Despite Michael Grade's decision to cancel Doctor Who in 1989, the show lived on in spin-off media. At the time, I doubt it was simply a way to milk the fan-cow further: rather, it was a way to give them at least some Who. And boy, there's been a lot of material published: disregarding the Novellas, the novelisations and the short stories, there have been 33 Missing Adventures, 61 strictly speaking Doctor Who New Adventures, both published by Virgin, 76 Past Doctor's adventures and 73 Eighth Doctor's adventures (BBC Books). So a whopping total of 243 books. I am about one third of the way there.
Just like the original TV show, some of it is really good, some of it is really bad. There seems to be a tendency amongst fans to prefer Virgin's publications to BBC Books. It is true that, amongst the books I have read, the NAs were oh so much bolder in what they undertook than the EDAs. They started off - from their very onset - with a four-part story, albeit with a meh enemy, and pushed the Doctor further than he could have gone on TV.
So, to know chaff from wheat, here are a couple of useful pointers:

  • Flee Gary Russell like plague if what you're after is a decent, consistent plot. If you're looking for lots of continuity references, though, he's definitely your man. Some of the author's worst offenses include The Invasion of the Cat-People, and more recently the IDW Comic Agent Provocateur. Instruments of Darkness is not too bad, but still doesn't quite work.
  • Marc Platt, on the other hand, always delivers mindblowing works. Though they are generally not action epics, quite the contrary in fact, they all have in common a very intricate plot which makes a second reading very rewarding. Though Ghost Light, his TV offering, was at least one episode short in order to be fully understandable, his New Adventures books have all the space which is necessary to craft a great plot with care. Cat's cradle: Time's crucible has three different time zones which are interacting with one another and gives a nice glimpse of Gallifreyan history. Lungbarrow, the most expensive Doctor Who book to my knowledge, picks up on that history and is grand because it manages to explain the start of the 1996 movie convincingly, which is no meagre feat.
  • The second most expensive Doctor Who book is, as far as I know, Lance Parkin's The Dying Days, the only Virgin book to feature Paul McGann's Doctor. It has in common with Platt a great care given to a well-built plot, but is not quite as good at mythology-building. Where Platt took on the show's history in his stride and expanded it, Parkin only uses it as a help for his books - which is completely, absolutely fine, given how much he delivers. Parkin's strength lies not in continuity, but in characterisation. All his characters are particularly well crafted, instantly loveable or despicable. His Father Time is one of the only BBC Books that manage to push the boundaries of the show as far as Virgin books had done.
  • Then there's Steve Lyons. His work is pure genius, unleashed in books. He does not only push the boundaries of what Doctor Who is, he plays with the concept of the book. He is, to date, the author of the only book I've read to break the fourth wall as a plot device (Conundrum). His Crooked World is very simply a joyride. The Witch Hunters is one of the very very rare pure historicals, and is worth every penny. A shame that the monsters he created for The Murder Game and Final Sanction haven't got that much depth - still, both books are still very entertaining.
  • Terrance Dicks's books are just that. Entertaining, and well-crafted, but not really interesting beyond that. Timewyrm: Exodus is still one of the best NAs I have read to date, and his Players arc, revisited in Endgame, is definitely a great plot device.
  • In the pantheon of Great Doctor Who Writers, there's also, in no particular order, Paul Cornell, Kate Orman and Jonathan Blum, Andrew Cartmel, though I must admit that, with the exception of Seeing I and maybe Atom Bomb Blues, none of their books has delivered to me yet...
  • And then there's the one-offs: great books that simply are awesome. Fear Itself, The Banquo Legacy, Asylum, Eater of Wasps are among them, and they're all wonderful page-turners.


So there's a lot out there - a lot of great new companions (well. Bernice, Fitz and Chris Cwej are worth it, I'm not going to say about the other ones) and a lot of less good ones. But the good books are most definitely worth the poorer ones.
All links above are, when available, to The Cloister Library, a great resource to find out whether books require prep reading or not. When scouring ebay for these books, please consider using http://www.buy.at/revelation!