Lungbarrow by Loomlight

[bdub76]

Somebody smarter than me. Help me out. Why does this book exist when it's tough to get the original novel?

Lungbarrow by Loomlight (novel)

Lungbarrow by Loomlight was a novella in Cwej: The Series written by Tomoko M Banks and published by Arcbeatle Press on 23 April 2026. This release acted as the...

tardis.wiki

It looks like a sequel to the hard to find Lungbarow.

 

[Steve Roby]

It is something of a sequel to Lungbarrow, though the Doctor probably doesn’t appear, as the publisher of this one has the rights to use the character Chris Cwej and original elements from Platt’s novel.

The original Lungbarrow was the one of the novels made available on the old BBC Cult website before the show came back, as archived here.

Now, as for why do a sequel to Lungbarrow in 2026… why not? I bought it, but who knows when I’ll get around to it.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Why does this book exist when it's tough to get the original novel?

Because there's a market for it. It's probably not very large -- a thousand, maybe, and probably shrinking as we get further and further from the time of the New Adventures -- and there's not going to be much in the way of money for it. But these spin-offs -- and there are some even far more tenuous -- can get really creative and unbound, and that can be really appealing for the writers, editors, and publishers.

 

[bdub76]

Because there's a market for it. It's probably not very large -- a thousand, maybe, and probably shrinking as we get further and further from the time of the New Adventures -- and there's not going to be much in the way of money for it. But these spin-offs -- and there are some even far more tenuous -- can get really creative and unbound, and that can be really appealing for the writers, editors, and publishers.

I can see it in free fan fiction, rather than published.

The online version of this book is an edited version of the original print. Neither are easy to get or find.

I did find an ePUB version of the online version, but it needs work with its style sheet.

 

[Steve Roby]

The rules about what kind of material can be published without the BBC’s approval are very different from the rules about what can be published without Paramount’s. There are dozens of Lethbridge-Stewart and UNIT novels that are perfectly legal and legitimate because the character is owned by his creator, who was not a staff writer and therefore retained copyright of the elements of the show that he created. So, Jo Grant and the Doctor can’t appear in these books, but Benson can.

Without getting into the literary quality of all these authorized but not quite Who series, Bernice Summerfield, Faction Paradox, Iris Wildthyme, Erimem, Lethbridge-Stewart, et al. (some are quite good, a few not so much), they add a lot of fun to the Whoniverse. I like living in a world that has Kaldor City audios and Señor 105 ebooks in it. But the Doctor Who universe is both broader and vaguer than the Star Trek universe, and it might be harder to carry off some kind of Star Trek spinoff without the absence of Star Trek elements being too difficult to work around.

 

[Chakoteya]

Somebody smarter than me. Help me out. Why does this book exist when it's tough to get the original novel?

Lungbarrow by Loomlight (novel)

Lungbarrow by Loomlight was a novella in Cwej: The Series written by Tomoko M Banks and published by Arcbeatle Press on 23 April 2026. This release acted as the...

tardis.wiki

It looks like a sequel to the hard to find Lungbarow.

Lungbarrow was easy to get in 1997.

No one's fault that some 'unproduced TV stories' that became novels have quietly infiltrated NuWho because the writers read the stories back in the day.

The worlds of Dr Who are worth exploring, just for the sheer fun of it, instead of tying yourself in knots trying to make the TV show make sense over 60 years.

 

[Steve Roby]

Lungbarrow was already getting rare and expensive by 2003. I don't recall exactly how much I paid, but it was a heck of a lot more than cover price.

"Trying to make the TV show make sense over 60 years" reminded me of Paul Cornell's classic comments on Doctor Who, canon, continuity, etc. (Cornell has written Doctor Who novels, audios, and TV episodes.)

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Without getting into the literary quality of all these authorized but not quite Who series, Bernice Summerfield, Faction Paradox, Iris Wildthyme, Erimem, Lethbridge-Stewart, et al. (some are quite good, a few not so much), they add a lot of fun to the Whoniverse. I like living in a world that has Kaldor City audios and Señor 105 ebooks in it. But the Doctor Who universe is both broader and vaguer than the Star Trek universe, and it might be harder to carry off some kind of Star Trek spinoff without the absence of Star Trek elements being too difficult to work around.

If Star Trek operated in that way, with small companies licensing directly from the creators, I could imagine, for example, a small press series about "the Picard who fought at Trafalgar" -- fighting sail stories starring a previously unnamed ancestor of Picard. Is it Star Trek? No. But it's tangentially part of the universe in the way that the independent Doctor Who spin-offs are part of theirs.