The Time Travellers

Such an interesting way to talk about time travel like WOW

(Taken primarily from my Goodreads Review | Last Read: August/September 2022)

The Time Travelers by Simon Guerrier was one of the first Doctor Who novels I ever read (I've read a lot more since then) and I loved it. Re-reading it now, with a lot more Who under my belt, I find it still a really good novel that while somewhat lore-heavy and complexly timey-wimey, is still a really good book. And, it's a debut novel (though, as best I can tell, the author had written some Big Finish print short trips prior to this).

The plot revolves around the First Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara arriving in a dystopian 2006 London where England is losing a war with South Africa and the scientific part of the army is working on a time machine. The novel is set between the TV Stories Planet of Giants and The Dalek Invasion of Earth for the TARDIS Crew, while the London they find themselves in is a direct result of what would have happened if the Doctor had not interferred in The War Machines in his personal future. There are also references to The Tenth Planet and Remembrance of the Daleks. But on the whole, it's very much a self-contained, character-driven story.

There are plenty of twists as it progresses, but it's never overly confusing and everything is worked out well. The regulars are all written superbly with each of them getting good moments and something to do. The way the novel deals with time, as well as the First Doctor/Susan and the vague threat of the Time Lords is done very well. With the benefit of hindsight, Guerrier is able work in the aftermath of the "You can't rewrite history" speech from The Aztecs, as well as foreshadow, and make a bit less abrupt, Susan's departure in the next chronological story The Dalek Invasion of Earth. So, this is an excellent novel for Who fans in general, but especially if you like the mechanics/philosophy of Time Travel, and/or the original Tardis Team or the First Doctor era.

The First Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan
Set between Planet of Giants and The Dalek Invasion of Earth
Written by Simon Guerrier

Various marathoners had read and reviewed this book and intrigued me with their thoughts (although I hadn’t read any review in great detail to protect myself from spoilers).  For some reason I had come to the conclusion that his was a story with a large amount of, shall we say, fanwank.

Reviews and synopses mentioned WOTAN and the idea of a 2006 where the Doctor hadn’t defeated the supercomputer in 1966.  I envisaged a timey-wimey story with lots of references to other stories.  That wasn’t what I got.

Whilst reading the book I did find I was a little bored.  A sizeable chunk of the plot involves the TARDIS crew being captured, escaping and being captured again.  Set, as it is between Planet of Giants and The Dalek Invasion of Earth, this capture/escape structure is actually, very fitting for the era – look at the number of capture/escapes that populate the middle episodes of The Reign of Terror for example.  But to keep the reader interested in the story, this fails.In retrospect, what I’ve realised is that I love the concept of the story and its ‘version’ of time travel rules but just didn’t enjoy the execution as much as I anticipated.

As the Doctor Who Book Club podcast points out, a lot of the story is concerned with the relationship between Ian and Barbara with the Doctor very much pushed to the sidelines.  This treatment of the Doctor is also fitting with the era, but is also why I sometimes dislike Hartnell stories such as Marco Polo, where the Doctor seems to do very little, compared to the other regulars.

That said, the love story between Ian and Barbara is well told and Barbara’s grief when she believes Ian to have been shot is quite harrowing.

The time travel aspect of the story did, however, leave me scratching my head.  Initially I wasn’t too worried as I thought an explanation would be forthcoming about how there were duplicate people appearing despite no one ever having actually passed through the hoop (the time travel device extrapolated from Dalek technology, it turns out, found in a school basement, somewhere in Shoreditch…).  As the story progressed, however, it became clear an explanation wasn’t going to be forthcoming, at least not in the clarity that I would have liked.

I was also frustrated by the lack of detail afforded to the war between Britain and South Africa.  Many of the secondary characters involved in this strand are ultimately disposable and are, indeed, disposed of and this is a little frustrating.

The DWBC podcast mentions how the pace of the story improves dramatically when the TARDIS crew travel back to 1972 to stop the time travel experiments.  This section has some good reveals and provides a fairly satisfactory ending to the story.

When I read books, occasionally I will get an actor stuck in my head for a certain character – regardless of whether that fits the description provided.  Many of the characters in this were too thinly sketched for me to get a real handle on, but one that did was Griffiths – the South African double agent.  I must have started reading this book around the time of Series 5 of Being Human and I pictured Griffiths as being played by Colin Hoult – who played Crumb, the nerdy vampire.  It just seemed to fit with the initial impression of Griffiths (before his true identity was revealed) as being the nerdy, non-vampiric Crumb to be replaced by the far more confident vampire Crumb (although obviously without the fangs in the context of this book).

Overall, The Time Travellers was not what I was expecting.  I wouldn’t say I didn’t like the book, but I did find myself a little bored in the middle.  One thing that did strike me is that, in a way, this was like reading a ‘future historical’.  In the same way that historical stories from this era involved only human characters and no science fiction elements except the TARDIS, the Doctor and his companions, so The Time Travellers involves only human characters with the only true science fiction element being the time travel equipment.  There are references to things such as ‘the Machine’ and the machine men at the South Pole, which are references to WOTAN and the Cybermen and the South Africans have alien tech for weapons, but really this is a very human story.  In a way, that is probably what I disliked the most, which is odd because a lot of stories I enjoy are those with very little focus on monsters or technology but far more on the humans and their troubles (Inferno, The Roundheads, Gridlock, The Kingmaker, The Eye of the Scorpion, Delta and the Bannermen).

I probably would have enjoyed a story which examined this alternative world in more detail but I think this book’s biggest problems were how repetitive it felt, particularly in its middle section and its refusal to explain a little more clearly its central conceit.