Scratchman

DOCTOR WHO: SCRATCHMAN
Tom Baker 

BBC hardcover £16.99

**** (4 stars) review by Christopher Geary 

An irresistible novelty book, this delivers on the promise of genre-franchise fiction in a manner rarely seen but always welcome. An actor famous for a beloved incarnation of a favourite character turns his hand, somewhat belatedly in his professional career, to an original novel based on his own performance of British SF-fantasy & horror superhero, the Doctor. The book attempts, quite boldly, to distil everything admirable, fascinating, and quirkily eccentric about Tom Baker’s tenure on the TV show into a chaptered story that flits effortlessly thorough Whovian lore, and Gallifreyan mythology, complete with much space-time gallivanting, with engagingly distressed, and endangered, companions. It never challenges readers' loyalty to the on-going show, and mostly fulfils expectations. OK, so there are no Daleks, but a Cyberman guest-stars, and both Sarah Jane Smith and Harry Sullivan are very well represented in a devil-bracing narrative dotted with mortal perils. All things considered, Doctor Who: Scratchman is great fun, and nearly a new kind of retro-Who masterpiece. 

It starts with a small island, besieged by animated scarecrows. Not just any old farming-related traditional menace, but zombified creatures, seemingly the ‘possessed’ bodies of local folks, victims of an inter-dimensional invasion. It’s a fairly typical Doctor Who foe, at first, but shocks accumulate, horrors increase, and stakes are raised as eldritch forces behind the evil goings-on makes a claim upon planet Earth, and the mystery of ‘Scratch’ unfolds. In-between all of the present-tense developments, on the morbidly conquered island and later, in a surrealistic version of ‘Hell’ that Terry Gilliam might have once imagined, the Doctor confronts antagonism outside of his familiar adventures in an episodic court-room drama that requires him to educate the immortal Time Lords about fear itself and its philosophical consequences for a multiplicity of intelligent life in a wholly indifferent universe.   

Yes, Scratchman is often a genuinely subtle story concerning the mortal dreads found at the heart of horror as a distinctive genre. Its varied menaces, drawn by Scratch from ‘the dreams of ghosts’ depend upon widescreen cinematic mayhem but, in this ever-relatable incarnation of the Doctor (all of our hero’s dialogue is carefully worded so as to facilitate the tones of Baker’s distinctive voice in the reader’s imagination), even troubles of death-games on a fantastical, enchanted battlefield that rudely mixes pinball and chess, can be overcome by a charming ideological perseverance, sincere brand loyalty, and honestly heroic self-sacrifice to honour human friendships.

The inclusion of jelly-babies and neutron-flows are wittily integrated into this SF/ fantasy adventure and will surprise no fans of Doctor Who in the 1970s, but the Doctor’s knowing humour extends far beyond a merely jokey approach, and exploitation of such familiar check-list items. Appearances by previous Doctors are handled with levity but also respect for the other actors potent contributions to the franchise. Scratchman delivers an expansive narrative in less than 300 pages, and it’s a publication that offers the hugely satisfying appeal of a ‘last chance to see’ event.