Synopsis: A stone circle in southern England, known locally as ‘The Nine Travellers’. Which is strange, as clearly there are more than nine stones. This is just one of many legends from the region. Another speaks of a woman who lives for centuries, who might have been a Celt goddess called ‘The Cailleach’. And then there’s the tale of two time travellers who expose a galactic criminal and discover a spaceship hidden in another dimension…
Chapter Titles
1. The Awakening of the Ogri
2. The Circle of Power
3. De Vries
4. The Sacrifice
5. The Ogri Attack
6. The Cailleach
7. The Vanished
8. The Prison Ship
9. The Victims
10. The Trial
11. Surprise Witness
12. Verdict
Background: Terrance Dicks adapts scripts by David Fisher for a story from 1978.
Notes: As The Pirate Planet wasn’t scheduled to be novelised at this point (or indeed, at any point in the foreseeable future), the first chapter explains that the second segment of the Key to Time was found on the planet Calufrax, which is almost right. As on TV, Romana learns that she wasn’t assigned to the Doctor by the President of Gallifrey but by the White Guardian, which amends the alternative continuity established by Ian Marter in The Ribos Operation. The Key to Time pieces are kept in the TARDIS control room inside a ‘wall-locker’ that opens to the Doctor’s palm-print. Professor Amelia Rumford mistakes the Doctor for Doctor Cornish Fougous (rather than an academic who specialised in Cornish fogous). Martha had been a school teacher before she met De Vries and she joined the druid cult to liven up an otherwise dull life. The doomed campers are newly-weds. The Megara are floating silver spheres about the size of a football. The Doctor namedrops Tacitus and Julius Caesar, who he was particularly pally with even though he refused to accept advice and the Doctor had to dress up as a soothsayer to warn him about the ‘ides of March’.
Cover: A composition by Andrew Skilleter featuring the Doctor, the Cailleach and some cult members among the flame-lit stones.
Final Analysis: Possibly Dicks’ most straightforward adaptation of a TV story so far, though he does offer up an delightful description of Professor Rumford:
The woman was quite old, though her back was straight, her eyes clear and alert. Her straggly hair was a snowy white, her face a mass of lines and wrinkles. It was the face of a woman of formidable character.
He’s clearly more interested in her than Vivien Fay, who is ‘a tall, strikingly attractive dark-haired woman in her forties’ but doesn’t really receive much more attention. This is particularly odd when we consider that the last time she’s described at all in the book, she’s dressed as a bird-faced Celtic goddess and on TV she arrives on the space-ship in a silver gown with metallic skin to match.
Synopsis: The Doctor has returned home to claim the Presidency of the Time Lords. As the Gallifreyan elite is driven to panic by this shocking development, this is just the first in a chain of horrific events as the new President banishes senior figures to the barren wastelands of Gallifrey – including his friend Leela. And then the Vardans arrive. This is all part of a trap created by the Doctor to defeat the invaders, but the trap backfires when the Vardans are vanquished and in their place arrive the Sontarans!
Chapter Titles
1. Treaty for Treason
2. The President-Elect
3. Attack from the Matrix
4. The Fugitive
5. The Betrayal
6. The Invasion
7. The Outcasts
8. The Assassin
9. The Vardans
10. False Victory
11. The Sontarans
12. The Key of Rassilon
13. Failsafe
14. The Chase
15. The Wisdom of Rassilon
Background: Terrance Dicks adapts the 1978 scripts attributed to David Agnew (Anthony Read and Graham Williams). This followed Underworld on TV, so that’s another pair of stories to be released consecutively.
Notes: Leela has brown eyes again [see The Horror of Fang Rock]. There are many references back to The Deadly Assassin that provide clarification or other information that wasn’t revealed in the onscreen Invasion of Time. There’s a summary of the events that led to the Doctor assuming the position of President by default, including the Doctor’s previous encounter with the Matrix, as well as an explanation that as there was no other candidate available, and the Doctor was absent, Borusa took on the role of acting President as well as Chancellor, making him extremely powerful. Castellan Spandrel has retired and his very recent replacement, Kelner, quickly established a Bodyguard Squad to protect himself; Kelner took possession of a suite of offices that are… :
… of transparent plastic and gleaming metal, with complex control consoles and brightly flickering vision screens everywhere. It was over-technological even by Time Lord standards, but Kelner, the new Castellan felt it helped to maintain his image.
Kelner is ‘thin-faced, nervous, rather insecure Time Lord’ who gained his position thanks to ‘good birth and political intrigue’. He has a bodyguard who is ‘very big, very brave, and very stupid’. Terrance Dicks maintains the impression given in The Deadly Assassin of the ceremonial chamber at the centre of the Panopticon and the scale of the Time Lord ensemble, which could never be achieved on TV:
The grand hall of the Panopticon is an immense circular chamber used by the Time Lords for all their major ceremonies. It is one of the largest and most impressive chambers in the known universe. The immense marble floor is big enough to hold an army, the domed glass roof seems as high above as the sky itself. Row upon row of viewing galleries run around the walls, and on the far side of the hall an impressive staircase leads down to a raised circular dais. By now the hall was filled with rank upon rank of Time Lords, all wearing the different-coloured robes and insignia of the different Chapters, the complex social family and political organisations that dominated Time Lord Society.
The Great Key of Rassilon is just a lost artefact on TV, but Dicks ties it to the one named in The Deadly Assassin; the one the Master stole was a replica and the real one is kept in the possession of the Chancellor; also unlike on TV, the Doctor deduces which one of Borusa’s keys is the correct one without Borusa first offering a decoy. The buildings on the edge of the Capitol have ‘sheer white walls’ and the gleaming towers can be seen many miles away.
Rodan is described as a ‘Time Lady’. The Outsiders live in log huts. Nesbin was expelled from the Capitol for an unprecedented violent attack upon another Time Lord. Ablif is a ‘burly young man’ and is the Outsiders who first captures Leela and Rodan – and gains a scratch across his face for his troubles. Jasko is also a ‘burly young Outsider’ who isn’t ‘especially bright’ but is ‘brave and strong’ and obedient. While these two Outsiders appeared on TV, a third member of the assault party is called ‘Jablif’ and it’s he who is fatally wounded but manages to kill a Sontaran before he dies.
Dicks’ description of Stor echoes that from Robert Holmes’ prologue for The Time Warrior:
The head was huge and round and it seemed to emerge directly from the massive shoulders. The hairless skull was greeny-brown and small red eyes were set deep in cavernous sockets. The nose was a snubby snout, the wide mouth a lipless slit.
Stor calls our hero ‘Dok-tor’ as if it’s his name, which is lovely.
Cover: Andrew Skilleter paints a much-minicked design of the Doctor and Stor smothered by metal cogs.
Final Analysis: Terrance Dicks guides us through what was actually quite a complicated script and helps it make sense along the way. Even Leela’s sudden departure is given a little assistance (in Leela’s tribe, it turns out, the women choose the men and Andred’s fighting skills and bravery clearly impressed her). He also succeeds in making the Vardans seem impressive:
The space ship was enormous, terrifying, a long, sleek killer-whale of space. Its hull-lines were sharp and predatory and it bristled with the weapon-ports of a variety of death dealing devices. Everything about it suggested devastating, murderous power.
… so that when their human forms are revealed, it’s more dramatic and less underwhelming as they’d already been fairly disappointing before the reveal. We’re still in this dry period where the books largely transcribe what happened on TV, but here, this at least prevents everything from feeling as cheap and improvised as it does on home video.
Synopsis: A group of space travellers seek the lost gene banks of the Minyans, a race of beings with tragic connections to the Time Lords. When their space craft becomes surrounded by a planet, the Minyan travellers discover a subjugated race – the Trogs – who live in underground tunnels as the slaves of the Seers and the god-like Oracle. Could these slaves be the descendants of the lost Minyans? The answers rest with the Oracle – and the quest is the quest…
Chapter Titles
Prologue
1. The Nebula
2. The Minyans
3. The Intruders
4. The Quest
5. Buried Alive
6. The Trogs
7. Skyfall on Nine
8. The Smoke
9. The Mouth of the Dragon
10. The Sword of Sacrifice
11. The Crusher
12. The Battle
13. Doomsday
14. The Legend
Background: Terrance Dicks adapts the 1978 scripts by by Bob Baker and Dave Martin.
Notes: We begin with a prologue (how I love a prologue!) that details the events that led to the loss of Minyos and the isolation policy of the Time Lords. Back in The Invisible Enemy, the Doctor complained that the TARDIS control room is such a boring colour – ‘No aquamarines, no blues. No imagination!’ – and here, he’s trying to paint the control room aquamarine and getting paint everywhere (but in the final scene, he’s painting it white again). On learning of the sword ritual, the Doctor reminds Leela that her own tribe had a similar trial by ordeal. Leela suggests that they return to the TARDIS and leave the Minyans to their fate but the Doctor wants to solve the mystery of the P7E.
Cover: Bill Donohoe combines two photo reference from this story to create something rather like a pulp sex book you’d find in the saucy rack in a 1970s newsagent – the Doctor looks pensive while Herrick carries a near-death Tala – as if we’ve just walked in on a scene we don’t really want to be a part of.
Final Analysis: This would always be a tricky one, a real clunker from Bob Baker and Dave Martin (the kings of overambition) and it’s one that’s always been unpopular for good reason. Devoid of the visibly low budget of the TV version, we’re left with a story with no recognisable human interaction, just mythology that gets a bit repetitive. It’s a relief that Terrance Dicks finds a way to highlight that humanity: The father who grieves for his lost wife and daughter after they’re killed in a landfall is a rare highlight. Something I’ve noticed though is that the Fourth Doctor in this period is brash and often his overconfidence borders on bullying, which makes him hard to like. The real highlight is that Dicks makes great use of K9 for his comedy potential, the wilfully over-literal explanations are hilarious.
Escape to Danger 