Doctor Who (Kim Newman) Books in Order

Kim Newman's Doctor Who work is small in size, but it feels very much like his. Time and Relative is not a generic tie-in adventure with a familiar monster pasted into place. It takes one of the most flexible parts of Doctor Who continuity, the time before the television series properly begins, and uses that space to explore character, mood, and the strange domestic life around the TARDIS.

The story centers on the Doctor and Susan.

That matters because the book is set before An Unearthly Child, when the two of them are still in 1963 but have not yet stumbled into the version of events most viewers know. By choosing that gap, Newman gets to write the First Doctor at his prickliest and most unpredictable, while also giving Susan more room than she often receives on screen. Their relationship is at the heart of the piece: affectionate, difficult, unstable, and held together by the fact that neither of them experiences time quite like anyone else.

This is a very good fit for Newman as a writer. He has always been interested in stories as systems, in continuity as a puzzle, and in the ways genre myths change when you look at them from a side angle. Doctor Who gives him all of that at once. Instead of trying to outdo the show on scale, he leans into unease, paradox, and the peculiar rhythm of a world where yesterday, tomorrow, and five months from now can all sit in the same sentence.

It is a compact story, but not a slight one.

Readers should expect a tale that feels more intimate than epic, even when the underlying ideas are large. The book has the pleasure of early Doctor Who, mystery, a little melancholy, a little danger, and an underlying sense that the universe is stranger than human logic can comfortably manage. Newman also has a good ear for the First Doctor's mix of irritation, mischief, and genuine alienness, which helps the novella feel rooted in that era rather than merely borrowing its costume.

Because this is only one title rather than a long run of books, the page is less about navigating a sprawling subseries and more about placing a curious side path in Newman's wider career. If you know him from Anno Dracula or the Diogenes Club stories, this is another example of the same habits in a different toy box: clever use of established myth, affection for old popular culture, and a willingness to let the uncanny stay properly uncanny.

So what should you expect overall? A prequel-like Doctor Who story that is interested in the Doctor before the legend settles, in Susan before she becomes a companion-shaped outline, and in the elastic weirdness of time itself. It is a smaller corner of Newman's bibliography, but a rewarding one, especially for readers who like the First Doctor era when it is mysterious, brittle, and just a bit unsettling.