Doctor Who: Ruby Red Book Review

At the DWAS Capitol event last year, there was a panel with Big Finish creators, one of whom was Georgia Cook, who had been commissioned to write an upcoming Fifteenth Doctor novel called Ruby Red.

While she couldn’t say much about it she spoke enough about the process of writing it when she hadn’t seen the characters of the Fifteenth Doctor and Ruby on television yet to know how they behaved so she just had to hope. Her short description of her time working on the book was enough to get me very interested in reading it.

The first of three original Fifteen Doctor novels Ruby Red takes the Doctor back to their origins in educating people about history with the Doctor and Ruby finding themselves in Estonia in 1242. They find themselves trapped on the eve of an event called The Battle on the Ice, a skirmish between Estonian and Novgorodian Republic forces on the frozen Lake Peipus. This is a period of history we don’t get taught in history lessons so taking a quick jaunt back to experience it with the Doctor is the best way to learn about this!

However the battle plays into the plot very little and as a result, one wonders why Cook didn’t delve more into what happened. In fact, I wondered if there might have been a censor on these novels, but even the original series didn’t shy away from showing the grimness of history, stories like The Reign of Terror have guillotines around every corner so a few descriptions of soldiers on the battlefield would hardly have been a concern.

None of the main characters come from this time period, so we just get a sense of people observing events, which does become a plot point later, but not anyone who has any stakes in the events unfolding around them. One also wonders if the setting could have been swapped with any other battle and the story would have been the same, and the setting is perhaps Ruby Red’s biggest flaw.

But if the setting doesn’t entirely convince, Cook does manage to handle the tension very well, especially towards the end with underwater sequences and the actual battle, there is a sense of things ramping up quickly and uncontrollably. I found myself holding my breath with the Doctor and Ruby during the final battle sequences where they find themselves in the freezing water.

Cook also manages to handle the guest characters very well. Ranavere has been sent back in time to this battle, which is something that happens to everyone in their species only to find their sisters have been sent back too to make sure Ranavere is ok. While their arguments can be a little grating and paper-thin, to begin with, I was surprised I found myself invested in their storyline towards the end and hoped that things would end well for them all.

And Cook handles the Doctor and Ruby brilliantly even though she has yet to see them on television. Their voices are perfectly captured and it isn’t hard to imagine Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson delivering this dialogue on television. Being confined to just over 200 pages does mean that Cook can’t quite into the scope of their adventures on screen but she does a marvellous job nonetheless and the way they interact with what is going on around them feels completely in character.

But looking past the underwater monster who also delivers some brilliant tension, Ruby Red is perfectly happy at exploring family ties and breaking away to forge one’s own destiny. Both of these are themes that fit in perfectly with the recent series and it’s little wonder Ruby sees much of herself in Ranavere.

When the TARDIS falls into the freezing waters, it’s another incident that makes us understand why Sutekh was as mad as he was, I wouldn’t be too happy at being plunged into freezing water either! But while this story won’t blow your mind if you want to spend more time with the Fifteenth Doctor and Ruby Sunday, then Ruby Red is a great way of spending an afternoon.