Doctor Who In Wonderland (novel)
Doctor Who In Wonderland was the sixth novel in the Puffin Classics crossovers range, published on 25 July 2024 by BBC Children's Books and written by Paul Magrs.
The novel featured the Fifth Doctor and his companions Tegan Jovanka, Nyssa and Vislor Turlough, and is inspired by Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Publisher's summary
The Doctor and his companions visit the dreaming spires of peaceful Oxford, hoping for a brief respite from their travels.
But when Lewis Carroll appears at a garden party and their fellow guests transform into animals, they realise that everything is not as it seems...
An unknown cosmic foe has trapped them in a twisted version of Alice’s Wonderland. Separated from the Tardis and from each other, their only hope of escape lies in cryptic clues teased by fan-favourite characters from Carroll’s classic tale.
Plot
to be added
Characters
Real
- Fifth Doctor
- Tegan Jovanka
- Nyssa
- Vislor Turlough
- Charles Dodgson (a.k.a Lewis Carroll)
- Alice Liddell
- Black Guardian
Exclusive to Wonderland
- The Mad Hatter / The Hatter
- The March Hare
- The Dormouse
- The White Rabbit
- The Gryphon
- The Mock Turtle
- The White Queen
Worldbuilding
- Wonderland was created by Charles Dodgson and (presumably) sustained by the Queen of Hearts (the Black Guardian)
- In Wonderland, time does not flow; it is eternal. This means that characters continuously come back to life after suffering a seemingly fatal blow.
- The Mock Turtle considers the Gryphon to not be a very nice friend at all.
- Alice Liddell (an old lady) was on her way to America to receive an honorary doctorate when the Doctor and the whole of Wonderland intercepts her, and the Doctor is going to drop her back off when the story ends; the elderly Alice is a Doctor in the DWU
Notes
- The title of this book appears to be both a play on the title of Alice in Wonderland and those of the Target novelisations, the latter of which Paul Magrs has used as inspirations for his works, such as the second series of Big Finish Productions' Iris Wildthyme audio dramas.
- This book notably does not feature Tweedledum and Tweedledee, who despite being unique to Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There, are often featured in adaptations of Alice in Wonderland. However, the book does feature the White Queen (taking the role of a bookkeeper, as she started out as in the original Carroll book) despite not featuring a Red Queen separate from the Queen of Hearts (and indeed, the Queen of Hearts is later referred to as the Queen of Black Hearts, who is actually the Black Guardian).
- Although Turlough says that Nyssa and Tegan have told him about Adric, he does not recognise the name in Terminus [+]Loading...["Terminus (TV story)"].
Continuity
- When the TARDIS crew speculate which entity was responsible for the events of the novel, Nyssa suggests the Toymaker. This is possibly a reference to PROSE: Divided Loyalties [+]Loading...["Divided Loyalties (novel)"], where Nyssa met the Toymaker.
External links
- Official Doctor Who: In Wonderland page at Penguin Books
