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D O C T O R W H O
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Doctor Who has a long established legacy of providing cheap and dependable entertainment and fire fuel. Most of the novels published under the Doctor Who banner are faithful tellings of the time lord hero and his adventures. However in Canada, a nuclear wasteland inhabited by inhuman demons of pure hatred, a publishing company got the rights to release novelizations. This vile organization known only as "Friendly Maple Leaf Publishing" created such distasteful flith as to alienate the entire Doctor Who community. I, for one, have never regretted working with them. The sales of the Doctor Who novels had not been so good in Canada. Imported copies of Gobot, The Mootants, and various others littered the bookshelves of Canadian book stores. So when "Friendly Maple Leaf Publishing" got their ungodly hands on the license to produce their own books they took on an entirely new approach to Doctor Who. The first book they released was a novelization of "The Lark In Space". The Canadians felt this title was too dull and instead insisted the book be named "Doctor Who Kills Some Midgets". When it was pointed out that no midgets were actually brutually murdered in the story the head of the company was heard to remark - "Screw the original story! I know what people want. People want to see little people being hit by big people! That's what it's all aboot, eh?!" This left the Canadians in a jam. They had to quickly find someone to tack on several random new chapters to the book which featured the Doctor killing various little people. I knew immediately that this was my chance to break into writing. I brought the Canadian publishers a manuscript for a novel I had been working on at the time "Scooby Doo Brutually Beats The Magical Dwarves Of Endor". The Candians were impressed with my prose and I was hired on the spot. Instead of writing whole new scenes for the Canadian novelization I merely changed all of Scooby Doo's lines to the Doctor's lines, I gave Shaggy and Thelma's lines to Sarah Jane, and Harry Sullivan took the role of Scrappy Doo. This did lead to some confusion over why the Doctor was suddenly willing to stupidly risk his life for the promise of a few Scooby snacks and why Sarah Jane Smith was wearing glasses which she kept loosing, however I don't think anyone has noticed any problems with giving Harry lines originally intended for Scrappy Doo. The books in the Canadian lines sold much better than the older imported versions. This caused a problem however as the BBC took notice. They were extremely curious as to why sales of Doctor Who novels had suddenly increased by nine thousand percent within Canada. When they saw the various novels which had been released by that time they immediately sued the company for various breaches of the original agreement, which apparently implied you couldn't just add in scenes of the Doctor killing midgets to boost sales. The BBC eventually won the law suit however they saw it as a total defeat as the damages were paid in Canadian money which, other than some pretty wild life scenes, isn't worth the paper it's crudely drawn on. A friend and fellow fan summed it up best when he said to me, "It's just so Canadian and so wrong!" To this day "Friendly Maple Leaf Publishing" continues to print Doctor Who novels. |