A trio of novels and a pair of series companions
ALMOST PERFECT
AUTHOR: James Goss
PUBLISHER: BBC Books 256 pages £6.99
SKYPOINT
AUTHOR: Phil Ford
PUBLISHER: BBC Books 256 pages £6.99 ***
PACK ANIMALS
AUTHOR: Peter Anghelides
PUBLISHER: BBC Books 256 pages £6.99
★★★☆☆
SOMETHING IN THE DARKNESS
AUTHOR: Stephen James Walker
PUBLISHER: Telos pages £12.99
TORCHWOOD ARCHIVES
AUTHOR: Gary Russell
PUBLISHER: BBC Books 158 pages £14.99
★★☆☆☆
IF, AS ELVIS COSTELLO SAID, WRITING ABOUT MUSIC IS like dancing about architecture, then writing a Torchwood novel must be like crocheting about geometry. I mean, how exactly do you approach turning TV's most schizophrenic drama into a coherent literary endeavour? Are you writing a gritty urban thriller? Or just Scooby Doo with shagging?
Almost Perfect emulates Torchwoods drunken lurches in style and tone with a story that's part William Gibson, part Sophie Kinsella and, whenever Jack opens his mouth, a little bit Round the Home. It sticks pretty close to the standard model of an alien parasite attaching itself to the local populace and wreaking more devastation than Charlotte Church on a girls' night out. But the ways that threat manifests itself - turning Ianto into a woman on the Cardiff-to-Dublin ferry, for example - are bunkers, and the climax is like Hieronymus Bosch directed by Derek Jarman.
Skypoint couldn't be simpler: a tale of a shapeshifting ET eating its way through the inhabitants of a high-rise apartment block, it's a bit like a Welsh Die Hard (Dai Hard?). It doesn't feel too far removed from the Beeb's Who tie-ins - though they'd probably have passed on the occasional nudity, not to mention the big pile of shit with an eyeball. The set-up's also the perfect excuse for Tosh and Owen to set up home together under cover of being a married couple, which is crying out for a spin-off sitcom...
Pack Animals is a full-on monster mash, with creatures from an RPG coming to life and causing havoc in the streets of Cardiff. It's gory stuff at times (Jack spends half the novel with a foot dangling off) and is a bit action-heavy for the medium - there's an 11-page car chase - but Peter Anghelides just about manages to sustain the momentum all the way to a big setpiece finish in the Millennium Stadium.
Something in the Darkness, the latest of Telos's forensically detailed unauthorised guides, chronicles everything you could wish to know and much you wouldn't - about season two. It's an impressive source of reference and opinion, and staunch defender Stephen James Walker continues to put up a good fight on the show's behalf.
The Torchwood Archives is presented as a suppressed dossier compiled by a journalist, with character profiles and episode breakdowns presented via memos, "case notes" and sneakily-accessed emails. It's a neat conceit, and there's some interesting imagery here - concept sketches of the SUV and the like. But the format is very frustrating. Fans will likely find themselves skimming or skipping much of the text - and wishing for a more conventional companion that spends less time "in character" telling them things they already know.
Helen Raynor's series two episode "To the Last Man" was based on a short story created for the Torchwood website by James Goss.
DOCTOR WHO:
THE TIME-TRAVELLER'S ALMANAC
AUTHOR: Steve Tribe PUBLISHER: BBC Books 192 pages £14.99 ISBN: 978-1-846-01572-8 OUT NOW!
This does a similar job to Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia, but in a more readable format than that A-Z reference work.
Arranged chronologically, it's a history of the Whoniverse, from The Dark Times to the year 10,000,000,000,000.
The first 50 pages are a good way of getting kids interested in history.
As you'd expect, the likes of Madame de Pompadour are profiled. But it also spins off from one-line mentions of the likes of Genghis Khan.
It's all new Who - apart from, Say, things mentioned by Sarah Jane, like the robot mummies from "Pyramids of Mars".
There are some fun little lists - like the movies visible in "Blink"'s DVD store.
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