Category Adric

Chapter 112. Doctor Who – Black Orchid (1987)

Jim Sangster 1 Comment

Synopsis: A case of mistaken identity leads to the Doctor playing for Lord Cranleigh’s cricket team. Invited for a post-match party at Cranleigh Hall, the TARDIS team are startled to meet Lord Cranleigh’s fiancee Ann, a young woman who appears to be an exact double of Nyssa. The party comes to a sudden halt as a murder is announced – and Ann has conclusive proof that the killer is the mysterious Doctor.

Chapter Titles

  • Prologue
  • 1. A Doctor to the Rescue
  • 2. Nyssa Times Two
  • 3. The Doctor Loses his Way
  • 4. The Doctor Makes a Find
  • 5. The Pierrot Unmasked
  • 6. The Pierrot Reappears
  • 7. The Doctor Stands Accused
  • 8. Under Arrest
  • 9. The Secret of Cranleigh Hall
  • Epilogue

Background: Terence Dudley adapts his own scripts from the 1982 serial. This completes the run of stories from Season 19 for Target.

Notes: In the prologue, the servant, Digby, is given a first name – Raymond – and his family don’t know where he’s working (as revealed in a letter from home found on his person by the Doctor); he survives the attack by ‘the creature’, only to be murdered a little later on (but still within the prologue), when ‘the creature’ uses the secret passage to spy on a sleeping Ann and then attacks Digby silently and fatally. There’s a very telling paragraph within Ann Talbot’s introduction, that suggests she’s engaged to Charles purely out of a sense of duty:

She had loved George as she knew she could never love his brother, but this was something Charles did understand, or said he did. She would come to love him in time, he said. He would make her love him.

Lord Cranleigh’s formal name is ‘Charles Percival Beauchamp, tenth Marquess of Cranleigh’, inheriting the title from his elder brother George, the ninth Marquess’. Charles’s friend at Guy’s Hospital is Smutty Handicombe (not Thomas as on TV) and he’s both a celebrated cricket player and one of the top brain surgeons in the country. The captain of the opposing cricket team suggests Cranleigh’s team bats first, to allow his last-minute guest to arrive.

The Doctor shamelessly name-drops Don Bradman, which impresses Tegan for once; making his first-class debut two years after this story is set (1925), Australian cricketer Sir Donald Bradman is widely recognised as the greatest batsman of all time. Tegan is a huge cricket fan, and tries to explain the game to her friends at length – but refuses to elaborate on the finer details of the Oxford-Cambridge boat-race. During the match, Tegan sees Latoni from a distance.

A new scene shows Charles and Ann choosing the costumes for their guests together, so Charles also knows there is only one pierrot costume, which he selects for the Doctor. Adric’s insatiable gluttony is introduced early on, when he longs for pie and gravy that he sees illustrated in a poster advertising Bisto at the station. Adric is treated with great empathy here. His appetite for food is actually one of curiosity, not greed, as there are so many foodstuffs he’s never encountered before and he wants to try them all. Then there’s the matter of dancing.

The last thing he wanted to be was conspicuous; more conspicuous than he felt in this ridiculous costume, that is. He’d suffered the last straw when a young man, dressed as what he discovered later was an eighteenth-century pirate, had approached him and asked him to dance. All he’d done was to open his mouth to say ‘thank you’ and the pirate had blushed, cleared his throat, muttered something about being sorry and beat a hasty retreat. It really was the limit. 

Adric does eventually join in with the dancing and enjoys himself immensely. He’s confident that he can spot Nyssa by the look in her eyes; he is wrong and completely fails to recognise that he’s talking to Ann. He has slightly more luck elsewhere though, and he feels uncomfortable when he first sees the figure dressed as the Pierrot.

When Ann is abducted, she sees the disfigured man and is distressed by his appearance, but does not connect him to the attacker in the Pierrot costume, especially after Lady Cranleigh tells her a blatant lie, claiming that the inhabitant of the attic room is an explorer who suffered a similar fate to George and was brought to England as a penance to make up for the loss of George.

Tegan tells Adric that the penalty for a murder convition in 1925 is a hanging. The Doctor is permitted by Sir Robert to change back into his normal clothes prior to being taken to the police station. He ponders whether he has been sent to this time by the Time Lords (though it would seem a trivial case for their attention) and he recalls the events of The King’s Demons, even though they happened in his future (but the book of that story was published first). He makes his way to the roof of the house by retracing his steps through the secret passage.

Latoni’s role is expanded; he’s a tender companion to George and believes his agitations to be connected to the coming of the full moon (much to Lady Cranleigh’s irritation). Though badly injured after he’s attacked by George, Latoni survives the story, helped to safety from the fire by Charles. George realises that the woman in his grasp is not Ann when he sees that Nyssa does not have a mole on her shoulder. He falls to his death after reaching out to Ann and losing his balance. The epilogue tells us that the news of the terrible treatment endured by the famous explorer at the hands of South American natives and his subsequent death is received with some sympathy by the public. The Doctor and his friends leave after George’s funeral, which takes place just three days after his death. It’s not stated that they get to keep their costumes, though the Doctor does receive a copy of George’s book.

Cover: On the lawn of Cranleigh Hall, a harlequin juggles balls in front of a parked police box – an eye-catching piece by Tony Masero..

Final Analysis: It’s a fairly small-scale story on television, where the story would pretty much play out as it does with or without the Doctor’s involvement. This adaptation provides background to the family secret and to Latoni’s motivations for helping George to get back home and Dudley tries to make the cricket scene as engaging as possible by contrasting Tegan’s enthusiasm with her friends’ utter bewilderment, highlighting how ridiculous the activity really is. There is an unfortunate element though, in the way the mystery is maintained: The victim of torture and violent abuse is labelled ‘the creature’, initially from Ann’s point of view but the description persists. We’re back in the realms of exploitative body horror here.

The head was hairless with exposed and alternative livid and puce puckered skin. Human facial features were barely acknowledged. There were no recognisable ears. The eyes were hideously shot with blood, the right one almost submerged in folds of livid morbid flesh. A fleshless ridge with two perforations and a lipless gash beneath it was small evidence of a nose and mouth. The obscenely puckered forearms supported hands, the fingers of which were welded together, giving a grotesque prominence to the thumbs.

Doctor Who doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to portraying disability and mental illness, but at least here we might make an excuse for what is effectively a literary pastiche, blending Jane Eyre and Agatha Christie. Putting the politics aside though, it’s a beautifully crafted novel that does a satisfying job of expanding on the original source without introducing huge amounts of padding or waffle. Dudley goes to some lengths to provide a sympathetic approach to each of his characters – even Lady Cranleigh, whose ruthless pragmatism could place her in the role of genuine monster were it not for the way the Doctor justifies her more callous actions in the pursuit of protecting her eldest son. For once, Adric is shown some kindness too, even if (as mentioned above) he’s too obsessed with grazing through the buffet to notice how close he comes to being given a romantic subplot with a clumsy pirate.

Chapter 83. Doctor Who – Kinda (1984)

Jim Sangster 1 Comment

Synopsis: A small survey team has set up a base on a jungle planet to review it for possible colonisation. But when the Doctor and Adric are brought to the survey dome, they can already sense a tension in the air. Some of the survey team’s number have disappeared and another is clearly on the brink of a breakdown. Left alone in the jungle, Tegan falls into a deep sleep and finds herself trapped in a nightmare with a terrifying evil force. Her only chance of freedom will also release the Mara!

Chapter Titles

  • 1. Dangerous Paradise
  • 2. The Kinda
  • 3. Ghosts
  • 4. The Box of Jhana
  • 5. The Mara
  • 6. The Change
  • 7. The Vision
  • 8. The Dream Cave
  • 9. The Wheel Turns
  • 10. The Path of the Mara
  • 11. The Attack
  • 12. The Face of the Mara

Background: Terrance Dicks adapts scripts from 1983 by Christopher Bailey. Publication for this was delayed to give Dicks time to finish The Five Doctors.

Notes: Deva Loka is a planet of ‘rich sub-tropical jungles, and warm blue seas’. Tegan has close cropped hair and her stewardess uniform, so a combination of her looks from Seasons 19 and 20. Sanders notes that falling asleep on duty usually carries a death sentence but as Hindle’s overnight watch is voluntary, he can’t be punished. The TSS machine looks like ‘a kind of squared-off parody of the human form’. Todd is referred to as ‘Doctor Todd’ throughout. Hearing the names of the inhabitants of the dome, the Doctor identifies the expedition as being of Earth origin (as in many novels set during Earth’s expansion across the universe, the homeworld is said to be overcrowded). Only one of the missing survey team – Roberts – is named on screen, but here we learn that the other two were Stone and Carter. The three people in Tegan’s dream are not named. Doctor Todd identifies the Kinda jester as ‘Trickster’, a ‘symbolic figure from Kinda ritual’. 

Cover: A slight step up in the photographic covers as there are two elements from the story that aren’t the most boring they could possibly be (the Doctor and a TSS Machine) – they finally learn how to do a decent montage just as the photographic covers are dropped for good [but see Time and the Rani]. We’ll have to wait until the 1991 reprint for Alister Pearson’s composition showing the bleached-out features of Dukkha, the Doctor, the Mara wrapped around a Kinda necklace and a sinister leering Tegan.

Final Analysis: I love Terrance Dicks – really I do – but this is a story that really needed to have been novelised by the original author. I’d have adored that extra insight into Christopher Bailey’s vision because, like many fans, I didn’t appreciate just how majestic this story was on first viewing (incredibly, it came bottom of the Doctor Who Magazine season poll, in a season that contains Four to Doomsday and Time Flight!). As ever, Dicks kindly improves on elements that didn’t quite work on TV: As the Mara detaches itself from Aris he ‘seize[s] it in a passion of hatred, as if determined to throttle it with his bare hands’ (as opposed to wiggling a rubber snake to make it look animated); while the Mara itself is larger than ‘any natural animal, it lashed about the clearing in a furious writhing coil. Its markings were red and black and white, and the fierce yellow eyes glowed with hatred’.

Chapter 78. Doctor Who – Earthshock (1983)

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Synopsis: After a brief encounter in a cave on Earth, the Doctor and his friends explore a freighter in space. When a crewmember of the freighter is found murdered, the Doctor becomes an obvious suspect. The captain of the ship, a stern woman called Briggs, remains unconvinced by the Doctor’s explanations but is more concerned with getting her cargo to Earth, unaware that each of her fifteen thousand silos contains a dormant Cybermen – and they’re about to wake up!

Chapter Titles

  • 1. Shadows
  • 2. Labyrinth of Death
  • 3. Uneasy Allies
  • 4. A Crisis Defused
  • 5. Stowaways
  • 6. Monstrous Awakenings
  • 7. A Siege
  • 8. War of Nerves
  • 9. Accidents Happen
  • 10. Triumph and Tragedy

Background: Ian Marter adapts scripts by Eric Saward for the 1982 serial.

Notes: All of the TARDIS crew receives a very good quick-sketch description in line with those of Terrance Dicks, so Adric is ‘snub-nosed’ and sullen and Nyssa is ‘aristocratic-looking’, while Tegan has an ‘efficient and determined air’. The new Doctor gets his best description so far: With his ‘long and tanned’ face and open collar with two embroidered question marks (their first mention!), he looks like he’s ‘dressed for a summer garden party or a regatta’. References to their failed attempt to get to Heathrow (The Visitation) and the book the Doctor is reading (Black Orchid) are missing.

The Doctor theorises that the bomb in the caves might be strong enough to blow the Earth apart if it were placed in a strategic position such as an ancient fault line. Without identifying them yet, Marter introduces two silver figures, one larger than the other, and it’s the most detailed descriptions of Cybermen so far:

The rigid mask-like faces had eyeless sockets and immobile mouth-like apertures, but no noses. They had no ears, but a network of wires and pipes connecting a bulging section on each side of their heads to a similar bulge on the top. The limbs were jointed like human ones, but were much thicker and more powerfully tubular, and the arms terminated in enormous hands like steel gauntlets. Tubes ran snaking over the hard metallic surfaces of their bodies from flat, box-like units protected by gratings which were fitted onto their chests…

The beings make hissing noises ‘like human breathing’ (so, just like Darth Vader) and their guns are clipped to their belts (utility belts like Batman? The Cyberleader pulls a key from his later). The Cyberleader is accompanied by a Deputy (which neatly avoids confusion with Lieutenant Scott) and their scanner is called a ‘holovisor disc’. The Cybermen are much more resilient than the TV versions toward the firepower of the troopers and freighter crew, until the Doctor suggests they focus their guns on the chest gratings. A mocking Ringway suggests that the Doctor and his friends should give in and the Doctor replies: ‘I never surrender, it’s too embarrassing.’

Berger is described as ‘a lean hard woman of about fifty’, while Captain Briggs is rather generously said to be about Berger’s age (rather than a decade older). As the Cybermen march him towards the TARDIS, the Doctor stumbles across their hidden control room; the entry hatch slams shut, accidentally sets the reactivation sequence running on the dormant Cybermen.

Nyssa removes the dead bodies of Professor Kyle and the trooper from the TARDIS Console room, which is possibly the single bravest thing a companion has ever had to do. Adric’s badge is used to attack both the Cyberleader and the Deputy; Tegan stands in wait as the Deputy returns to the console room and attacks him from behind, before the Doctor (not Nyssa) blasts him with the Leader’s gun. The Doctor picks up a surviving fragment of Adric’s badge and places it in his pocket.

Cover: A misleading photo of the Doctor pointing a gun. Davison looks rather heroic and dashing, and the cover at least maintains the surprise of the returning enemy. This even extends to the back cover blurb – for the first edition at least – which skillfully avoids spelling anything out. The 1992 edition states that the book ‘features the long awaited return of the Cybermen, the Doctor’s most lethal enemies.’ Alister Pearson’s cover has a half-length painting of a Cyberman with the Doctor, Adric and the Earth beautifully sketched in shades of blue in the background.

Final Analysis: Oh I’ve missed Ian Marter’s writing. I often wish he could have been published as a horror author, maybe with a selection of original short stories. The book begins with an evocative image of the landscape:

The towering cliffside resembled a gigantic human skull with the dark openings of caves gaping like empty eye-sockets and nostrils. 

… and it continues with the same dripping nastiness that made Ark in Space such fun. Marter’s violence is sensuous: Bodies shot by the androids collapse into a ‘gluey pool’ of ‘steaming, viscous liquid’; a ‘sickly smell’ hangs in the air, sizzling ‘like hot fat’; a Cyberman slices a trooper’s skull ‘like an egg’; when the Cybermen die, they leak ‘black oily pus’ and their ventilator units emit ‘thick black smoke’, ‘brown fluid’ or  ‘evil yellow and black bubbles’… the idea that Cybermen smell of anything makes them even more disgusting and repellent.

I recently criticised Christopher Bidmead for wilfully choosing to ignore the kind of stories the target / Target audience actually wants; Ian Marter’s approach might not be the literature their teachers or parents would chose for them, but this is exactly the kind of gloopy thriller a macabre teenage boy with a love of reading deserves. Earthshock was already the best Cyberman story (no really!) but Marter’s adaptation converts the familiar-but-generic invaders into something more disturbing than they’ve been. Best Cybermen ever!

Chapter 77. Doctor Who – Four to Doomsday (1983)

Jim Sangster 1 Comment

Synopsis: The TARDIS lands on a huge spaceship heading towards Earth. The inhabitants appear to come from different periods in Earth’s history, providing entertainment for three amphibious Urbankans called Enlightenment, Persuasion and the imperious Monarch. Given the freedom to explore the ship, the Doctor and his friends begin to understand the terrifying scale of Monarch’s ambitions…

Chapter Titles

  • 1. Ship of Mystery
  • 2. A Meeting with Monarch
  • 3. The Transformation
  • 4. The Invaders
  • 5. The Explorers
  • 6. The Android
  • 7. The Convert
  • 8. Tegan’s Gamble
  • 9. Death Warrant
  • 10. Reprieved
  • 11. Riot!
  • 12. Spacewalk

Background: Terrance Dicks adapts Terence Dudley’s scripts for the 1982 serial. This followed Castrovalva on TV, so that’s another pair of stories to be released consecutively.

Notes: Terrance gets his first go at this TARDIS crew, so we get decent descriptions of them all – at last!: Nyssa is ‘an attractive-looking girl with brown hair and an aristocratic, somewhat haughty air’; once again, Adric is ‘a smallish, round-faced youth wearing a yellow tunic’; the Doctor’s ‘third, least willing companion [is] an ‘Australian air-hostess called Tegan Jovanka’ who is said to be ‘exceptionally forceful, even for an Australian’; and the new Doctor, who we’re told is now in his fifth incarnation, is a ‘rather slight, fair-haired young man with a pleasant, open face’ (entirely coincidentally a cricket pun there – Dicks had no idea  it was a term for how a cricketer grips the bat!). Each of the companions gets a one-line origin summary.

Observing a device that can reduce matter, Nyssa recalls that it’s a favoured method of the Master and was the way he murdered Tegan’s aunt. As the Doctor tells Monarch that only he can operate the TARDIS, it dematerialises under Tegan’s control, rather undermining his boast. Nyssa’s fainting cliffhanger that leads into the next story is omitted. 

Cover: An almost competent photo montage of Stratford Johns as Monarch with Peter Davison as the Doctor. Alister Pearson’s 1991 cover is just a noble portrait of Monarch with a suggestion of his chamber lightly etched into the background. 

Final Analysis: By this point in time, TARDIS companions exist solely to bicker and Terrance Dicks relishes the opportunity to show the previously impish Adric as an utter brat. Tegan’s brashness is accentuated too, which rather underlines how empty and bland Nyssa is. We’re even told that she manages to save the Doctor from execution because she’s ‘ standing unnoticed in the background, ignored because nobody considered her a threat’. Four to Doomsday is unlikely to be anyone’s favourite story, or indeed anyone’s favourite book; it does the job, nothing more.

Chapter 76. Doctor Who – Castrovalva (1983)

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Synopsis: The Doctor is struggling after a particularly distressing regeneration. He seeks rest deep within the TARDIS, but an external force sends the time machine racing towards the Big Bang. A narrow escape brings the travellers to the quiet town of Castrovalva. The locals are friendly and offer the Doctor room to recuperate. But there’s something strange about the town; how can the local chemist be in four places at once? Who is exploiting the Doctor’s weakened state and for what purpose? And where is Adric?

Chapter Titles

  • 1. Escape from Earth
  • 2. Towards Zero
  • 3. Destination: Event One
  • 4. Russian Roulette
  • 5. Jettisoned
  • 6. The Quest for Castrovalva
  • 7. Within the Walls
  • 8. The Dark Reflection
  • 9. The Occlusion Closes In
  • 10. The Clue of the Chronicle
  • 11. The World through the Eyes of Shardovan
  • 12. The Web is Broken

Background: Christopher H.Bidmead adapts his own scripts for the 1982 serial.

Notes: We’re told that the ‘apocalyptic events’ of Logopilis led to the previous and future Doctors overlapping in the form of the Watcher. We’re drawn to consider the new Doctor’s ‘strangely smooth and vacant face’, while  Adric has a ‘strange smile and wicked black button eyes’ and Nyssa possesses ‘a remote, aristocratic quality that was somehow unEarthly’. Based on the scant hours he’s spent there, Adric considers Earth to be a ‘planet of fools and bullies’. We’re reminded of Adric’s former home on the starliner on Alzarius. Tegan is said to have ‘once been lost in that maze of white corridors during her involuntary first trip in the TARDIS’… which took place… yesterday? She also utters the mild expletive ‘strewth’ a couple of times.

Nyssa tries to explain recursion to Tegan by discussing family trees (and Tegan feels awkward as she realises Nyssa’s family and everyone she knows has been wiped out by the Master). The Doctor’s new coat is ‘a cream coloured garment that was too summery to be a morning coat but too long to be a sports jacket’. As Tegan and Nyssa look at the scanner to see the Master waving at them, they can see Adric behind him, trapped in the electronic web. The TARDIS has a surgery and a trolley laden with medical supplies rolls out of it towards the Doctor during the Event One incident.

Apparently, ‘the Gallifreyan temperament tends to see the world from the other person’s point of view’, so the Doctor feels empathy for a roast pig. There’s also an ‘official Time-Lord strategy’ that’s taught to small children that… :

… in circumstances of near-defeat you take stock of the forces that are working on your behalf, your assets, and then separately assess the forces working against you, your liabilities. This leads directly to the next stage: devising a logical plan that will increase the former and diminish the latter. 

The Doctor views this ‘arid, abstract and artificial’ edict as ‘typically Gallifreyan’ – he prefers ‘blind panic’. He is said to be ‘nearly eight hundred’ years old, while Castrovalva was created by the Master as a trap 500 years ago. So was this created in the Master’s distant past and he’s only just come back to it? Did he set it up and then jump forward 500 years? Did he play at Portreeve for half a millennium while Adric was held in stasis in the electronic web?! (Or is this just not actually true and he knocked it up yesterday in between wrestling with the Doctor on a gantry and choosing a nice hat for his Portreeve cosplay?). On the jog back to the TARDIS, Adric is ‘still a little pallid after his long ordeal’ – a real-world cheeky dig at actor Matthew Waterhouse’s overindulgence in the bar the night before the filming of that sequence for TV. The Doctor opts not to dampen Tegan’s enthusiasm by telling her she didn’t land the TARDIS after all and it was all Adric’s doing.

Cover: Somebody clearly resents being made to work on these as the cover design is woefully lazy – a photo of a smiling Peter Davison against a starfield backdrop. Alister Pearson’s reprint cover from 1991 is predictably better, to be fair, with an almost identical picture of Davison (which makes him look old) next to a beautifully realised, geometrically impossible walkway from the Castrovalva town square.

Final Analysis: ‘Euclidian topology’? Really, Bidmead? We’ve come a long way since the days of writing these books for eager seven-year-olds, but there really is no concession for the child reader here. It all fits together rather neatly, especially the way so much of the dialogue is there to underline the theme of recursion, but as with Logopolis, there’s also the suspicion that the author’s making himself a little too visible in the text by showing off.

Chapter 74. Doctor Who – Time Flight (1983)

Jim Sangster 1 Comment

Synopsis: A supersonic aeroplane has disappeared. Retracing its last known flight path aboard another Concorde, the Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan are as surprised as the crew when they touch down on a prehistoric plateau. Nearby is a huge temple, the home to a strange wizard called Kalid, who seems amused by the time travellers’ plight…

Chapter Titles

  • 1. Flight to Infinity
  • 2. An Unauthorised Police Box
  • 3. The Doctor Goes Supersonic
  • 4. The Coming of the Plasmatons
  • 5. The Magic of Kalid
  • 6. The Doctor and the Magician
  • 7. The Enemy Unmasked
  • 8. The Power in the Sanctum
  • 9. On a Wing and a Prayer
  • 10. In Transit

Background: Peter Grimwade adapts his own scripts for the 1982 serial.

Notes: The first TARDIS scene is, if anything, even briefer than the one on screen, although in the aftermath of Adric’s death, the companions at least acknowledge that the Doctor might be grieving too, in his own way – and they also realise they didn’t know the boy all that well at all. Does the Doctor’s mention of Adric’s brother Varsh come as news to them? Tegan identifies their landing site as ‘London Airport’ (so assumes they’ve arrived in 1966?). Kalid has a ‘thin, strangulated voice’ and a:

… yellow oriental face, bloated like the body of a drowned dog and gangrenous with age and excess, with broken teeth and rotting gums that contorted his mouth into a permanent leer. His height too, for a Chinaman – if that was his race – was remarkable, and his girth, concealed by a bright coat of damask, as monstrous as the force he invoked.

When he emerges from Kalid’s body like ‘a pupating beetle’, the Master is introduced without any further explanation or description (as is the Tissue Compression Eliminator, which makes its debut in the books here!). I’m beginning to suspect this is perhaps a new house style. Having stolen the Doctor’s TARDIS, the Master is indignant that it’s typical of the Doctor to ‘travel in a machine that was unserviced, unsafe, and light years out of date!’ As she helps to change the wheels of Concord, Tegan remembers the wheels on her Aunt Vanessa’s car.

Cover: A drab photo of Peter Davison next to a Concorde.

Final Analysis: Another original author steals food from Terrance Dicks’ plate.The opening chapter suggests that Grimwade is keen to show off all of the extra research into Concord that remained unused from his TV scripts and he has a fondness for bizarre similes that somehow work, such as ‘The Professor’s lips moved silently like an elderly goldfish that has just been fed’. I look forward to reading something from the author that’s based on something a little more substantial.

Chapter 72. Doctor Who – Logopolis (1982)

Jim Sangster 2 Comments

Synopsis: A sudden whimsy to reconfigure the TARDIS’s chameleon circuit leads the Doctor to confront a terrifying and certain future. The Master has returned and his new scheme puts the entire universe at risk. Surrounded by companions he didn’t choose and forced to enter a partnership with his oldest enemy, the Doctor has finally reached the end – and it really has been prepared for…

Chapter Titles

The chapters are simply numbered one to twelve. Bidmead could have at least done them in binary!

Background: Christopher H. Bidmead adapts his own scripts from the 1981 story. Making good use of his past life as an actor, he also reads the audiobook, making him the first credited author to do so (although Barry Letts read The Daemons, the scripts were co-written and credited to ‘Guy Leopold).

Notes: The police officer killed by the Master is named Donald Seagrave. The police box he investigates is on the Barnet bypass (not specified on screen). Aunt Vanessa lives in ‘a cottage house in a quiet village-like street’ less than 50 miles from the Barnet bypass.  The Doctor recalls that Romana is ‘at the Gateway with Biroc and the Tharils’ (though we’re not told what this actually means for any reader who didn’t yet catch Warriors’ Gate). Adric is said to have a badge for mathematical excellence, but his ‘grasp of physics wasn’t very good’. As he inspects the real police box, he queries the wording on the telephone hatch:

Adric had seen identical wording on the outside of the TARDIS, and had taken it to be some sort of joke of the Doctor’s. Officers and Cars had never, to his knowledge, responded to Urgent Calls, although there were several occasions when he and the Doctor could have used a little extra help.

This is his first time on Earth, so it’s possible that the only encounters Adric has had with ‘officers’ is Proctor Neman on Traken – that pillar of the community who accepted bribes. The Doctor has cause to recall the recent events on Traken and is reassured that Tremas and his daughter are ‘happy’ but begins to worry that the Master might have escaped. Adric refers to the ‘console room’ (the first time this phrase has been used – it doesn’t even appear in the TV version). 

Tegan is ‘barely twenty years old’. When he sees Tegan on the TARDIS scanner, Adric has a feeling he has known her very well; he observes that her face ‘looked rather beautiful, framed by that dark red hair under the severe purple cap that matched her uniform.’ Tegan’s plane ‘back home’ is a Cesna. 

The TARDIS cloisters have a ceiling with an ’emulation of the sky, even as far as the suggestion of clouds’. The Doctor gives Adric a copy of The Complete Poetry of John Milton and the boy observes a similarity between a fallen angel and the Master. The Doctor hovers the TARDIS above Logopolis to give the Logopolitans advance notice of his arrival. As viewed from above, the City of Logopolis looks like ‘a giant brain’. 

The Master’s (unnamed) weapon is silver and leaves a whiff of ozone after discharge. The Doctor falls from the telescope when the cable he’s hanging from snaps. Adric realises the Doctor is ‘regenerating’, as he and Nyssa confirm their suspicions that the Watcher was the Doctor all along. The new Doctor has a ‘smoother, younger face’ and beams ‘somewhat vacuously’ at his friends. We’re presented with his first words::

‘Well, that’s the end of that,’ said a voice they had not heard before. ‘But it’s probably the beginning of something completely different.’ 

Cover: Andrew Skilleter paints a simple composition of the Master in front of the Pharos project. Alister Pearson’s 1991 cover has the Doctor looking tired, Tegan and Nyssa grinning, leaving the Monitor and Adric to look at the shrinking TARDIS.

Final Analysis: The opening paragraph warns us that…

When some great circumstance, hovering somewhere in the future, is a catastrophe of incalculable consequence, you may not see the signs in the small happenings that go before.

Accordingly, Bidmead progresses to foreshadow events: Tegan is about to embark on a journey that ‘she would never forget for the rest of her life’; Adric hears the cloister bell for ‘the first but not the last time’;  … and so on.

As with The Visitation, there’s no introduction for or description of the Doctor or Adric, but there’s a palpable enthusiasm for showing off Bidmead’s knowledge of modern science, such as Maxwell’s Second Law of Thermodynamics and ‘Mr Heisenberg’. The assumption is that the reader already knows who the Doctor and Adric are (which I’ve grumbled about with other writers), but we at least get a clear idea of the new arrival, Tegan. The best bit is the conclusion of Chapter 5:

Tegan’s voice exploded like a shrapnel-bomb in the quiet of the console room. ‘I demand to see whoever is in charge of this ship.‘

Chapter 70. Doctor Who and the Visitation (1982)

Jim Sangster 1 Comment

Synopsis: A plague-ridden England leaves its people wary of strangers, so the Doctor and his friends receive a hostile welcome from a group of villagers. Help arrives in the form of Richard Mace, an out-of-work actor. Together they explore a nearby house, its inhabitants nowhere to be found. But hidden behind a secret wall, a wounded Terileptil and his android servant are about to put into motion a plan that could lead to the deaths of millions…

Chapter Titles

Numbered One to Eleven.

Background: Eric Saward adapts his own scripts just six months after they aired.

Notes: The introduction follows the nocturnal explorations of a fox (and later on, a badger watches events). The chapter expands upon the ill-fated family of the Squire, who is named here ‘Sir John’. Preparing for her return home, Tegan remembers how her favourite aunt was murdered by the Master, but there’s no mention of her possession by the Mara on Kinda, so this doesn’t necessarily follow on from the previous televised story (and while she apologises to Nyssa for being maudlin about her own Aunt, she seems to forget that, thanks to the Master, Nyssa has lost her father, stepmother and every other person she’s ever known, so…). 

The Doctor deduces that the aliens are Terileptils thanks to an insignia on the wreck of their craft. The Terileptil leader is over seven feet tall with a head like a small Tyrannosaurus Rex. It has ‘lively, intelligent, magenta eyes’. Yes, plural – the disfigurement is ‘on the left side, a large carbuncle-like growth and heavy scarring that covered his whole cheek’. That’s left as you look at it, not his left, and doesn’t include a missing eye. When the android enters her bedroom, Nyssa plays dead to avoid it from shooting her. As the Doctor and his friends catch up with the Terileptil leader, he is ‘seated at a desk… pen in hand, writing’. 

Cover: The first of the photo covers and it’s pretty bland, just a standard portrait of Peter Davison in costume outside the TARDIS, with a flash announcing ‘A BBC TV PROGRAMME WITH PETER DAVISON AS THE DOCTOR’. Alister Pearson’s 1992 cover has an unusually cheerful Doctor accompanied by the android (holding his death mask), the Terileptil leader and a soliton gas device against a backdrop of a burning London skyline. In a reversal of fortune, a 2016 BBC Books reprint gave us Chris Achilleos replacing Alister Pearson, with an illustration of the android as Death, the Terileptil and a disappointing likeness of the Doctor. It tries to recapture the glory of Achilleos’ earlier works but it doesn’t really work, sadly.

Final Analysis: This is a curious warning of things to come: Saward puts a lot of effort into depicting some scenes, perhaps through the viewpoint of an owl or fox, but when we reach the regular cast there’s no attempt to describe them. The author seems to be unconcerned that some readers might not have seen the TV episodes yet, so although followers of the book range might know Adric, they won’t know how Nyssa or Tegan came to join the TARDIS. This is especially criminal when it comes to the Doctor – this is the first story to feature the fifth incarnation. In the early chapters, Saward has a lot of fun building the setting, but this peters out towards the end and it becomes very Dicks-like in its straightforward transcription of onscreen events. It’s a solid enough adaptation though and the Terileptil leader is an imposing presence. 

Chapter 68. Doctor Who and the Keeper of Traken (1982)

Jim Sangster Leave a comment

Synopsis: The Keeper of Traken presides over a union of harmony. Nearing the end of his very long life, he visits the Doctor and invites him to visit Traken. Instead of being honoured guests, the Doctor and Adric find themselves mistaken for the evil that the Keeper has warned about. In a nearby grove, Kassia, the wife of a consul bares her soul to a lonely statue, fearful that her loving husband will be taken from her if he is nominated to be the new Keeper. But then the statue speaks – and promises everything will be okay, so long as she obeys without question. Within the statue, in an impossibly large chamber, a decaying figure observes his plan coming together, a plan that will find him power to regenerate his husk of a body – and enact revenge on his nemesis, the Doctor!

Chapter Titles

  • 1. Escape to Danger
  • 2. Melkur Awakes
  • 3. Intruders
  • 4. The Voice of Melkur
  • 5. Melkur’s Secret
  • 6. The Net
  • 7. Prisoners of Melkur
  • 8. A Place to Hide
  • 9. Death of a Keeper
  • 10. The Rule of Melkur
  • 11. The Last Resort
  • 12. The Enemy

Background: Terrance Dicks adapts Johnny Byrne’s 1981 scripts, which followed Warriors’ Gate on TV, making this the second time that three consecutive stories have been released together.

Notes: The first chapter is called ‘Escape to Danger’ (yay!) and it directly follows on from Warriors’ Gate, explaining the disappearance of Romana and K9. Adric’s standard description now tells us he’s ‘a smallish, round-faced, snub-nosed lad with an expression of cheerful impudence’. We’re also told he ‘usually eats enough for two’ and Adric observes that ‘practically everyone on Traken was old, eminent, and bearded’, which is a brilliant line. We only discover the identity of Melkur at the same time as the Doctor. The description of the Master matches that from The Deadly Assassin:

The figure in the chair was both wizened and decayed, the body as worn out as the tattered robes. One eye glared madly from the crumbling ruin of a face and blackened lips drew back in a ghastly chuckle.

As he confronts the Master in his TARDIS, The Doctor recalls his nemesis back in his prime:

The stocky, powerful figure, the darkly handsome face with its pointed beard and burning eyes, the deep, hypnotic voice. All of that was gone, decayed, so that all that was left was a walking corpse.

The new Master’s first words are ‘Now begins my new life!’

Cover: Andrew Skilleter gives us a simple scene of Nyssa and Melkur. Alister Pearson’s 1993 reprint cover is another montage of faces, depicting the Doctor, the Keeper and Melkur, along with the screaming, decaying face of the Master.

Final Analysis: A lot more effort with this, even though it’s largely a straight translation from screen to page, as Terrance provides points of view and character insights throughout. One slightly odd thing is that it’s not exactly clear in the TV episodes when exactly the Keeper reveals that Tremas is to be his successor, as this is merely reported by the Keeper after he shows the Doctor and Adric the wedding scene. Here, the appointment is very much part of the wedding, meaning Tremas and Kassia are married for less than two days before they’re both killed.  As on TV, Nyssa is not signposted as the new companion and if anything her role is minimal, even though Terrance makes sure to tell us that she and Adric quickly become friends.

Chapter 67. Doctor Who and Warriors’ Gate (1982)

Jim Sangster 4 Comments

Synopsis: The Tharils were once a proud race, masters of the time winds with an empire forged on slavery. Then the robot Gundans came. Now the Tharils themselves are slaves, sold as mere components to be plugged into space ships as unwilling navigators. One such ship is the Privateer, fashioned from dwarf star alloy, captained by the dictatorial and stubborn Rorvik… and currently mired in a white void near a mysterious gateway. As the Doctor, Romana and Adric search for a way out of E-Space, their encounters at the gateway promise freedom at last for the Tharils… and Romana.

Chapter Titles

None! It’s just one big run of text. 

Background: Steve Gallagher adapts his own 1981 TV scripts under the pen-name of John Lydecker to avoid confusion with his other novels. This followed State of Decay on TV, so that’s another pair of stories to be released consecutively.

Notes: The opening scenes introduce a member of The Antonine Killer clan, a methodical, maverick Tharil in pursuit of Privateers trying to evade a blockage. The clan is part of the anti-slavery alliance and they’ve already targetted four privateer vessels. The actions of this Killer result in the Privateer being disabled and stranded outside of normal space. Early on, we’ve given an explanation of the Tharils’ time-sensitivity that really helps make sense of the entire story:

Time-sensitivity was the Tharils’ curse; from an infinite range of possible futures they could select one and visualise it in detail as if it had already happened. Sometimes in moments of extreme trance their bodies would shimmer and glow, dancing between those possible futures and only loosely anchored in the present. It took intense concentration to bring a Tharil back into phase with the Moment.

As K9’s health ails, we’re told that even though he could be rebuilt, ‘there was no way of reproducing its personality with any exactness… a copy would never be any more than just that’, so either the author has forgotten that this unit is the second model, or each K9 has its own individual personality that can’t be recaptured. Meanwhile, Romana departs with Lazlo, not Biroc, while we lose the final scene with Adric and the Doctor. There’s something of Brief Encounter or The Empire Strikes Back in the way the Doctor and Romana say goodbye:

‘I can only wish you good luck. It’s not likely we’ll meet again.’

‘I know,’ Romana said.

Cover: An ethereal composition by Andrew Skilleter showing the Tharil Biroc, the gateway and the Privateer in front of a blue hazy background.

Final Analysis: The most radical departure from the Target house style so far, Gallagher really dives deep into the story and his characters. It’s all the more impressive considering his first delivered version was much longer and had to be condensed (that longer version was later released as an audiobook). It’s a complete rewrite of the TV episodes and Gallagher’s style is more mature than we’re used to – and that doesn’t mean the kind of violence or language that Ian Marter employs, but in Rorvik we get a much more sadistic character than Saturday tea-time TV could allow. Surprisingly for someone writing for Season 18 setting, Gallagher also adds a lot of comic sequences – actually capturing the Fourth Doctor that we know, rather than the muted version we got that season (I’m reliably informed the jokes were in the original scripts, so we can work out what happened there!).

Rorvik cut across the diffident denial with another blast into the ceiling, another snowfall of plaster. 

‘This could be a listed building for all you know,’ the Doctor warned, but Rorvik’s sense of humour seemed to have been suspended. 

‘You’ll be listed as a former human being if you don’t play straight.”Human being? Are we descending to cheap insults now?’

And just a couple of pages later:

‘Can you hear me, Doctor? I’ve got a message for you. I hate you. Did you get that? Of everybody I’ve ever met, you’re my least favourite!’ And he hammered his fists on the mirror’s surface in frustration. 

On the page, Rorvik is one of the most sadistic monsters we’ve encountered so far – we’re told of the atrocities he’s committed to other Tharils even during Biroc’s short time on the Priveteer and Rorvik himself admits to others – yet Gallagher remembers that pomposity can actually be hilarious when the subject isn’t in on the joke. One tiny criticism, but it’s an obvious one, is that this is a very dense, detailed story with some very heavy SF themes and motifs; it would have really helped to have had chapter titles. I’m a traditionalist at heart.