The Story of Martha was a novella collection, the twenty-eighth release in the BBC New Series Adventures series. It was written by all of Dan Abnett, David Roden, Steve Lockley & Paul Lewis, Robert Shearman and Simon Jowett and featured the Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones.
It was the first of the full-length New Series Adventures volumes to not be a single-storyline novel. It was the last to feature Martha and was set during the Year That Never Was.
Publisher's summary
For a year, while the Saxon Master ruled over Earth, Martha Jones travelled the world telling people stories about the Doctor. She told people of how the Doctor has saved them before, and how he will save them again.
This is that story. It tells of Martha's travels from her arrival on Earth as the Toclafane attacked and decimated the population through to her return to Britain to face the Master. It tells how she spread the word and told people about the Doctor. The story of how she survived that terrible year.
But it's more than that. This is also a collection of the stories she tells - the stories of adventures she had with the Doctor that we haven't heard about before. The stories that inspired and saved the world . . .
Stories
| # | Title | Writer |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Story of Martha | Dan Abnett |
| 2 | The Weeping | David Roden |
| 3 | Breathing Space | Steve Lockley and Paul Lewis |
| 4 | The Frozen Wastes | Robert Shearman |
| 5 | Star-Crossed | Simon Jowett |
Notes
- This is the first multiple-author release in the current BBC Books line. The short story format makes it the first release of its kind by BBC Books since it passed its Short Trips series on to Big Finish Productions. The format of a short-story collection focusing on a companion or other character would be revisited in 2015 with the publication of the similarly formatted The Legends of Ashildr and again in 2016 with The Legends of River Song.
- The short story The Story of Martha provides the main narrative with the remaining four short stories weaved into it as being told by Martha Jones to people she meets during the Year That Never Was. In particular, each of these four stories is bookended on both sides by parts of The Story of Martha.
- Discounting created-for-novels companions Bernice Summerfield and Roz Forrester (subjects of a series of novels and an entry in the Virgin Decalogs series, respectively), this is the first licensed, book-length release to focus on a single TV companion since Harry Sullivan's War more than two decades earlier.
- This is also the first time the current BBC Books line has published a story based upon a televised episode, although it is not a novelisation. However the final and first moments of TV: The Sound of Drums and TV: Last of the Time Lords respectively are novelised.
- This release marks the first time a former companion has returned to the covers of the TDA line after having been replaced by the new companion. In this case, Martha returns after having been replaced for several books by Donna Noble. It is also the last TDA release until the beginning of the eleventh Doctor novels in 2010: all releases in 2009 feature the Doctor travelling alone.
- This anthology was also released as an ebook available from the Amazon Kindle store.