Bree Hatfield's Reviews > Doctor Who: Time and Relative

“‘Continuity, bah!’ Grandfather said yesterday or the day after. ‘Doesn’t exist, child. Except in the minds of the cretinously literal …. Without contradiction, we’d be entirely too easy to track down. Have you ever thought about that? It’s important that we not be too consistent.’”
—
“I think meddling is an obligation. I want to be part of time and space. When we left Home, machines in the box came to life: clocks, to tick away the passage of seconds; odometers, to measure miles. Grandfather put those devices there, though they had no purpose until we ran away. Home isn’t a place where anything happens. Space there is like inside the Box — if you’re measuring all the dimensions in the universe, the space of Home doesn’t count. When we left, we winked into existence, entering the steady stream that runs from past to the future, emerging from the Box to become dimensional. Before that, I don’t even know if we qualified as being alive.”
—
“Everyone had obviously suffered through Adventures — which had changed them and the way they felt about the world. Or maybe just gave them an excuse for acting the way they had always wanted to.”

I started watching Classic Who recently and instantly fell in love with the first Doctor and Susan. They bounce off each other in exactly the way that a Doctor-companion relationship should work, but they also have a wholly unique relationship since they’re family. Suffice it to say, when I found out about this book I needed to read it. And if you are at all a fan of the first Doctor, I highly recommend this book!

The writing style is brilliant, the YA voice brings Susan’s character to life, makes the book more accessible, and brings a unique perspective to Doctor Who fiction we rarely see. It takes true talent to write an adult story in a YA voice, but Kim Newman does it brilliantly.

I love Susan as a character and a companion (as I’ll go into later). It’s very rare that the Doctor interacts with a school-age person, so Susan brings an air of whimsy and a want to learn that some of the other companions lack, at least to Susan’s extent. Her personality won me over from the first episode I saw with her, and this book expands on that and her overall character wonderfully.

Susan’s arc in this book is also incredibly important. She loves being able to go places and see things with her grandfather, but in this book she learns that it can be dangerous, that people can die and that she can lose friends. The lives of exiles is not a pleasant one, but she finds in the end that it’s one she’s willing to live, if only to keep her grandfather in check.

I love the characterization of the Doctor through Susan’s perspective. Susan, like the first Doctor, is the blueprint for a companion: an empathetic person who the Doctor is close to and who encourages him to be better. However, the first Doctor is much more stubborn and has had hardly any time with humans, where Susan has. She knows how great and terrible they can be, which is why the Doctor needs her, even if he never admits it. I really like how his first companion is the one who helps him realize the value of humanity, and I think it’s illustrated perfectly in this novella.

We see the beginnings of his love for humanity, going from a mindset of not meddling in the Cold’s takeover and extinction of humanity to seeing the value of humanity through their creativity and imagination. Because of this, we see him realize that meddling for the sake of helping people can do a great deal of good. This is the start of The Doctor, when he decides to take on that identity and internalize it. All because of Susan and her friends.

The plot is also very good. The stakes are just high enough to make things intense, but not too high as to ruin the vibe of the characters.

In the afterward, Justin Richard’s says “The Doctor of today is in danger of becoming merely a hero like any other. By returning to the roots of Doctor Who, Kim is able to recapture so much that we have subsequently lost. Time and Relative is a startling demonstration that less is more.” Since beginning to watch Classic Who, the differences between the character of the Doctor become stark. The first Doctor is aloof, mysterious, and too curious for his own good. While the Doctor of today still has a great deal of mysteries, they’re put on center stage and be plot points and character moments. The first Doctor cared very little about all that. The Doctor of today, especially with Steven Moffat’s run onward, feels very much like a typical hero. He has flaws, but they’re never explored deeply. Doctors 9 and 10 are the sweet spot in between mystery and heroism, but Richards’ fears are valid. And he’s right about Newman’s book, it does a fantastic job at reminding us why Doctor Who is so great.