Two Envelopes And A Phone's Reviews > Doctor Who: Time and Relative

If you’re here to be directed to the worst, worthless, useless, magnificently boring, unutterably painful and bloated prequel novel of all time - you’ve come to the right place. This is the spot for me to help you out. If that’s what you want, all that I just mentioned…you need Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov.

How did you know I was fiddling with you, a little, up above? Well, first of all, this magnificent and moving prequel to 60 years (just now, We Are Here!) of everything else Who that came after it, or before it, or before and after it at the same time (timey wimey walkie talkie), is not bloated. It’s a novella, not a novel. I mean, I did give clues to my shenanigans…plus, y’know, the 5-star rating.

Telos got the rights to publish Doctor Who novellas for a little while, up until the BBC pulled the plug. A selling point was that we were going to get a stream of wonderfully unexpected authors. People sneaking in while the sneaking was good, and doing their own thing with the legend. Results, like the roster of contributors, were various…and mixed. This, Time and Relative, emerged as the generally-accepted best of the Telos lot, I would say by a wide margin. Though there’s some other good stuff…even if I’m the only one who dug certain entries with atypical vigour (Shell Shock, anyone?…)

The Doctor and his granddaughter Susan have been hiding out in 1963 London, with Susan blending in by attending Coal Hill School, for only several months. They are fugitives, and we learn a bit about where things are at with them, via Susan’s diary covering March into April of that crucial year.

It’s very clear they are suffering some form of punishment, even though they have rebelliously fled an advanced, alien planet, or place of some kind. The punishment is mental; even so far from Home, the Doctor and Susan are somehow programmed to obey Rules -No Meddling Rules, No Compassion Rules - that they don’t like. Susan, young, less indoctrinated by a long life of passive Observation, gets headaches and mental fogs, whenever she tries to think like a rebel, or someone who cares about what happens in the Universe. Her mysterious old Grandfather is having a harder time being what he wants to be, deep inside. No Meddling, No Meddling, No Meddling Allowed!…and anyway, it would be Detected; the punishments, the amnesia, would be infinitely worse than anything endured, thus far.

The Cold, on Earth - we see the London version - has persisted, from winter, into March/April. The Cold comes alive, achieves the sentience it had, when it was one of the first forms of Life, billions of years before the first self-entitled little human. It seems, the humans’ experiments have helped awaken it. The ice and snow moves, bites, kills. Susan and some students, trapped in a hostile, frozen environment, fight to survive…and push towards a mentally-shackled potential saviour who is programmed not to care, not to do a damn thing to change the icy inevitable No Future (for us). Bring a stuffed animal.

Oh, if this somehow could have been the first televised Doctor Who story, instead of cave-people! But we have it now, early was late (timey no whiney). Of course, Ian and Barbara can only flit through the story, or get spotted together on a date, or throw snowballs, like the kids, even when it’s Not Allowed and the other teachers wouldn’t. No Meddling, No Meddling with the time-line. It gives us headaches, it gets complaints, fanboys descend and Punish…

I got emotional, and teary-eyed reading this once, reading this twice. Susan is a particular favourite of mine, so there’s that. And the Show means a lot to this ageing duffer.