Doctor Who: Chap with Wings

I had a mad obsession for the Doctor Who New Adventures novels published by Virgin in the mid-90s, just as they started to go out of print and rapidly disappear from sight. I still managed to snatch most of them up from the bargain bins at Paper Plus, and through the excellent classified adverts in the back of TSV, but it took me 20 years to find the rest.

But I got so many of them back in the day, so fast, that I never had time to read them all. I'd obviously read all the Ormans and Cornells and Parkins and Platts and Aaronovichs, but had only read a handful of those books outside this core group of writers.

So a couple of years ago, once I'd paid way too much money to secure the last books in the series, I figured it was time to get cracking and start from the beginning, with the one about Gilgamesh.

I'm still at it, and try to average one a month - I currently read one in tandem with my one person book club, and it works out surprisingly well - so I've got through a few, and have just got to the end of the vague arc where the Meddling Monk was fucking with everybody's history.

No Future had Cornell's usual sledgehammer wit, but it's really reached the point where following a TARDIS crew who all actively hate each other is just too tiring.

Still, this is one of the ones I read back in the day, and I really only remembered four things about it - the villains; the 'pint of vodka' line early in the book, (Bennie was the drinking buddy I always wanted, which wasn't very smart, because she's just imaginary); the bit where Ace stabs the Doctor, but it's all a fake!; and, of course, the "chap with Wings" line, which is my favourite line in all Doctor Who novels ever, including all the ones from The Dalek Invasion of Earth.

So while I'm really starting to realise what people were on about when they moaned that everybody in the NAs was so unpleasant, it still has moments of classic Doctor Who, and moments of the dumbest fucking humour.