Time Lord Victorious: The Knight, The Fool And The Dead Review

Firstly I want to state this, I’m reading and consuming the material surrounding this event in the order they were released. With that being said it’s about time I started the ask the bigger questions such as why this is all happening.

Thankfully the novel does answer these questions however it has only done so for some of the Doctor’s timeline with a few other stories and their placements still in flux.

With that being said let’s discuss this novel.

My relationship with Doctor Who novels has been quite mixed over the years. I haven’t venture too far into them but that’s mainly down to the few I’ve read not being particularly worth my time.

Here is something quite different. This book felt like it was almost written for me.

Lovecraftian monsters with a tale that’s practically screaming Stephen King. Yeah, I was hooked.

The idea of death is used to great effect with echos from The Waters Of Mars throughout acting as a lovely tone setter for the Doctor himself. The idea that this is so far back in time that death is treated like a disease rather than the end to the cycle we called life fascinated me.

The concept of this story has the Doctor, high strung, with the knowledge that he’s the last Time Lord and that makes him his own personal rule setter, but in high doubt as Adelaide’s suicide from Waters Of Mars follows the Doctor like a bad omen.

What better then to see the Doctor come face to face with what he believed he was the master of. Death itself.

So far it sounds like a dark tale, and it does have more in common with the Big Finish stories than the show, however there’s enough levity with the Tenth’s humour and my new favourite who character of all time, Brian The Ood, along with Mr. Ball of course (no I’m not making that up).

My main issue with this novel stems from its size. Around Chapter 5 I realised things were still being explained, and with this being a foreign place with foreign concepts to the Doctor, the lack of the Doctor’s more prominent whit does leave an element of Doctor Who missing.

Tenth is still the smarty pants he always was but the joy and wonder from knowing something before someone else, especially the audience, is gone here.

Doctor Who isn’t much with its fair share of monsters and the Kotturuh fit this story extremely well. Sharing similar ideals as the Doctor currently makes them the perfect advisory, along with a nice sledgehammer to the Doctor’s keeper of time attitude.

The length of the novel was something I initially had doubts over and that feeling hasn’t really gone. It’s clear this is a story in a larger series of events so keeping it self contained is a sensible idea however it’s hard not to feel worried that some necessary piece of the larger puzzle is going to be in another form of media.

The novel also makes it apparent this is only the first part in the story and, whilst I’m looking forward to seeing how it wraps up, there’s still a wealth of content to consume in between.

Maybe this complaint is more focused on the potential traps multimedia projects can fall into as accessibility is key.

The ending is one I’d like to sit on for the time being as I feel the direction they take the Tenth Doctor’s character is one that was hinted at but not to the levels shown here. It’s a take I like but I don’t know if the build up was enough.

The final pages are a particular joy if you’ve consumed some of the accompanying material however I still feel the turn was enough to excite me regardless, even if an audio drama version of this would’ve excited me just for those final moments.

With all of that being said, I had a lot of fun with this book, more than I thought I would have, so it has me eager to see what’s to come from this series!

8/10