City of Death

Douglas Adams & James Goss City of Death (2018)
This is one of those which Target never got around to novelising - something to do with the rights being held by Douglas Adams and it was tricky because, as you know, Douglas Adams is the greatest writer who ever lived.

Anyway, here at last is City of Death for the sake of filling in a gap, now published as a mass market paperback as nature intended so as to facilitate its being sat nicely on the shelf in between Destiny of the Daleks and The Creature from the Pit. I never bothered with the hardback editions, which probably indicates how important these things are to me; and I've actually had this one over a year. When it came in the post I turned to the first page and read:

If you'd asked him about the Jagaroth a mere, say, twenty soneds ago, he'd have shrugged and told you they were a savage and warlike race and that if you weren't happy about that, you should meet the other guys.

I initially put it back on the shelf, having decided to leave it for a bit and read something which didn't seem likely to spend its entire page count winking, smirking and digging me in the ribs with an elbow, because I don't actually regard Adams as having been a comic genius, or even a particularly notable author once we move beyond either screen or speaker. I'm not even sure how much of City of Death was his, given that it supposedly constitutes something written by David Fisher, heavily revised by Douglas Adams and Graham Williams, now novelised by James Goss.

Goss seems to be one of those Who regulars presently churning out some tie-in thing every few months - here's the Torchwood novel, here's the umpteenth Doctor novel, here's the spin-off novel starring the Trinny and Susannah robots from whatever the fuck that piece of shit was called - which would seem to bode ill; but on a positive note, the guy is clearly serious about making a living and doing a decent job, so at least City of Death doesn't read like fan fiction - aside from maybe a few slightly jarring conflations of dialogue and thought here and there; and on a very positive note, once past the first page, I find he's not actually engaging in the Douglas Adams impersonation I had anticipated. He keeps the story well-grounded and solid, and peppered with a much more gentle wit than Adams ever managed, keeping it light without getting in the way. In fact, you could almost say he's saved City of Death from the guy who wrote it in all senses which count.

It's not great literature, but neither is it terrible, and City of Death is a very satisfying way to spend the best part of an afternoon. Internet research reveals that the version we saw on the telly was much reviled as a farce at the time of broadcast, but a quick glance at the names behind the reviling more or less underscores the worth of such views, or the lack thereof. I was fourteen at the time and I thought it was fucking great, and I thought the same when I saw it on VHS - whenever that was - and now James Goss has delivered a more rounded and satisfying interpretation of the same thing. My expectations weren't high, so consider me genuinely impressed.