--- title: "Doctor Who: The Deviant Strain" subtitle: "Book review" author: Seth publish_date: 2026-02-08 02:00 date: 2026-02-08 02:00 hero_classes: text-light title-h1h2 overlay-dark-gradient hero-large parallax hero_image: doctor-who-tardis-controls-1600x800.webp show_sidebar: true show_breadcrumbs: true show_pagination: true taxonomy: category: culture tag: [ scifi ] --- I recently got a boxed set of Doctor Who novels, featuring the 9th and 10th Doctors along with Rose Tyler, from a second-hand bookshop. I've been enraptured by them, so I'm reviewing each one. The third book in the set is **The Deviant Strain** by Justin Richards. This review contains spoilers, so if you intend to read the book yourself, suffice it to say that this is a good one that I do recommend to any Doctor Who fan. In **The Deviant Strain**, the TARDIS arrives at a research base, and the town that serves it, in a snowy region of Russia. I'm not sure the book gives a precise year, but it's the late 20th or early 21st century (basically "present day".) It seems the research base and town have recently suffered a death and a disappearance. The local sheriff is on the job, but the entire police force is literally just her and so progress has been slow. The teaser scenario that opens the novel is what's being investigated. A young couple stole out at night to gaze at stars, or something. The young man ended up dead, and the young woman has gone missing. Nobody knows what happened, but the village rumours involve a local vampire legend. It's not just the doctor and Rose in this novel. Captain Jack Harkness has joined the crew, placing the events of this book sometime after **The Empty Child**. It must be difficult to write characters that are still developing on the TV show, but the author does it well and Captain Jack feels "right" in this book. This reads like the same Jack Harkness from the show. He takes charge of bad situations by placing himself in the frontline, and instinctively protects the people around him. He's a lone operative when he needs to be, but he's also a reliable part of a team when he has one. Maybe he's less complex than Rose Tyler, but in a way I think he's better written in this book than Rose is in some of the others. ## Vampires and aliens It should come as no surprise that the legend of a local vampire turns out to be incorrect, and that actually the malevolent entity behind the deaths is an shipwrecked alien trying to gather enough power from the region to get off planet. Rose and Captain Jack discover a buried spaceship, and the Doctor delves into some strange inaccuracies in the research base's laboratories. The plot is convoluted (or nuanced?) enough for me to have forgotten, by the time I'd finished the book, how all the threads connect. But the story is fun, and that's good enough for most Doctor Who content. Rose and Captain Jack do a lot of running around, dodging alien tentacles and life-leeching technology. The Doctor faces down a powerful foe, and they all reach a resolution eventually. ## Good Doctor I can't help but feel that the setting of this book is a little misleading. I approached it expecting atmosphere like John Carpenter's **The Thing** but it may as well just be a quiet English country village. That's not really the book's fault, obviously my expectations are my own. The story's good, probably good enough to have been a Doctor Who episode or audio drama. Enjoyable, and keeps you guessing. Definitely good classic "new" Who.

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