Part of the Doctor Who Expanded Universe, these are novels published including Doctors from the New Series. They began with The Clockwise Man featuring 9 and Rose, and continued with novels about 10, 11, 12, and 13 in turn. In 2014 Engines of War, notable as the first story to fully feature the War Doctor, was published.
Tropes:
- Adaptation Expansion: The Story of Martha is a gap filler between "The Sound of Drums" and "Last of the Time Lords", covering Martha's travels from her arrival on Earth at the start of the Master's takeover, through to her return to Britain to face the Master. It tells how she spread the word and tells stories of the Doctor to get people to believe in him.
- All-Natural Gem Polish: In Diamond Dogs, the diamonds that form in Saturn's atmosphere are said to be uncut when they get hauled up, but at the same time Bill instantly recognises them as being diamonds. The cover shows a rain of shiny, faceted stones.
- Alternative Number System: It's never mentioned in the books themselves, or the series, but the "Gallifreyan numerals" used on the spines and chapter headings of the 9th and 10th Doctor stories are in base 7.
- Anachronic Order:
- Only technically, considering the usual "batch of three" release format.
- The trio of novels published in the fall of 2015 was subtitled "The Glamour Chase" and formed an arc, but the book covers contained no suggestion of what order in which to read the novels (even though one of the three did feature the conclusion of the arc).
- Bloody Murder: In Forever Autumn, the Doctor temporarily disrupts the antagonists' biological ship by smearing a drop of his blood over one of its surfaces. Later on, he threatens to overwhelm the ship completely by slitting his wrists all over the floor.
- Call-Back:
- Beautiful Chaos includes the return of the Mandragora Helix from the TV story "The Masque of Mandragora".
- Bernice Summerfield makes her NuWho debut in The Big Bang Generation by telling someone who was hoping to get River Song on day release "I'm an archaeologist, but probably not the one you were expecting."
- At Childhood's End features the return of Ace, teaming up with the new Doctor to investigate a group of aliens abducting homeless teenagers. In addition to Ace herself, it's a significant plot point that the mechanism by which the abductees are teleported away to the villain's planet is a version of the 'time storm' with which Ace herself was spirited away from Earth at the beginning of her space adventures.
- Canon Immigrant: The 2005 novel The Monsters Inside made history as the first Doctor Who spin-off novel to be directly referenced by the TV series as its setting is mentioned in the 2005 episode "Boom Town" as a place recently visited by the Ninth Doctor and his companions.
- Canon Welding: "The Coming of the Terraphiles" by Michael Moorcock has references to the Eternal Champion and Second Aether.
- Compound-Interest Time Travel Gambit: In At Childhood's End, Ace recalls that during one visit to the 1940s with the Doctor, she nicked fifty quid from the Doctor's wallet and deposited it in the bank, with the intention that if she ever got separated from the Doctor she'd have some money to draw on. When she parted ways with the Doctor and returned to her own time, the account had grown to a sizeable nest-egg, which she used to found A Charitable Earth.
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: In The Silent Stars Go By, the "Transhumans" are psychotic cyborgs who intend to eat their descendants once the planet has been terraformed for them.
- Discontinuity Nod: At Childhood's End features the return of Ace, the companion who was travelling with the Seventh Doctor when the original series ended, and depicts yet another version of how Ace stopped travelling with the Doctor. This one involves her interacting with an alien artifact that gives her visions of potential futures — which include Ace becoming a Time Lord (the way the TV series writers had considered writing her out before the show was cancelled), dying during an adventure (as in the DWM comic), going to live in the past with Count Nikolai Sorin (as depicted in the novelisation of "The Curse of Fenric"), several scenes from the Doctor Who New Adventures, and one of her hanging out with a young man who might be Hex Schofield from Big Finish Doctor Who — with the implication that in NSA continuity none of these potential futures came to be because she chose to go home shortly afterward.
- Early-Bird Cameo: "Made of Steel" is set during the Doctor's travels with Martha, despite being released prior to Martha's first TV appearance.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: This is common in novels written prior to the first appearance of a Doctor or companion on television, and therefore written without the knowledge of the characters voices and other factors, resulting in characterization that doesn't always match up with the TV version - or later novels featuring the characters.
- Evil Redeemed in a Can: In At Childhood's End, the backstory involves an implacable galaxy-threatening army that were defeated by trapping them outside of time and space. The Doctor is worried about them eventually finding a way to escape the trap, and it turns out that the villain's goal is to set them loose on the galaxy to wreak havoc. In the end, when Ace establishes contact with their leader, she learns that they're no longer interested in wreaking havoc; being trapped outside time meant that they could see every possible future, and they learned that every scenario where they went back to their old ways ended badly for everyone, so now they're committed to turning over a new leaf and helping their former enemies rebuild from the devastation they caused.
- Fake Town: In the book "Nuclear Time", the 11th Doctor and his companions land in a place called Appletown. The town as it turns out is fake: the grass is artificial, there are televisions but nowhere to plug it in, and the plumbing doesn't work - the town was built because the US government needed to get rid of a bunch of androids and only nuclear weapons could do the job.
- Framing Device: "The Story of Martha", set during The Year That Never Was, has Martha telling stories of the Doctor during the year she walks the Earth.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Das, a Neanderthal whose species went extinct 28000 years ago, ends up in 21st century London in "Only Human".
- Fun with Acronyms: At Childhood's End, featuring the return of Ace, has (as the cover design emphasises) a title with the acronym ACE. It also reuses the bit from "Death of the Doctor" about Ace's world-saving endeavours being under the banner of A Charitable Earth.
- Historical Domain Character: As is usual for the franchise.
- Last of His Kind: The point of the Museum of the Last Ones from "The Last Dodo".
- Penal Colony: "The Monsters Inside" features Justicia, an entire star system of prison planets.
- Sealed Badass in a Can: Peacemaker has the Clade, who are Living Weapons designed by an unknown civilization millennia in the past. When an unknown enemy attacked, the civilization built the Clades to protect themselves. But the Clades did so well that no one else ever attacked them, and so they were placed on standby, waiting for a war that never came.
- And then, one day, either there was an error in their coding, or else they un-sealed themselves from the Can-nobody knows, because all that's left of that civilization are ashes and weaponized particles.
- Ship Tease: A number of novels take advantage of being arm's length from the TV series to occasionally play up the relationships that may (or, depending on one's point of view, may not) exist between the Doctor and other characters. The 2014 novel The Blood Cell is a recent example in which the Twelfth Doctor and Clara Oswald relationship is emphasized; the 2016 release, The Legends of River Song, focuses on the romance between the Eleventh Doctor and River.
- The Slow Path: In "The Stone Rose" 10 thinks this has happened to Rose when she is Taken for Granite. Subverted when it turns out to be just a statue.
- Tie-In Novel: Obviously applies to all, however in an alternate definition of the term, several fiction books referenced in the series were later published as real-world books. Examples include Summer Falls (in-universe a short-story collection written by Amy Pond) and The Angel's Kiss, the mystery novel (featuring a character based upon River Song) the Eleventh Doctor reads during the episode "The Angels Take Manhattan".
- Timey-Wimey Ball: So many but what did you expect?
- We Named the Monkey "Jack":
- In The Last Dodo, the Doctor names the titular bird Dorothea. He doesn't explain why, but Dorothea Chaplet was a former companion, usually called "Dodo".
- In At Childhood's End, Dorothy McShane, formerly known as Ace, has a cat named Sorin, presumably after Captain Sorin from "The Curse of Fenric".
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: In "The Pirate Loop", the Badger Pirates, thanks to Martha's influence, try to become polite and good mannered despite their upbringing. While the (rather perfect looking) human staff of the intergalactic cruise ship (not really a cruise ship, it was just a disguise, when in reality they wanted to test an experimental drive. But they didn't want to endanger "Humans" so all of the passengers were aliens) called them disgusting freaks and mongrels, though are complete jerkasses themselves. Rogue human criminal scientists created the Humanoid Badger race, using them to their advantage by forcing them into a life of thieves and mercenaries, to do the dirty work in humanity's place. The pirates never knew a life outside of that before meeting Martha. The Badger Pirates were the ones who started a truce by offering the human crew snacks without being told.
- Whole-Plot Reference: "The Resurrection Casket" is essentially Treasure Island science-fictioned, with the Doctor taking the role of Dr Livesey, and Rose sharing the Jim Hawkins part with a young boy named Jimm.
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You Look Familiar: Martha's relation to Adeola is brought up in "Made of Steel", shortly before RTD addressed it in the TV series.
