The novel “Winner Takes All” by Jacqueline Rayner was published for the first time in 2005.
The Ninth Doctor brings Rose back to her home after she discovered that her mother Jackie won in a lottery. When the two travelers arrive, they realize that a really extraordinary event has started with a mass involvement. Participants can win a holiday or a game console. Jackie won a console and gave it to Mickey.
The Doctor and Rose try to understand the reasons for so much excitement, also for the game “Death to Mantodeans”, which comes along with the prize console. The awards are apparently normal but the people who win a holiday never return home and the videogame soon turns up to be far too realistic with an alien involvement.
“Winner Takes All” is one of the first novels connected to the new “Doctor Who” series, published a few weeks after it started. They are targeted to a wide audience by being fairly linear to be appreciated even by very young readers but sophisticated enough to interest more mature readers.
Set during the first season of the new series, “Winner Takes All” has the Ninth Doctor and Rose as its protagonists. Between trips, they return to her home after she discovered that her mother won in a lottery. Soon, the two travelers realize that the prizes, a vacation and a videogame console, are hiding something disturbing.
The basic concept of “Winner Takes All” isn’t exactly original. The aliens Quevvils exploit human beings for their attacks against their Mantodean enemies through what seems like a simple videogame. The Quevvils are basically giant porcupines and as villains they’re caricatures, without a characterization giving them something original.
From the beginning, “Winner Takes All” seems mostly focused on its protagonists. The novel was written before the broadcast of the new series started so Jacqueline Rayner must have received the information about the characters needed to write it. Certainly she knew at least something about the episodes plots because the novel contains some references to some of the earliest adventures of the Ninth Doctor and Rose and one of Mickey’s videogames is called “Bad Wolf”, part of the story arc of the new series’ first season.
The major work by Jacqueline Rayner, however, is on the protagonists. The result seems good to me because the characterization of the Doctor and Rose and their relationship seems to me to reflect well what happens in the TV show. It’s therefore strange that Jackie seems curiously friendly to the Doctor, much more than she generally is in the show.
When the Doctor and Rose, with the help of Mickey, investigate the lottery prizes, they soon discover that behind it there are the alien Quevvils. Throughout this first part, “Winner Takes All” seems more targeted to a very young audience for its simple and unoriginal plot but going on with it certain tones of the novel becomes darker.
The alien Quevvils are uninteresting as villains, instead, some human behaviors are much more effective for their realism. In “Winner Takes All” some dark sides of humanity are explored much more than in stories targeted to the very young when the lottery also generates negative behaviors in some humans. In particular, the character of Darren Pye, a suburb bully, shows the levels some humans can sink to.
In the end, “Winner Takes All” well resembles the typical television episode of the Russell T Davies era, focused much more on the characters and the relationships between them than on the plot. In particular, you can see the different attitudes of the Ninth Doctor, who at times is capable of almost childlike cheerfulness and of an intense anger in others, in some ways even towards humans.
In my opinion, “Winner Takes All” is an enjoyable novel despite its limitations, a mix a little curious of intense moments and many other frivolous ones. It’s the kind of story you’ll probably like if you appreciate the Russell T Davies era.
