Space Babies has been regarded by the Doctor Who fandom as everything from an oddish start for a Doctor’s first proper season to an experiment in tech-syncing of voice to mouth movement that doesn’t quite ever pull off its big trick, to a bit of an exercise in sloganeering space silliness – depending on which rabbit holes of internet fandom you fall down.

So let’s answer a handful of basic questions first.

Yes, the novelization and audiobook is better than the on-screen version.

Yes, the Doctor still misses not a single opportunity to cry “Space babies!” No, there’s no more valid reason for it here than there was on-screen. Yes, you actually get more instances here because you go inside the Doctor’s head once or twice, and he does it in there too.

Yes, the Ruby-as-butterfly-lizard sequence still makes buggerall sense and feels entirely like padding. If anything, here it makes less sense, because it takes longer in prose than it ever did on-screen.

Beyond that though, this short audiobook (clocking in at under three hours) is a much more enjoyable experience than the on-screen version was, even if you actively enjoyed the madness and silliness and fart gags and the monster made of snot in the original.

What makes it better? Well, first of all, Alison Rumfitt clearly understands the slightness of the original, and actively looks for ways to extend and deepen the premise. There’s a whole pre-credits sequence here that would have radically changed the tone of the on-screen version for the better, but would have been almost impossible to deliver in a TV format. She sets up a way into the mind of the Bogeyman, and technically of all monsters that have ever hidden under beds or in closets, pondering the unfairness of a destiny that traps them forever in their role as antagonist, going step by step into life with the “hero” children of the world, who thrive by overcoming them, by vanquishing them, and by ultimately making them irrelevant.

While it’s important to maintain the lightness of the storytelling when it comes to Space Babies, you could even extend her premise into issues of mental health and body dysmorphia – like the Mara many decades ago, the monsters of children’s nightmares can’t look themselves in the eye, can’t stand to see themselves in the mirror, and if you didn’t want to keep Space Babies as a light, bright story of rescue and love and care, you could even envisage cases where the monsters under the bed begin to win, to fuse with their children, so that such negative feelings begin to be the children’s experiences.

And ultimately, Rumfitt’s addition brings balance to the ending where the Bogeyman is a space baby too, the yang to their yin and equally deserving of its salvation. The business of its equality with them is more or less simply presented to the audience in the TV version, but with Rumfitt’s sensitive addition, it’s balanced, and is allowed to hit like a coming home, a full circle completed. 

You see the point? Space Babies is all about pressing buttons, defeating snot-monsters, clever babies, a fairly clumsy stab at Republican baby-abandonment values and space stations powered by giant methane farts – but Rumfitt’s deepening of the premise could let the story exist on a whole broader, deeper plain if you wanted it to. So for anyone who thought the on-screen Space Babies was offensively light and fluffy, the audiobook has enough to get your teeth in – without spoiling it for everyone who loved the original.

There’s more depth at various other points, too – in particular, at moments when the question of why the babies are the way they are, and whether they’ll ever actually “grow up” are discussed. There’s a little more time and breath given to these ideas here, and honestly, it’s very much the right way to go, adding if not exactly gravitas, then at least a little counterweight to all the bonkers running around and dripping in snot.

There are a handful of other treats here too, like extended use of the Nanny Filter gag, and a longer, more deliciously vulgar sequence with the Doctor and Ruby making overt fart gags at the end, to absolutely crease the space babies with talk of big bottom burps. No, it’s by no means sophisticated, but it appeals to the babies, and as such, it underlines a spirit that runs through the story, of the babies being people that, whatever happens next, have shared a very particular experience and let it mould them. There’s also slightly more time given to the objections of the grown-ups who were forced to abandon the babies in the first place, and the characters of some of them, as “Nanny” Jocelyn experienced them in happier days. That helps broaden the world from which the space babies come, adding realism beyond the bottle of the space station where the action takes place.

Clare Corbett on reading duties is a very sound choice, bringing lots of audiobook reading experience to bear. She gives the babies some believably squeaky voices but never particularly doing impressions of Ruby or the Doctor as such. She delivers pace, depth, believability and a strong level of engagement that makes the two-and-three-quarter hours of Space Babies feel even shorter because the story belts along under her stewardship, while delivering more of practical value than the on-screen experience did.

So, short story even shorter, Space Babies as an audio novelization is a better experience than the on-screen version was, whether you loved that on-screen version or loathed every second of it. That means there’s absolutely no excuse not to get it, and experience a fun and frothy story with the weight it could have had dialled up a little, so that it feels like a much more balanced affair than the TV version had the time to deliver. Tony Fyler