This is a Doctor Who spin-off novel set during the Salem witch trials of 1692, which I was inspired to read after reading Arthur Miller's Crucible. The First Doctor with his original companions Susan, Ian and Barbara visit at some point after the TV story The Reign of Terror (it's not clear if it's before or after Planet of Giants, though). Needless to say they are accused of being witches and face imprisonment, humiliation and death alongside the real historical victims of the witch hysteria. The story paints a grim picture of the stifling atmosphere of extreme Puritan religiosity and the fear of damnation that played a very real part in these people's lives with tragic and horrible consequences. Susan wants to change history to save the victims but, like Barbara in the TV story The Aztecs, must learn the hard way that it is not possible to change the pre-set course of human history (though the Doctor himself is also tempted to do so at times here. There are various twists and turns in time that I found slightly hard to follow, and overall this felt a much more grim read than other First Doctor Who novels, even ones with settings as equally grim on paper, which is a testimony to the quality of the writing, but also that I found rather depressing. Finally, I didn't like the format of the novel, divided into five sections, some of them very long, but not into individual chapters. ( )

I hadn't read one of these new adventures since before the show's revival. Now that the show-runners have pissed all over its legacy I thought I might look to them again for my fix, but I just can't get into this one. In this novel, the TARDIS arrives in Salem in 1692, just about the time that the witchcraft hysteria is gearing up. The Doctor's granddaughter, Susan, is horrified by what humans are doing to each other and is determined to break them out of their spell, but the Doctor insists she can't change history, and knows she will be devastated when she tries and fails.

I've only seen a couple of the first Doctor's televised adventures, but from what I see here he just doesn't have much of a personality. He tugs on his lapels, says "Hmm?" a lot and refers to schoolteacher Ian Chesterton as "my dear boy." It's all very dry with none of the wit or humor evident in later incarnations. In the half of the book that I read, he's barely in it at all, as the story focuses mostly on Susan, and historical events. Well, if I want to read that, I'll pick up The Crucible or something. I don't know why authors want to write a Doctor Who novel and then hardly feature him. Anyway, I've lost interest. Maybe these just aren't for me any more, though I'd still probably give one a try if I found another by one of my favorite DW authors (Jonathan Morris, Mike Tucker & Robert Perry, Keith Topping & Martin Day.)

http://nhw.livejournal.com/1018381.html

The Witch Hunters, by Steve Lyons, is an early one of the BBC's Past Doctor Adventures, set pretty firmly in TV chronology between The Sensorites and The Reign of Terror, bringing the First Doctor with companions Ian, Susan and Barbara to the village of Salem in Massachusetts in 1692, just in time for the infamous witch trials.

Like Caroline Symcox's The Council of Nicæa, there is no sfnal element in the historical context apart from the Doctor and his companions, and thus it is very much rooted in the early traditions of the show, in a historical context where, essentially, the bad guys are the mainstream authority Christians and the listener/reader is invited to sympathise with the underdog.

Lyons makes the reader work hard; he has more characters to follow (not just four in the Tardis crew, but a large chunk of the population of Salem) and more background knowledge is assumed. He is also sticking closer to the historical sequence of events, though The Crucible is explicitly referenced, with the Doctor and crew taking in the first performance in Bristol in 1954, and the Doctor then returning with Rebecca Nurse to take it in again. Actually Lyons handles the possibility of changing history a bit less convincingly than Symcox, with even the Doctor rather un-Doctorishly seduced by the possibility of intervening to save lives. He also requires the Tardis to operate rather more accurately than we saw at this stage of the show's history. Balanced against this, there are a lot of pleasing references to the first few television stories. The narrative has its own drama, which carries the book in the end, but the Tardis crew rather end up with the roles of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. ( )