for the Outpost Gallifrey fan website, "but if I want a dose of the Problems of the World and Man's inhumanity to man, I'll pick up the newspaper. I don't buy science fiction, especially not Doctor Who, for a lesson in modern sociology. I certainly would not have bought Damaged Goods had I known that is precisely what I would be getting." Generally, however, reaction to the novel was extremely positive, with other online reviews around the time of the book's release praising Davies's work. "In Damaged Goods, Russell Davies has marked himself as the best newcomer to Doctor Who fiction since Lance Parkin eight months earlier," wrote Shannon Patrick Sullivan on his own website. "Davies has crafted a taut, compelling novel which falls down only slightly at the end. Certainly, Damaged Goods is one of the best novels Virgin has released in 1996... Damaged Goods is a template for Doctor Who in the Nineties; I hope Davies has the opportunity at a follow-up under the aegis of the BBC." Sullivan's website also includes a monthly updated list of the most popular Doctor Who novels, "The Doctor Who Novel Rankings", based on votes e-mailed in by readers and running since 1993. As of the 4 January 2006 edition of the novel rankings, Damaged Goods was placed eighth in the list of most popular New Adventures novels. In 1998, Doctor Who Magazine ran their own one-off readers' poll to find the most popular New Adventures as part of their celebrations of Doctor Who's 35th anniversary. Damaged Goods received votes from 780 readers, with an average score of 7.295 out of 10, placing it thirteenth out of the sixty-one novels in the series. Adaptations After having been commissioned to write the novel, Davies had originally planned to take three months off writing for television in order to complete it. He was then also commissioned to write for two major ITV television series, leaving him very short of time in which to complete the book, eventually writing the manuscript in only five weeks. This sudden amount of work did, however, have the unexpected result of Granada Television purchasing the media rights for the novel on 2 February 1997, with a view to Davies possibly scripting a television adaptation for them. "Granada lent me a researcher, Maria Grimley, to do all the leg-work on the novel, just so I could finish on time," Davies