Target novels can be a
great insight to missing episodes especially when they are adapted by the
original author, which is the case with Marco
Polo. John Lucarotti novelized all
three of his scripts for the Target Books range often from his own scripts, but
in the case of Marco Polo this
happened to cause a little bit of a curse.
Sadly the very few changes Lucarotti made to his original script did
damage to the story in general. Now the
biggest change is that this story focuses mainly on the Doctor, so we get a lot
of the characterization of Marco Polo, as seen on television in the journal
entries, left out. The reader no longer
knows how conflicted Polo is about his decision to seize the TARDIS on the way
to Kublai Khan’s court making him much less sympathetic of a character. This makes it even more disappointing when
Lucarotti cuts out the battle between Marco Polo and Tegana which served to
redeem the character in the television script.
Now one of the Khan’s guards shoots Tegana with an arrow instead of
Tegana impaling himself which takes away from Tegana’s own
characterization. That said Lucarotti is
still an engaging writer and the novel is a really quick read as the journey
portions of the novel are tightened up which makes the novel engaging. It should also be noted that Lucarotti was
writing the Doctor as he would in The
Aztecs not as he was in Marco Polo
which works really well.
To summarize, Marco Polo is a case of where the
television story is better than the novel in almost every aspect with both of
them sharing some of the flaws.
Lucarotti still gave it his best effort and writes the characters well
except for the titular Marco Polo.
70/100
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