The Eye of the Giant by: Christopher Bulis: Giant Crabs that Have Nothing to Do with the Macra

The Third Doctor has had two novels devoted to him, the first being The Ghosts of N-Space which was awful and the second was the brilliant Dancing the Code.  It’s interesting to see the third Virgin Missing Adventure of the third Doctor make a welcome return to Season 7 to continue the exile on Earth and get back to working with Liz Shaw as the companion in an adventure set in the genre of hard science fiction.  The Eye of the Giant sees the Doctor, Liz and Sergeant Mike Yates sent through a time corridor to an island where thirty years previous, a yacht carrying a film crew disappeared from time and there are giant creatures roaming around because of an alien crash.  Christopher Bulis’ fourth novel has the tone of a story from Season Seven down to a tee with the UNIT family coming together, Liz Shaw while being captured by the aliens once in the novel is just as proactive as the Doctor and the experiments on the TARDIS are partially the cause of the problem.  It’s extremely interesting to read the novel as even the biggest flaw of the ending, which let’s be honest goes on way too much of a tangent making Nancy Grover a demigod and having her rule the world through mist because Bulis is trying to have a message about vanity or something, isn’t all that bad.  It still is an ending that is especially easy to read and I finished it in a day.

 

Bulis is great at captioning the transition in between the relationship of the Doctor and the Brigadier after Inferno and before Terror of the Autons.  The Brigadier has had his eyes opened even more since Inferno which served as a real catharsis for the character as he and the Doctor finally buried the hatchet after the rather rocky start as seen in Season Seven.  The two characters really reach an understanding as the Doctor is given full command of the expedition through the temporal anomaly with the Brigadier holding down the fort at UNIT until the focus is brought back onto the Earth for the lackluster finale.  The novel also introduces the character of Mike Yates who at the time the novel is set is still a Sergeant with Sergeant Benton.  The cover prominently features Yates acting as if he will be a main character, but really his role could have been accommodated with Benton in the role as he is more of a gentleman while Yates is really nothing like that.  Sure he’s a nice guy in the series, but the gentleman of UNIT is Sergeant Benton.  Bulis did however give a little backstory as to how Yates took the news that aliens exist which is a very interesting idea as how do you get people to come around to aliens when their mind is hardwired to military way of running things which is at odds with the bizarre nature of aliens.  Osgood from The Daemons also makes an appearance here where he somehow has even less characterization than in that original story.

 

The crew of the film featured in this novel is almost a snapshot into the society of the 1930s film industry.  They’re all working off a very loose script and getting shots that will tie in with the finished product, not really caring if it will make sense.  Their only care is that it will look good in the end when it gets to the theaters and that their secret island isn’t discovered until they are finished with it.  Nancy Grover, who becomes the main villain of the story by the end, is the typical diva and prima donna as it is going to be her way or the highway.  Liz Shaw is also really good in the novel as she is portrayed straight out of Season Seven.  I can just imagine Caroline John being in the part as she is extremely snarky to Jon Pertwee’s egotistical Doctor.  It leaps right off the page and something great really happens as you realize just how good their relationship was on television and what we were really missing when Caroline John sadly left the series after only one season.

 

To summarize, The Eye of the Giant is a great novel overall as it deals with a very standard sort of adventure that was from the era of Season Seven.  It has a few glaring flaws in the fact that Yates is prominently featured on the cover, Osgood appears in really a way that doesn’t do anything to add much depth to the character and the last fourth of the novel goes and rips off Inferno with a parallel timeline bleeding through.  Nancy Grover is a great character until the end where she becomes a demigod who just wants attention which is weird.  83/100