If you recall my Doctor Who on MP3 essay a while back, I said that I hadn’t been able to complete my BBC MP3-CDs collection. This was because the asking prices, on auction sites, of the missing ones were too expensive.
Recently, I ventured into eBay and searched for “Doctor Who MP3” in the hope I would be able to find at least one of them at a more reasonable price.
Was I successful? Alas, no.
However, something else flagged up, of which I had no prior knowledge. I discovered that a selection of Twelfth Doctor stories from Series 8 and 9 have been novelised, for English language learning materials, by a company called Pearson Languages.
The stories available are (in the order stated on Pearson’s website): The Girl Who Died, Robot of Sherwood, Mummy on the Orient Express, Flatline, Face the Raven, and The Woman Who Lived.
Not only have the stories been novelised; they also come with an audio MP3 containing the audiobook version, the idea being that the student reads the book along with the narration.
Piqued, I immediately ordered The Robot of Sherwood from an eBay bookseller, this having been a story I particularly enjoyed on its original broadcast.
My subsequent investigation into Pearson was… interesting. I looked at their website and information was a tad hard to find. Specifically, to pursue anything about Doctor Who only threw up a little bit of information. What I did find out, aside from the titles available, was that this has the blessing of the BBC. Therefore, although these are not ‘official’ novelisations, they are still legitimate.
It’s also worth noting that Pearson also has a Marvel Avengers book; a version of Richard Curtis’ Love Actually and Notting Hill; along with Shakespeare, John Grisham, Jane Austin, and history titles among their numerous offerings. I wasn’t able to find any link to specific books, but I suspect that you would need to create an account to find this information. Costs and the ability to buy/obtain titles didn’t seem that obvious either. After all, I had found out about them on eBay by accident (I later found that the books are available on Amazon too).
A small selection of downloads – including a snippet of Mummy on the Orient Express – is available on Pearson Language’s website.
Presently, my parcel arrived and its contents were – as I expected – an MP3-CD and a novelisation of the story. However, it’s not a full-blown thick paperback style of the more recent Target novels and neither is it the thinner reads of the Terrance Dicks’ days.
What we have is more a version of The Robot of Sherwood presented as a children’s book. It initially reminded me of seeing a fanzine, during Panopticon V (1982), where a keen writer hadn’t waited for the official novelisation of Castrovalva but had done it themselves.
However, that is not a criticism; remember that the reason for its being is as an English language tutorial. Therefore, the story is a short version which doesn’t take that long to listen or to read. Although, as appears on the cover, Mark Gatiss is mentioned as the original scriptwriter, no one is credited as the writer of the book.
I was reminded of Target’s short-lived excursion into turning Doctor Who into an easier read for a younger audience: Junior Doctor Who and the Giant Robot and Junior Doctor Who and the Brain of Morbius.
Pearson’s version of Robot of Sherwood, released in 2018, is actually quite glossy and lavish, and a bit bigger than the average paperback. Its presentation looks as if it’s aimed at children and is sprinkled with colour photographs from the story, including what looks like character stills, and uses a little graphic of the Sonic Screwdriver as a passage end marker.
The contents don’t stop there: there is a resume of all the characters in the story, a very very short history of the Doctor (the Doctor always carries a spoon to fight with, apparently), and a comprehension test at the end.
The accompanying MP3 containing Sherwood‘s audiobook (credited to Nancy Taylor, who gives it her all, and might be the author of these tales) is a straightforward narration: no incidental music, theme tune, or sound effects; very much in line with the 1980 Tom Baker-narrated tape release of State of Decay.
Pearson’s Doctor Who books are split into two levels: level two (The Girl Who Died, Robot of Sherwood, Mummy on the Orient Express) and level three (Flatline, Face the Raven, The Woman Who Lived), although there are six levels across all of Pearson’s titles; the language used being more detailed the higher the level. As a result, Sherwood, at a low level two, has the style of the story as quite simplistic. It comes across as what we would assume would be aimed at small children; for example, there is very little in the way of descriptions of people and surroundings, other than a character being “fat” or “ugly”.
Also, the audiobook reading is slower and more deliberate than something Jon Culshaw, Maureen O’Brien, or Michael Troughton would deliver. But just remember its prime endeavour is to teach; entertainment is secondary (although Doctor Who is the peg to hang it on).
If I may find something a bit odd, it’s that the story is written in the present tense. For example, where we may be used to reading:
“You’ve re-decorated. I don’t like it,” said the Doctor
In this version, a similar line would read:
“That’s not Robin Hood,” the Doctor says. “Robin Hood is not real.”
But it’s a minor issue. English is my first language and this book isn’t aimed at me, but what I see here is Doctor Who presented in another medium. It’s always a delight to find things like this, being the formats-guy (er… self-appointed, admittedly) of the Doctor Who Companion.
Okay, it’s a book and a CD (and this can be done by matching up a Target book with its corresponding audiobook), but in this instance, it’s a combination to make something different: a read-along specifically designed as a teaching tool.
For whatever Pearson Learning is trying to achieve, it is still quite heart-warming that Capaldi era Doctor Who is still deemed popular enough for an audience to learn English with.
