Off to See the Wizard with the Fam

 by Theresa Gauthier

The Wonderful Doctor of Oz

What could be better than The Doctor meeting one of my favorite writers? Not much! 

I loved it when Christopher Eccleston’s 9^th Doctor met Charles Dickens at Christmas. I was equally thrilled when David Tennant’s 10^th Doctor met William Shakespeare, and, later, Agatha Christie.  Of course, there was also Jodie Whittaker’s 13^th Doctor meeting Mary Shelley. Then there was H.G. Wells meeting Colin Baker’s 6^th Doctor.

Precedent aside, The Wonderful Doctor of Oz gives Jodie Whittaker’s 13^th Doctor a chance to meet L. Frank Baum, and to visit the world he created. This isn’t the Oz from the films, of course. There were always differences between the Oz books and the Judy Garland movie, but this book gives those differences a twist. Now, not only are the shoes silver and not red, but the less well-known characters are slightly altered, a bit scarier.

The Doctor, in trying to give her Fam a Movie Night, finds that the premier of The Wizard of Oz didn’t happen. The book wasn’t written. The world that L. Frank Baum created does, however, seem to exist. 

Who could be behind this? As my father would have said, I’ll give you three guesses and the first two don’t count. 

Missy isn’t the first person to pop into the 13^th Doctor’s mind when she thinks someone is to blame for what’s happened, and I do wonder what her thought processes were when she jumped headlong to the conclusion that it was—

“Spoilers!” A voice says behind me.

I turn and find myself face-to-face with River Song.

“It’s a book review. I have to say something about the book,” I remind her.

River raises an eyebrow. “Spoilers,” she says softly as she polishes the barrel of her space gun.

“That’s not how it works.” Another voice.

I turn and there stand 12. 

“Not how what works?” I finally ask my mind blanking as to what I should be asking.

“You don’t put ‘space’ in front of something. You don’t have space restaurants or space handkerchiefs or space dustbins.” His exasperation seems to grow with each example.

I split my stare between each of my ersatz visitors. “How’d you know I was thinking that?” 

“I’m not really here,” he explained pointing at his head and doing an impression of George Harrison from the Yellow Submarine film. “It’s all in the mind,” he said as he disappeared. 

River Song just smiles and does a fabulous impression of the Cheshire Cat.

So—

The 13^th Doctor is surprised to discover who’s behind this particular situation, but the reader is one up on her as there’s a picture of the culprit on the cover of the novel. 

Regardless, this particular novel does an amazing job with the Fam. Each is written so well, that you’d swear they could walk off the page. Ryan, Graham, and Yaz  try to remember more about the Oz novels and the film when they’ve only had limited exposure to either of them. The real expert, of course, was Ryan's Gran. Still, the trio does manage to dredge up the occasional detail, and even K-9--

"Spoilers!" River's back.

"Shush!" I shout.

Even K-9 manages to forget everything in an entertaining moment of "shoulda seen that coming" for The Doctor.

I didn’t expect to like this book as much as I did. I’m sure I’ll read it again.