I’ll write up my thoughts on “The Wheel of Ice” soon, but there’s one thing I noticed in the book that I wanted to address in general.

I’ve noticed that in some of the Doctor Who novels and fanfiction during the Second Doctor’s time, writers tend to make Jamie sound a bit more Scots than he did in the show. They’ll have him saying words like “yon” or “ken” (as in “Doctor, there’s a noise coming from yon shrubbery!” and “Look, Doctor, she’s not joking, ye ken.”).

It doesn’t bother me a lot, but we’ve never actually heard him use these words in the show, even in his very first stories “The Highlanders” and “The Underwater Menace” (if I’m wrong, please let me know … I do remember him saying “dinna fash” and “whist” several times, but no “yon” or “ken”). When I write any fanfics involving Jamie, I like to make him sound as closely to the way he talked in the show as possible. I know not everyone does that, and there are writers who don’t employ any of the “Scots-speak” at all.

Maybe it’s just me but I’ve found it a bit of a pet peeve. It is quaint but to me not overly realistic of the way he talked in the show.