September 7th, 2017
39 comments
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Doctor Who and The Krikkitmen Hardcover
by Douglas Adams and James Goss.
Available to order from www.amazon.co.uk
The Audio CD is also available to order from www.amazon.co.uk (audible free trail available)
Intergalactic war? That’s just not cricket … or is it?
The Doctor promised Romana the end of the universe, so she’s less than impressed when what she gets is a cricket match. But then the award ceremony is interrupted by eleven figures in white uniforms and peaked skull helmets, wielding bat-shaped weapons that fire lethal bolts of light into the screaming crowd. The Krikkitmen are back.
Millions of years ago, the people of Krikkit learned they were not alone in the universe, and promptly launched a xenophobic crusade to wipe out all other life-forms. After a long and bloody conflict, the Time Lords imprisoned Krikkit within an envelope of Slow Time, a prison that could only be opened with the Wicket Gate key, a device that resembles – to human eyes, at least – an oversized set of cricket stumps…
From Earth to Gallifrey, from Bethselamin to Devalin, from Krikkit to Mareeve II to the far edge of infinity, the Doctor and Romana are tugged into a pan-galactic conga with fate as they rush to stop the Krikkitmen gaining all five pieces of the key. If they fail, the entire cosmos faces a fiery retribution that will leave nothing but ashes…
Categorised under: Books, Story books
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Owsi07
September 8th, 2017 - 6:43amI believe this was submitted by Douglas Adams in 1976 as a story but then was being prepared as feature length film however this was not made and elements of the story I think were used in the ‘Key to Time’ story and Adams reworked the story to what later became the third instalment in ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ series that was ‘Life , the Universe and Everything’. ‘Doctor Who and the Scratchman’ was being written by Ian Marter and Tom Baker ( Harry Sullivan and the Doctor ) during filming but never came to fruition.
Doctor Mysterio
September 8th, 2017 - 12:15amI’ve preordered this already. I very much enjoyed the previous Adams adaptions.
Whorules
September 7th, 2017 - 8:47pmStill don’t understand why the doctor is never featured on the covers of these books. We’ve had a 2nd, 3rd and this will be the 4th 4th dr book and none have had the doctor on the cover. Also i wish the general fiction would age up a bit, i don’t mind reading the stuff aimed at a younger audience but i do feel that the modern stories slightly miss the reasons i loved the target books when i was growing up. They were full of death and destruction and a hero who won without resorting to just beating up the baddies (something that puts me off a lot of america shows) and at the time the target books were released that was not something you got in kids books. I moved to reading adult books by the age of 12 because apart from the who books other kids books were so dull and boring! It’s very different now, kids books are impressively well written now, largley due to j k rowling and the sales figures proving kids will read if the books are good enough. I’ve just finished steve cole’s last young bond book and it’s rather violent, full of genuine threat to characters and brilliant, that is what I’d like to see the who books return to. I don’t mean a return to the excesses of the virgin books, all swearing and pointless angst, but just a little more oomph would be nice. Oh, and put the doctor on the cover again!
bryan
September 8th, 2017 - 11:40amHi whorules. Id really just like some decent covers, regardless if the Doctor was on it or not. We keep getting told Tom Bakers 4th Doctor and Elizabeth sladens , Sarah Jane, are the most fondly remembered, so put them on the cover, surely it would sell more copies?
But the covers to all of these “Douglas Adams Presents“ books, have been shockingly bad. I assume all the bits and bobs on the cover have a relevance, but its so lacking in any vim or sparkle.
DWM did a big iece on this story, as did the fantastic Charles Norton movies book. Not one i was expecting or begging for. But then i still hanker for Revelation and ressurection to get official novel releases, yeah even after all this time 😉
Whorules
September 8th, 2017 - 3:52pmYep, harvest of time featuring the 3rd doctor and the delgado master and what is the cover? A spaceship! Odd marketing choice. And yes I’d lovevtocomplete the original run of official novels.
DoctorSong2016
September 8th, 2017 - 4:06pmI’m still not happy that Romana II is in this instead of Sarah or even Leela.
The Dalek Whovian
September 7th, 2017 - 6:08pmWas this meant to be a movie at one point?
booboo
September 7th, 2017 - 6:30pmThat was Doctor who and the scratchman i think
G.Nimon
September 7th, 2017 - 7:24pmAlthough I think that this script was submitted as a Doctor Who movie in 1980 to Paramount
Whorules
April 19th, 2017 - 9:33pmDisappointed it’s moved from January to April, quite a delay.
Whorules
April 20th, 2017 - 11:48pmAmazon are now saying April 2019
Anonymous
April 17th, 2017 - 8:50amIf this was a Lost Story
Shouldn’t this be in the Lost Stories Range in Big Finish
The Outcast
April 17th, 2017 - 9:13amI’m hoping they’ll adapt this and Lost in the Dark Dimension eventually.
Anonymous
April 17th, 2017 - 10:06amWell, Is Lost in the Dark Dimension still possible
Unless they adapt it to the original and get Tim Treloar to do the third Doctor and get Mike Yates to play what would have been the Brigadier’s role but still
The Outcast
April 17th, 2017 - 10:28amAnd they could change the ending so the 4th Doctor from that Dark Dimension become the Curator we see in day of the Doctor and ultimately becomes the Watcher in physical form in order to put history back on course.
G.T
April 13th, 2017 - 11:27amCalled it! Can’t wait to read this when it is released!
KORSAIR
April 12th, 2017 - 2:08pmSounds like a 60’s skiffle band.
Joshua Duffy
April 12th, 2017 - 12:57pmI heard this was suppose to be a doctor who movie when doctor who meets scratchman didn’t get made but parts of it were used in the key to time saga and hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy
Doctor Mysterio
April 12th, 2017 - 7:06pmScratchman was a different story.
Prof Horner
April 12th, 2017 - 12:00pmAre we ever going to get Nigel Robinson Unearthly child audio?
Peter
April 14th, 2017 - 4:49pmAs far I know this is coming out December 2018.
The Outcast
April 12th, 2017 - 2:44amWow, I’ll probably have a look at this one.
Borg
April 12th, 2017 - 2:25amIs this an original story?
Bob
September 3rd, 2017 - 11:11amSort of. It was originally supposed to be a Fourth Doctor story, but was unmade. It was later adapted into the third ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ book, but this is the first release of it in Doctor Who form.
TARDISGuy
April 12th, 2017 - 1:55amWhy? The concept for this story was used in the third Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy novel. It’s technically already been written. If you’re going to novelise unmade Douglas Adams stories, he pitched at least three before The Pirate Planet that weren’t this one.
Al
April 12th, 2017 - 2:13amBut this one is famous because it’s long been attached to the Tom Baker Doctor and had been rumoured to be produced for years. So I perfectly understand why they chose this one. And maybe they’re planning to do the others, too. Makes perfect sense to me.
Peter
April 12th, 2017 - 2:43amI imagine for the same reason Big Finish produced the Lost Stories.
Paul Castle
April 15th, 2017 - 9:26pmWhy not? Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency was a modified version of Shada, with elements of City Of Death woven in, so Doctor Who And The Krikkitmen is no different really. It’d be worth a read because Doctor Who and Hitch Hikers are two tonally* different beasts, and the central characters through whom you’ll experience the story will naturally play to another beat.
*not a typo, in case you were wondering 🙂
Stephen
April 11th, 2017 - 10:27pmI’d rather BBC Books got Eric Saward’s two Dalek stories novelists.
Stephen
April 11th, 2017 - 10:28pmThat should, of course, have said novelised.
Whorules
April 11th, 2017 - 11:50pmI’d hoped that to, but I suppose that’s down to Eric saward and weither he wants anyone to do them. Happy enough with this but think I’d have preferred farewell great Macedon or Lords of the red planet as novels, still I’ll take what I can get! Just wondering if this is the later film treatment with presumably romana or the original with Sarah Jane. Must be the film treatment as that had the ‘doctor who and’ title.
Al
April 12th, 2017 - 2:14amThat’s up to Saward. If Saward was Douglas Adams’ estate they’d have been done. But for whatever reason it hasn’t happened yet.
Who?
April 11th, 2017 - 9:04pmI assume there will be at least some similarities between this and Adams’ “The Tertiary Phase” of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which features homicidal cricket bat-wielding robots from the Planet Krikkit…
Anonymous
April 11th, 2017 - 8:15pmI thought so. I prefer they did what they do with a number of Authors that have passed, by clearly putting on the cover ‘James Goss writing as Douglas Adams’ in this case. Case in point, the James Bond/Bourne novels with people writing as Ian Fleming/writing as Robert Ludlum.
Doctor Mysterio
April 11th, 2017 - 8:08pmDidn’t Adams himself use part of this story as the basis for Life, the Universe and Everything?
Al
April 12th, 2017 - 2:14amYes, and Shada was reworked as the first Dirk Gently novel too, but that didn’t stop them from adapting that.
Anonymous
April 11th, 2017 - 7:56pmDouglas Adams?
Nuallain
April 11th, 2017 - 7:58pmYes, Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen was a story Adams was working on writing but which was ultimately abandoned and unmade.
I do think they’re kind of pushing it at this stage. I’m not even sure Adams got beyond a vague outline so these “By Douglas Adams and…” DW books are getting less Adamsy all the time.
Al
April 12th, 2017 - 2:15amMy guess is giving him top billing on the novelisations is part of the deal. As a result the books are usually filed under Adams’ name in the shops which might sell more copies. Smart, really. I know people who’d never bought a Doctor Who book before who bought Shada and City of Death because of Adams’ name.