and unnerving. You really feel the betrayal of the Not-Things as they trick The Doctor and Donna into opening up to them instead of each other, because it's not undermined by lacking effects. After revisiting the story in novelised format, I'm certainly intrigued to see it again televised however, and seeing as it's the only one of the three 60th anniversary specials that I haven't seen twice, I think it's warranted it.