Back in 2022, I published a novelisation of Dimensions in Time on this blog. Ever since then, I’ve been asked if I’m going to do another. Because that would be mad…
So – here’s a completely unauthorised and unofficial adaptation of the 1999 Comic Relief comedy special ‘The Curse of Fatal Death’.
eBook version (PDF – this might require a download if you don’t have a PDF reader on your device) Download or read here:
Synopsis: The Doctor and Jamie discover they’ve acquired a stowaway – Zoe, the young astrophysicist they met on the Wheel space station. Zoe is determined to join the travellers in the TARDIS, but the Doctor believes it only fair to warn her of the kind of dangers she might face. He weaves a narrative of one of their previous adventures and projects it into Zoe’s mind. A story in which Jamie’s faith is tested and the Doctor is forced to work for his deadliest enemies, the Daleks.
Chapter Titles: A prologue, epilogue and 17 numbered chapters.
Background: Credited to Frazer Hines, with help from Steve Cole and Mike Tucker, this is an abridged version of the longer hardback book published in 2023. Rather than simply adapting the scripts from David Whitaker’s 1967 story, this incorporates material from the 1968 repeat version, plus the final scene from Whitaker’s The Wheel in Space. This edition was released as a free gift alongside Doctor Who Magazine issue 609.
Notes: A prologue is told from Jamie’s viewpoint and adapts the final scene from The Wheel in Space. The quest to locate the TARDIS is heavily truncated, with Chapter One beginning at Waterfield’s shop. Maxtible knew Kemel when he was a wrestler in London’s East End; he offered the Turk lodgings in a small cottage on his land. Kemel performed menial tasks within the grounds to pay his way. It’s stated that Maxtible planned to use Kemel in the Daleks’ series of trials for Jamie.
Contributions from Kennedy, Perry, Ruth Maxtible, Arthur Terrall and Toby are completely excised; some of these absences are explained away in the epilogue (which is also told from Jamie’s point of view). The epilogue consists of entirely new material, concluding with a line paraphrased from The Dominators: ‘It’s quite taxing, mental projection, y’know.’
Cover: Dan Liles, who took over from Anthony Dry with The Church on Ruby Road, creates a painting of a dramatic scene, with Jamie and Victoria looking on as the Troughton Doctor stands proudly in the Emperor’s control room surrounded by Daleks. In keeping with past Target covers (Day of the Daleks and Dalek Invasion of Earth) the Daleks are flipped so their arms are the wrong way round – a shame as otherwise it’s a beautiful piece of artwork.
Final Analysis: While John Peel’s The Evil of the Daleks was the final TV novelisation of the original run, it was published by Virgin Books, so technically this new adaptation is a first for the Target range. It’s much more in the style of old Target books, economical and fairly linear apart from the intro and outro chapters. Sometimes, the simplicity is to the benefit of the story, skirting over some of the gaps in the narrative that were present in the televised story (such as why the Waterfields have such a presence in Maxtible’s house). As a side-step – and as a freebie for DWM – this is a nice piece of whimsy, but it doesn’t come close to the quality and richness of John Peel’s approach. As an abridgement of the longer hardback, it also loses most of the point-of-view material that justifies having Frazer Hines’ name on the cover. It’s a decent retelling of the TV story though, while still leaving room for the curious reader to approach either of the other, longer versions previously available.
In advance of my guest appearance on the Dr Who Literature Podcast to discuss Harry Sullivan’s War, I wanted to create a theme tune, as if the book had been a TV movie. As the book is inspired heavily by James Bond, there’s a nod to a 1980s Bond theme in there, as well as references to events in the novel, sewn together as an oblique narrative in the style of Duran Duran. I’m immensely grateful to Antony Owen for providing the lead vocals on this.
Then there’s the title sequence, making use of very limited animation to evoke something similar to a 1980s TV thriller.
You can hear my discussion with Jason about the novel here:
As part of my ongoing contributions to the Dr Who Literature Podcast, I’ve been creating musical parodies to introduce some episodes. Here’s a catchy little ditty I wrote and animated for the episode on Enlightenment:
News has only just reached me of the passing in January of artist Nick Spender. Nick provided the cover art for four Target books (plus the proposed artwork for the unreleased An Unearthly Child audiobook).
Well, this is new territory. In 2022, to mark the end of this blog, I published my own take on the Children in Need story Dimensions in Time. For Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary in 2023 (which is also the 30th birthday of Dimensions in Time), I’ve gone one better and recorded an audiobook.
Just a few notes – I don’t have a professional recording booth, just a headset, so the sound isn’t perfect, but at least it’s free (although a donation to Children in Need would be very welcome). Also, I’ve cheekily used the theme tune to the original Pickwicks talking book of State of Decay – the one that was released before the Target version – as I thought that’d be funny.
Here’s episode 1, covering the first four chapters. You can either play it in your browser or download it; just right-click and “Save Audio As”…
Having now read every Target book, I thought I’d have a go at novelising the one televised story we’re unlikely to ever see in Target form. It also has the distinction of being the only TV story we’re unlikely to see with an official home video / DVD release, due to various contractual nightmares, so this would serve the same function as those original Target books of telling a story you might not have seen on broadcast. While there are some jokes slipped in, I set myself the challenge of treating it seriously, as if it were a ‘proper’ TV adventure.
The first line is a tribute to Terrance Dicks’ opener for Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth (1977). The first chapter depicts new events leading up to and out of the Doctor’s warning to his other selves. The reference to the Rani hating children has been omitted (sorry!). The boy who discovers the Doctor in his yard was going to be Ian Beale, until I realised that the Ian as seen on TV was actually the wrong age. Pauline’s elder son Mark was a better fit, so he was swapped in.
Chapter 2 references a few stories: The backstory to Underworld and the near-eradication of the Minyans; the Doctor’s departure from Gallifrey as shown in Name of the Doctor; and the Doctor’s trial in The War Games and subsequent exile to Earth. The Rani’s TARDIS control room is the one seen in Mark of the Rani, with the addition of a separate corridor where the menagerie is kept. The disembodied heads of the Doctors are avatars, not the actual heads (explaining why they look like rubber heads on telly). The descriptions of the first two Doctors are inspired by similar lines in The Five Doctors (1983), again by Terrance. A Wirrn is added to the Rani’s collection. Although not given on screen, the name of the Rani’s companion Cyrian appears in the scripts. For many years, fandom had another name for him – ‘Shagg’ – something actor Samuel West recently acknowledged he was aware of on Jay Rayner’s Out To Lunch podcast (the segment begins 6 mins in)!
Chapter 3 sees the TARDIS arrive with the ‘wheezing, groaning’ noise introduced by Terrance Dicks in Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion (1974). The description of the Seventh Doctor and Ace is inspired by similar lines in Terrance Dicks’ original New Adventures novel, Timewyrm: Exodus. The ‘JUST MARRIED’ headline from the TV episodes is expanded upon – as the wedding of Princess Anne and Captain Mark Philips took place a couple of weeks before that sequence was set. The Sixth Doctor’s description cribs from Terrance Dicks’ The Mysterious Planet (1988), while Mel’s ‘inquisitive glint’ comes from Pip and Jane Baker’s The Ultimate Foe (1988).
Chapter 4 provides some of Kathy Hills-Beale’s backstory, to introduce some of the contrivances inherent in soap opera plotting (and to foreshadow the revelation later in the story). As seen on TV, Kathy’s son Ian was too old for 1973, so he’s shown as a quiet three-year-old here. The description of Susan comes from The Five Doctors, while her back story includes details from An Unearthly Child and Nigel Robinson’s adaptation of Edge of Destruction. The Fifth Doctor is said to have a ‘pleasant, open face’, a description first used by Terrance Dicks in Four to Doomsday (1983). As the Doctor searches his memories, he sees fog, a tenuous reference to the very first shot of An Unearthly Child. The Ogron description comes from Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks (1974), while the Cyberman is from The Wheel in Space (1988)
Chapter 5 introduces a new idea, that the first Doctor is influencing events in the favour of his other selves (which also explains how the Doctor suddenly acquires multiple companions!). The alternative dimensions that flick from the big man to the sleight girl refer to the TV viewers’ vote as to which EastEnders character would be involved in episode 2 – Big Ron or Mandy (and the dimension readings are, of course, the phone numbers for the voting). Bessie’s description is another steal from The Five Doctors. The Doctor checks to see if Mike is an Auton, referring back to a similar rescue by car in The Terror of the Autons, while the backstory for Liz and the Brigadier is from Spearhead from Space. The joke about the Mitchell brothers speaking in ‘wheezing, groaning’ voices was suggested by author Will Maclean – cheers Will!
Chapter 6 provides Frank Butcher’s backstory and the explanation for exactly why Albert Square is the perfect setting for the Rani’s trap.
Chapter 7 includes a reference to ‘teshnology’ and Leela’s introduction, The Face of Evil, which also provides her description. The chapter includes new scenes showing some of the aliens from the Rani’s menagerie returned to their proper times, along with suitably nasty resolutions. Just this once, everyone dies! And finally, the presence of K9 at the end is explained away. Almost.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this daft bit of fun. I’ve never monetised this blog or added adverts, but I’d really appreciate it if you could donate to BBC Children in Need, the charity appeal that first gave us Dimensions in Time.
… and as a thankyou to you faithful readers, here’s a PDF ofthe novella for you to download, which should work in most e-Book readers (please note, if you don’t have PDF software on your device, this may trigger an additional download).
The gaps between the sudden transformations for the Doctor and his companions were getting smaller and smaller. This could mean only one thing – the Rani’s plans, whatever they were, were nearing fruition. Racing through Greenwich, he found himself tripping over himself – literally – each time the long legs of three of his selves suddenly shrunk down into those of the short Scottish one, or running out of breath as the burly one in the colourful coat. As he reached the Cutty Sark, he became the white haired one with the frilly shirt. He stumbled and Victoria, the young Nineteenth-century orphan who had travelled with him when he was the short tramp, took his arm and helped him up.
‘I should be taking it easy, not bounding around like some megaluthian slime skimmer.’
‘Who was that terrible woman?’ asked the petrified Victoria.
‘The Rani. One of my own people. Her handiwork is behind all this confusion in time and now her control is beginning to break down.’ They turned a corner and there it was – the TARDIS, just where he had left it back in 1973. Pulling the key from a chain around his neck, the Doctor opened the door to the police box and ushered Victoria in before stepping inside wearily and closing the door.
The TARDIS dematerialised from beside the Cutty Sark, then simultaneously materialised half a mile away at the Greenwich Observatory. It seemed the Doctor had finally got the hang of those short hops. The short Scottish Doctor stepped from the TARDIS, looked behind him and said ‘stay!’ to a companion hidden inside.
Just a few metres away, he saw a strange stone obelisk materialise with the customary grinding sound that accompanied all TARDISes. A woman emerged from behind the obelisk. She was tall with brown hair and piercing blue eyes. Her arms and legs, exposed by her brief costume of animal skins, were brown and smoothly muscular. Her pose was that of a captured wild animal preparing for a final fight.
‘Leela!’ the Doctor cried. Leela stared at the short man with the wise but comical face. Though he looked nothing like the Doctor she had known, who was very tall with curly hair and a long scarf, she knew that they were one and the same. Even so, she approached the man with caution.
‘Doctor?’
‘The Rani let you go?’
‘I escaped, but not before she copied me. She has a zoo of animals in there, Doctor, trapped by teshnology.’ Leela had been raised as a savage on an alien jungle planet. She had long ago left behind many of her old ways, though her experiences with the Tesh tribe on her homeworld still left her suspicious of all machinery.
‘So long as you’re safe.’
‘But Doctor, the Rani is attempting to transfer a massive time tunnel through the Greenwich Meridian. She has a computer in there with genetic codes and brain prints of every living creature in the entire cosmos.’
‘And with it evolution is hers to control,’ said the Doctor. But something troubled him. Leela’s words were not those of a savage. ‘This is important, Leela. Whose form were you in when the Rani cloned you?’
Leela replied, ‘Romana. Doctor, I think the Rani thought that Romana was human’.
‘Ah! That means there are two time brains from our side embedded in the Rani’s computer. Quick – into the TARDIS! There’s an old friend waiting for you.’
As Leela stepped into the TARDIS, she was greeted by a high mechanical voice: ‘MISTRESS!’
The lights in the Rani’s TARDIS were a deep vermillion as the walls throbbed with a deep bass note. Cyrian clung to the central console. ‘Thirty seconds to full power status, Mistress.’
But the Rani was lost in thought, drunk on the results of her genius.
Finally, victory was hers!
Swamped in cables, the Doctor frantically issued orders to his friends. As Leela unravelled the wires and laid them out around the Rani’s TARDIS, the robot dog K9 welded them into position.
‘Twenty-five seconds, Master,’ chirped K9 helpfully. Leela suddenly flashed from existence – and Ace took her place.
‘What- where are we, Professor?’
‘No time to explain, Ace. Hold this!’ He threw a detonation box to his young friend, who recognised its purpose instantly.
‘Wicked!’
‘I’m trying to overload the Rani’s computer, enhance the power of the time tunnel to pull her TARDIS in and not me.’
‘I assume it’s not as easy as it sounds?’
‘Of course not,’ the Doctor grinned.
‘Twenty seconds…’ said K9.
The Doctor was good at improvising, but even he knew that twenty seconds just wasn’t enough. They needed more time.
And then he realised – entirely by accident, more time is exactly what the Rani had given him.
‘I must free my other incarnations. Join me!’ He held his fists to his temples – and made contact.
‘We must pull free,’ said the tall one with the shock of white hair and the frilly shirt.
‘Together, we can succeed,’ said the cricketer.
‘Precisely,’ the colourful clown encouraged.
‘Good luck!’ came the voice of the Bohemian, his woollen scarf billowing in his own dark dimension.
‘Five seconds…’ said K9.
‘Ace, activate the converter!’ the Doctor said. And Ace realised his voice was inside her head.
‘Three… two…’
Ace pulled the switch on the detonator. The air filled with the sound of the Rani’s TARDIS dematerialising…
But instead of disappearing, the stone obelisk shuddered in position. Slowly, a whirling light appeared around it – the Time Vortex!
The pressures of the vortex flooded into the Rani’s TARDIS. Cyrian lost his grip on the TARDIS console. He flew into the air and found himself pinned to the ceiling, unable to move. The Rani tried desperately to reach the console, but the time winds pushed her back, lifting her up against the curved wall of the chamber. Huge electrical charges filled the air. The capsules of the menagerie shattered open and all of her captors awoke, blinking in shock (at least, those captors who had eyes that could blink; it was difficult to tell what the Cyberman’s reaction was).
The elderly Doctor fell from his capsule, his fall broken by the supine form of the already released second Doctor. The two men, who were the same man, helped each other up, shook each other by the hand – and promptly disappeared. All around the chamber, the aliens were fading away as they were returned to their own proper places in time and space.
The ape-like creature appeared in the sprawling grounds of an English stately home. The confused Ogron had just enough time to recognise that he was back where he had been taken from before he felt a thud against his chest. In the distance, a tall white-haired human with white hair and a frilly shirt was pointing a gun at him. The Ogron clutched his chest – and disappeared.
The Cyberman scanned its surroundings. It was deep in the ice catacombs of Telos. As it began to pull in data from Cyber control’s central computer, a nearby doorway exploded, knocking him from the gantry and into an abyss.
The mutant with the exposed brain was back in the laboratory of his ship, strapped into a machine, surrounded by his brothers. A tall human male with a pleasant, open face stood frozen in fear next to an older man with a military aspect. Suddenly another man entered the room – yet he was also a younger version of the military man. The two forms of the same man stared at each other in bewilderment and reached out to each other. With a blinding flash, the time differential shuddered through the machinery and at last the mutant embraced the finality of death that he had longed for through the centuries.
The plant creature fell by its fellow Vervoids as they withered and died together from exposure to vionesium charges, detonated by a tall, curly haired human in a colourful coat and a petite woman with a mane of red hair. The plant’s leaves became dry and they crumbled in the breeze of the air conditioning of a space liner hundreds of years into the future.
The Time Lord, still in his ceremonial robes, looked out defiantly across the courtroom. The court prosecutor, dressed all in black, handed a scroll to the Inquisitor. He heard the words of the Inquisitor: ‘Morbius, you have been sentenced to death by disintegration…’ but the Time Lord knew that this was not the end. In the gallery, high above the witnesses, he spied one of his most loyal followers. Doctor Solon had promised him a way to cheat his impending execution. The man was holding a glass jar, an expression of cold ambition on his face…
One by one, all of the Rani’s captives returned home – and instantly wished they hadn’t… and out in the time vortex, the Rani’s TARDIS spun helplessly out of control…
Ace patted herself down. She was herself again. At least for the time being. The Doctor was buried under a mass of cables and wires. She untangled him and brushed the dust off his face.
‘Hoisted by her own peTARDIS,’ he coughed. Still the same old Doctor.
‘What did you do to her?’
‘Well, thanks to Romana, there was an additional rogue time-brain in the Rani’s computer and I used that to rocket the Rani into the trap that she set for me,’ he said, rolling each ‘r’ with a flourish.
‘So now your other selves are all free?
‘Certainly I – I mean we – are difficult to get rid of.’ Ace looked over at the mess they had made. From beneath the frayed cables, there was a glowing red rectangular light.
‘Master!’ it said. ‘Mistress!’
‘K9! Doctor, you forgot K9! Shouldn’t he have gone back with one of the other lot?’
The Doctor shot Ace a guilty look. ‘Yes. Ah well, we can drop him off on the way.’ Ace looked up with excitement.
‘Where next, Professor?’
The Doctor just gave her a look and smiled. She knew better than to ask questions that he had no way of knowing the answers to. He filled Ace’s arms with all his broken equipment, held the TARDIS door open for her and then waited patiently as his old robot dog trundled over the threshold. Just like old times.
The colonnades of the Greenwich Observatory echoed with the sound of timeless engines grinding into action. With a pleasant wheezing and groaning sound, the Doctor’s TARDIS disappeared.
‘I was looking for the Doctor, if it’s really any of your business.’
6
Captured by the Rani
Despite her set-back in Albert Square, the Rani seemed as confident as ever.
‘My menagerie is almost complete. I now have everything I want – apart from one Earthling. Find the Doctor’s companion. Any of them!’
Cyrian allowed himself a moment to be thankful that she hadn’t blamed him for the error, but he still hadn’t told her of his suspicions, that the captured Doctors were somehow disrupting events. Nevertheless, the scanners showed one companion was straying very close indeed.
Romana was not used to hiding. When she first travelled with the Doctor, she had been fresh out of the academy, barely past her hundredth birthday. After many years exploring the galaxy with him to hide behind, she’d finally branched off on her own and found she was just as good as he was at getting in and out of trouble, saving the day and righting wrongs. Far-flung worlds in long-forgotten galaxies were childsplay to her – especially with the assistance of her robot dog, the super-computer called K9. But she had surprisingly little experience of Earth in the Twentieth Century. Now, she was lost and alone – K9 had vanished – and for the first time in centuries, she found herself wishing the Doctor was there.
In this incarnation, she was a little on the small side, aristocratically attractive, with long fair hair above a high forehead. When she’d materialised in this time zone, she’d found herself in a dark room made of bricks and the workbenches were littered with pieces of dark metallic machinery. A vehicle was raised up above a pit in the floor, presumably to make it easier for functionaries to conduct maintenance. The air was oily and stale.
The only light smeared in from the edges of a set of wooden double doors. As she tried to make her escape, she heard voices immediately outside. She ducked down behind the vehicle and hid.
The door opened and two figures entered. At first, Romana thought they were Sontarans, with their bald heads and broad, squat bodies. She heard the new arrivals speak, in low wheezing, groaning tones. Concerned that her hearts were both beating too loudly, she stopped one of them and held her breath.
‘I thought you said you’d locked it?’ said the older man.
‘I did,’ replied the other. ‘Someone must have broken in. What’s going on here? The Square is madness today.’ They were not Sontarans. Though the two men were not identical, there was a strong family resemblance. Brothers, perhaps. As Romana adjusted her position to get a clearer view, she knocked over a sweeping brush, which fell to the ground with a clatter. Romana stood up with a guilty smirk on her face.
‘Oi, you! What’s your game?’ the older man said. Romana realised she needed to rely on an old trick of the Doctor’s – pretend you own the place. She walked over to the men and looked them up and down dismissively.
‘I was looking for the Doctor, if it’s really any of your business.’
‘Well you won’t find him here,’ said the younger, taller man. ‘He lives at number one Albert Square, over there. I suggest you leave.’ The Time Lady was momentarily thrown by this.
‘You know the Doctor?’ The older one with the wheezing voice looked at her with a furrowed brow that made him look even more like a neanderthal, if that were even possible.
‘Yeah, Doctor Legg. He’s the only doctor round here, love.’
‘Doctor who?’ said, Romana, brushing between them and making her exit.
Frank Butcher was the king who lost it all. At one time, he owned a bed-and-breakfast and a car lot in Albert Square. For a time, he was even the joint landlord, with his wife, Pat, of the Queen Vic. But 1993 had not been a good year. After being stung with a huge tax bill, Frank was already struggling, but when Pat was arrested and sent to prison for accidentally killing a woman while driving, his businesses suffered and he was facing financial ruin. Many times, he’d thought about leaving Albert Square and starting again, but he couldn’t do it. This wasn’t some deep-rooted work ethic or even a strength of character. He literally wasn’t able to leave without something pulling him back.
And this was why the Rani had selected this specific spot for her trap. Because Frank was not alone. Generations of families had been born here, lived out their lives and died within the same quarter mile. They spoke in hushed tones about jobs ‘up west’ or ‘south of the river’ while Albert Square’s unique gravitational pull stopped them from ever leaving for good. His wife, Pat – née Pat Hills – had grown up nearby and married Pauline’s brother, Pete. Even years later, after they had divorced and Pete had married Kathy, Pat found herself returning to the square – and drawing Frank in with her.
It was the same for all of them – every single resident of Albert Square. Their complex family trees were horrifically interwoven. It was not unknown for individuals to discover that their sister was also their mother, or parents who’d been buried and mourned long ago were still alive and longing to return. Albert Square was a chronological, genealogical impossibility. And the perfect location for the Rani’s trap.
Frank crossed the Square deep in thought. He barely registered the aristocratic woman with the long blonde hair and the furtive expression until unseen hands seized her by the shoulders and dragged her through the doors of the Queen Vic.
‘Well,’ said Frank to himself, ‘I’ve seen them thrown out of the Vic, but never dragged in!’ He chuckled to himself and realised with some sadness that it was the first time in months that he’d had anything to laugh about.
As he passed the Queen Vic, the entire building seemed to shimmer slightly as a faint wheezing, groaning sound hung in the air.
Inside the Rani’s TARDIS, which was no longer disguised as the Queen Vic pub, Romana struggled in vain to free herself from the strong arms of the Rani’s assistant. Cyrian held her in an efficient armlock as he marched her across the control chamber and into a corridor full of capsules. Through the circular port-holes on each capsule, Romana saw the faces of the Rani’s menagerie, frozen in time. They approached an open capsule and Cyrian pushed her inside with a hefty shove. The capsule door closed around her and Romana had time merely to turn around before the stasis field flooded over her and fixed her into position.
‘Human sample acquired, Mistress,’ Cyrian cheered, unaware that his captive was not in the least bit human.
‘Excellent! Prepare to rematerialise at the centre of the Earth time meridian, Greenwich!’
As Cyrian adjusted the dials on his mistress’s console, lights danced across the Rani’s impassive face. He suddenly thought she had the look of the devil about her.
But back in the capsule corridor, the old Doctor was making plans of his own. He managed to make a connection with his replacement, the short scruffy one. They knew what needed to be done. They focused their thoughts upon the capsule that contained the form of their future companion, Romana. Inside the capsule, the Time Lady’s second heart began to beat again. There was a blinding flash – and the capsule door sprung open!
Escape to Danger 