Doctor Who: The Hollow Men

Past Doctor Adventures #10

by Keith Topping, Martin Day

The village was cursed centuries ago, but only now is the alien evil beginning to revive...

The children of Hexen Bridge are gifted and clever, but insanity and murder follow in their wake. The Doctor has a special interest in the village, but on his return to England in the early twenty-first century, events seem to be escalating out of control.

Kidnapped and taken to Liverpool, the Seventh Doctor realises that developments in Hexen Bridge have horrifying repercussions for the rest of the country. Ace is left in the village, where small-minded prejudices and unsettled scores are flaring into violence.

As scarecrows fashioned from the bodies of the recent and ancient dead stalk the country lanes around Hexen Bridge, a sinister dark stain is spreading over the surrounding fields. And as the fierce evil grows ever stronger, can the Doctor and Ace prevent it from engulfing the entire world?

Genres: Doctor Who, Science Fiction, Fiction, Ebooks, Doctors, Media Tie In

284 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Keith Andrew Topping is an author, journalist and broadcaster most closely associated with his work relating to the BBC Television series Doctor Who and for writing numerous official and unofficial guide books to a wide variety of television and film series, specifically Buffy the Vampire Slayer.He is also the author of two books of rock music critique. To date, Topping has written over 40 books.

One of the leading players in British Doctor Who fandom's fan-fiction movement during the 1980s, Topping's first published fiction was the BBC Books "Past Doctor Adventure" The Devil Goblins from Neptune in 1997. The novel was co-written with his friend and frequent collaborator Martin Day.
The pair quickly followed this up with the acclaimed novel The Hollow Men in 1998. Following Day's move into TV scripting, Topping wrote the novels The King of Terror (2000) and Byzantium! (2001) solo. The latter novel is the only BBC Books Past Doctor Adventure to be set entirely within one episode of the television series Doctor Who — 1965's The Romans by Dennis Spooner. Topping also wrote the Telos Doctor Who novella Ghost Ship which was published in 2002 and proved so popular that it was one of only two novellas reissued as a paperback edition in 2003.

As well as writing fiction, Topping has also authored numerous programme guides to television series as diverse as The X Files, The Avengers, Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Sweeney and The Professionals. These were all published by Virgin Books, and co-written with Martin Day and Paul Cornell. Cornell, Day and Topping also collaborated on the popular Doctor Who Discontinuity Guide, published by Virgin Books in 1995 and re-issued, in the US, by MonkeyBrain Books in 2004, a lighthearted guide to the mistakes and incongruities of the television series. The trio had first worked together co-writing two editions of The Guinness Book of Classic British Television (1993 and 1996 respectively).

Subsequently, Topping wrote The Complete Slayer: An Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Every Episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a number of related texts on this popular series as well as guide books to The West Wing (Inside Bartlet's White House), Angel (Hollywood Vampire), 24 (A Day in the Life) and Stargate SG-1 (Beyond the Gate), amongst others. According to the 2003 book Slayer Slang by Michael Adams (Oxford University Press), Topping was the originator of the word 'vampiry' (adj. "exhibiting features of a vampire") in the January 2000 edition of his book Slayer (pg. 26). In addition, Topping is a regular contributor of articles and reviews to several TV and genre titles including TV Zone, Xposé and Shivers and is a former Contributing Editor of Dreamwatch. He also worked as Project Consultant on Charmed: The Complete DVD Collection.

On radio, Topping was the Producer/Presenter of the monthly Book Club (2005-2007) and currently co-presents a daily television review slot, Monday to Friday, on The Simon Logan Show for BBC Newcastle. He has also contributed to the BBC television series' I Love the '70s, Call The Cops and The Perfect Detective and has written for Sounds, the Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times Culture Supplement and many other magazines and periodicals.

Topping writes, and occasionally performs, stand-up comedy and has written radio comedy sketches, an (unproduced) stage play and a TV pilot (with Martin Day) that is, currently, stuck in “Development Hell.”

Topping continues to live and work on Tyneside. He achieved a lifetimes ambition in 2005 when his book on The Beatles, Do You Want to Know a Secret was published by Virgin Books.

Reviews

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

A highly enjoyable Seventh Doctor and Ace story that’s set during the latter part of the Classic era of the show.

Like many of these books that were written during ‘The Wilderness Years’ there’s plenty of references to past adventures.
This story is a lose sequel to The Awakening whilst also reminiscent of The Daemon’s, as something sinister is developing in the small village of Hexen Bridge.

Both The Doctor and Ace are well characterised and with them being separated for a big chunk of the book, each getting their own moments through the story.

I’m really benefiting from having seen all of the classic era on DVD since I’d last read this, all the references helped pull the story along.
I enjoyed this one more on a revisit!

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my all-time-favourite 7th Doctor/Ace novels. Topping & Day don't simply capture the era...they freeze-dry it in special cryogenics. It emerges a decade AFTER the TV era it emulates...and is even BETTER than that era! Speaking of decade jumps...congratulations goes to the authors for terrifying readers with creepy scarecrows prior to their TV appearance in 2007.

[Brayden Raymond · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is top notch Dr.Who and some of the best 7 & Ace content I've had the chance to read. I particularly liked that for the majority of the novel The Dr. and Ace were separated and followed the same mystery despite being apart. I found the characters interesting and compelling and the story exciting to the very end. Who would have thought that a rural English town with some scarecrows would prove so interesting.

[Gareth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A murky, moody horror novel featuring a creepy village and killer scarecrows, but it spends most of its effort on the villagers who always seem a little bit off. The Doctor seems to be a step behind in this one, which makes the action strangely unexpected. It fits into that late 80s era very nicely, as well as evoking the New Adventures from the 90s with excursions into urban horror. Lots to like here.

[F.R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Doctor and Ace find themselves involved in both a folk horror AND a gritty gangster take. This combination shouldn’t really work, and the chaotic way it ends gives away how much the seams are straining, but I was thoroughly engrossed throughout.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

The thing that struck me most about The Hollow Men was every time I picked the book up I found myself, after reading a few pages, unconsciously turning the book over in my hands to look at he cover illustration. I wasn't admiring the menacingly drawn scarecrow... no, I was reminding myself which Doctor I was reading about. There's only one Doctor it could possibly be as Ace plays quite a prominent role in the advancement of the plot but I still kept glancing at Sylvester's mug just to make sure every so often. Although the dialogue never strays away from what the Seventh Doctor and Ace might say it seemed for the most part to have been plonked down on the page as if the authors assumed the readers would supply the colour and tone themselves.

It's not a bad book, it was voted best book in the 1999 Shelf Life awards in the Other Doctor category, but I still don't know why it proved to be so popular. I suspect it has something to do with the popularity of the combination of the Seventh Doctor and Ace. There are some decent elements like the sub plot about Shanks and the Doctor's interaction with him past and present. The first third of the book seemed quite intriguing with its Wicker Man style village with a hidden secret but as soon as the Doctor gets whisked off to Liverpool things start to flag.

The plot plods on, moving forward in the direction I know it's going and throws up very few twists or surprises along the way, while the sparkless characterization of the Tardis crew fails to divert my attention from the join the dots story line. This isn't a universally held opinion, not by a long way, but it is an accurate summary of my own thoughts at the time of reading.

[Devin Harvey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was just totally a Seven/Ace style story from beginning to start and I felt the author's really captured Seven and Ace and put them in the perfect setting for a story that includes the two. The book had pretty good atmosphere, surprisingly as the whole first two parts were a bit slow and un-suspenseful. The first two parts seem quite political and mysterious but as you make it through the third part the plot thickens and gets quite fast-paced and interesting. Usually I think seperating companion from Doctor for too long can ruin a story, but somehow it really worked here, as we would get a chapter of slow-paced politics and interesting debate with Seven and suddenly a dramatic switch to an obviously fast-paced chapter focusing mainly on Ace (I say obviously because, I mean it is Ace). This is one of those books that when you finally finish it, you automatically want to go back through, especially to go back through the epilogues, not because you are confused and annoyed but because there are references and continuations that help make the book just that much more interesting and entertaining. I definitely will be rereading this eventually!

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

A darn good novel which captures the darker, more abstract style of storytelling from the late McCoy era of the series. Hope more Kindle editions of Doctor Who novels featuring the Seventh Doctor become available in the near future.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite a good story. Love Seven and Ace together

[Pietro Rossi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The TARDIS lands at Hexen Bridge, a village where family ties run deep. A nice mix of everyday deviancy such as vandalism, the macabre in the form of scarecrows, and real world issues such as drug pushing and (eco)terrorism.

A big bugbear for me is the  constant cross referencing. This is the Seventh Doctor and Ace, but the author keeps linking lines,  thoughts, plot devices to previous Doctors,  both televised and never seen stories. This gives the book an amateurish, fan-fiction edge. But this ploy does give an explanation at the end if how the Doctor is connected to the village at the beginning.  

Overall there's a good mysterious village story struggling to get out. Merging the extraordinary with the ordinary can work. But the writing style just didn't gell with me. I struggled to finish the book, so 4/10

Scoring: 0 bad; 1-3 poor; 4-6 average; 7-9 good; 10 excellent.

[Dan Robbins · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️✨

This was great fun! Really fits into the Season 26 vibe. The Doctor and Ace were great but it felt like they were barley in it! The side characters were great tho! The pacing was a bit weird. Sometimes it feel fast paced, but most times it felt pretty slow. A lot of build up that sort of payed off?? The last act felt a bit meh compared to the rest of the book, but I overall enjoyed this! The hollow men were also pretty scary 😳

[Michael T Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dammit, I accidentally added this book a second time, told it to remove it, and it removed my review. Apparently I thought it was quite good & it gave Ace a lot to do, which I enjoyed. Anything I wrote beyond that is now lost to time ....

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good book

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review here: https://fsfh-book-review2.webnode.com...

[Tracy Smyth · Rating 4 out of 5]

An easy read. The Doctor saves the day

[Whofan · Rating 4 out of 5]

More adult themed story with a touch of horror mixed in . The doctor and ace come across realistic and true to the tv show .
Overall very good story

[Aurae Ivkovic · Rating 4 out of 5]

haven't read it since middle school but I remembering it being a pretty solid doctor who story

[Varad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Take two pillars of English society, the country village and the public school. Strip them until nothing remains but their pathologies. Throw in corrupt politicians, gangsters, an alien menace whose centuries-long plan is ready to be put into high gear, and racism and xenophobia. Add a dollop of sex and violence. Last but certainly not least, sprinkle the Doctor and Ace and top. Serve chilled. Or, in this case, hot. Such is the recipe for Keith Topping and Martin Day's The Hollow Men.

Spiritually the book has much in common with the television stories "The Daemons" and "The Awakening." In fact, the book is a sequel to the latter, surely one of the more unlikely candidates for a sequel among Doctor Who stories. Both concern small country villages imperiled by an alien threat which manipulates humans in order to feed off their psychic energy and carry out its own ends. If you're wondering - as the Doctor himself muses aloud at one point - why the invasion that was thwarted in "The Awakening," this book explains why.

Substantively, though, the book is very much in keeping with the Virgin New Adventures, even though it was published as part of the BBC's Past Doctor Adventures range. The Doctor isn't the master manipulator in this one that he is in the Virgin books. But he clearly has had his eye on Hexen Bridge, the village where most of the action occurs, for his long time; since right after "The Daemons," he explains at one point. So for him he's been keeping an eye on things for several centuries, though in human terms the story takes place early this century, so about thirty years after "The Awakening" and fifty after "The Daemons."

Thematically the book is like the NAs, too, with gun running, drug dealing, corruption, adultery, racism: all the so-called adult stuff woven in, that is, that made the NAs notorious on one hand, but when handled right so compelling on the other. The Hollow Men hews a middle course, trying to keep the shape of a story from Season 26 while incorporating the more mature storytelling of the Virgin books, without succumbing to the seediness and grubbiness of them at their worst. For the most part Topping and Day straddle the two worlds successfully.

If there's one criticism I have, it's that the Doctor gets sidelined for a good portion of the novel. He arrives at Hexen Bridge, is kidnapped and taken to Liverpool, then he makes it back to Hexen Bridge to confront the alien menace. But most of the action is initiated by others, the villains and the Doctor's associates. Even when he does confront Jerak (the alien menace) at the end, he does so through the spirits of the people Jerak has consumed. Jerak always remains abstract and indistinct, a mass of tentacles writing in the ground and scarecrows maurauding in the night.

Jerak fell to Earth in 1685. 325 years later the descendants of his first victims are still paying for the sins of their fathers. Whether one can escape one's past - and how one does so - is the main theme of the book. It is fitting it should be set at a school in a tiny village. Few English institutions (the church comes to mind) are more dominated by their pasts and traditions. Breaking free may only be possible at a terrible cost. But the cost of remaining in bondage, as the villagers of Hexen Bridge have known for centuries, may be even worse. Lucky for them they have a renegade Time Lord in their corner.


Friday, March 1, 2013

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1590612.html

A Seventh Doctor / Ace novel set before Survival, thus outside the New Adventures continuity which I am used to. Despite the fact that Keith Topping is a co-author, I thought it was rather good, a sort-of sequel to The Awakening and to a lesser extent The Dæmons, with occult practices in a remote English village connecting both to ancient aliens and the highest levels of today's government; lots of good moments for Ace and her Doctor, and managing to engage with the genre of The Wicker Man while still being more or less a Doctor Who story. Two things I didn't like: the scene-setting seventeenth-century dialogue in the opening chapter is terrible (though oddly later chapters do it better) and there seemed to be a geographical delusion that Liverpool is the nearest large city to Wiltshire. But apart from that it worked for me.

[Jenae · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've got a bit of an obsession with all things DW at the moment, and borrowed this book from a friend as a quick fix. The writing is good but I couldn't get invested in the story. The "hollow men", while creepy, weren't the ultimate antagonist. He was only given a brief treatment at the end before being dispatched by the joint efforts of the Doctor and Ace. Overall, it was a forgettable alien encounter but made much more enjoyable by the presence of Ace and the seventh Doctor.

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Doctor goes to a school reunion where he is the governor. The village has some strange legends and weird scarecrows. They do not like any outsiders. This is a good plot that could very easily have been a TV series. It's also a sequel to a classic series. The scarecrows are scary, and it does have a feeling of village under siege that adds to the atmosphere. A good read.

[David Layton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a genuinely scary book about a village possessed by "something" for generations. There is not much new here, as the plot is a "Midwich Cuckoos" variation with some "Wicker Man" thrown in. But it is good fun. The authors have decided to go with the usual 7th Doctor characterization of a Time Lord on a mission that only he knows about.

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fair book. Well characterized and well plotted, but slow and overly tied to a minor element of Whovian continuity.

[Michael Blackmore · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the better Dr Who Novels, but with a bit of a slow start. It's not exactly new territory for a type of monster/threat but still reasonably readable and fun.

[Stephen Osborne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, but, IMHO, overly horribly violent, Seven story. Some creepy moments, but a slow start and some confusing scenes marred a good premise.