Synopsis: The Doctor returns to Peladon with his new friend Sarah Jane Smith. Though membership of the Federation has brought some benefits to the planet, there is growing discontent among its people. The young Queen Peladon rules with kindness, but the old ways of superstition still have influence and when manifestations of the great beast Aggedor disrupt the mining of minerals, a force of Ice Warriors arrives to ensure that mining continues. But Sarah Jane saw an Ice Warrior in the mines before they officially arrived – and the Doctor’s old friend Alpha Centauri begins to suspect that these Ice Warriors aren’t even part of the Federation, but are traitors intent on gaining the minerals for themselves.

Chapter Titles

• 1. Return to Peladon
• 2. Aggedor Strikes Again
• 3. The Fugitives
• 4. The Hostage
• 5. The Wrath of Aggedor
• 6. The Intruder
• 7. The Ice Warriors
• 8. The Madman
• 9. The Return of Aggedor
• 10. Trapped in the Refinery
• 11. The Threat
• 12. Aggedor’s Sacrifice

Background: Terrance Dicks adapts the 1974 scripts by Brian Hayles (who had started work on the novel before his death in 1978). This completes the Target run of adaptations of stories from Season 11.

Notes: Peladon has three moons. We’re told this as part of an introductory chapter that summarises both the events of The Curse of Peladon and the intervening years up to this point, during which a war with Galaxy Five has made Peladon a key resource for the Federation. Apparently, Sarah Jane Smith has been the Doctor’s ‘more or less unwilling companion on a number of adventures’ and she instantly regrets allowing herself to be persuaded by the Doctor’s stories of a ‘picturesque and primitive planet, just making the transition from feudal savagery to technological civilisation’.

Ettis is said to be ‘a thin, wiry young man’ (so the casting for the TV version clearly shows what a hard life it is, being a miner, because he’s not ‘young’). Sarah observes a number of differences between Commander Azaxyr and his subordinates: 

Although equally large, Azaxyr was built on slenderer, more graceful lines than his tank-like troops. He moved more easily, and in particular his mouth and jaw were differently made, less of a piece with the helmet-like head. While the other Ice Warriors grunted and hissed in monosyllables, Azaxyr spoke clearly and fluently, though there was still the characteristic Martian sibilance in his voice.

The Doctor notes that, as a member of an aristocratic Martian line, Azaxyr is ‘almost a different species from the ordinary warriors’. 

Cover: Steve Kyte’s design shows an Ice Warrior and the hulking form of a roaring Aggedor. Simple but effective. Alister Pearson’s 1992 cover shows the Aggedor statue and the Doctor as the background to a cluster of Sarah, Azaxyr, Alpha Centauri and Eckersley.

Final Analysis: It’s a welcome return for the Third Doctor, our first story to feature him since Death to the Daleks 19 books ago. Terrance Dicks might not attribute the colourful cuttlefish properties to Alpha Centauri that Bryan Hayles did in Doctor Who and the Curse of Peladon, but instead Alpha’s tentacles are the indication of his moods. Aggedor is said to be even bigger than he was the last time the Doctor saw him (and considering the illustrations of him in the previous novelisation, that must make him really huge now) and Dicks adjusts the Martian Commander to be as imposing as his warriors.