The Invasion by: Ian Marter: Underground Operations

The Invasion was written by: Ian Marter based on the story of the same name by: Derrick Sherwin, from a story by: Kit Pedler.  It was the 98^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

This novelization, for being an adaptation of an already pretty gritty story from the 1960s, goes down as an even grittier version of the already great story.  Ian Marter has 150 pages to tell the eight episode story.  Now most 150 page novelizations from the time The Invasion was published, were of six part stories, so using it for an extra two episodes may cause problems in the process and could make things rushed.  Well, oddly enough the televised story actually had the main problem being that the final few episodes were dragged out so in the novel the pace is put to snappier while still being able to reinsert scenes that were cut from the original script.  Yes this is really what makes this novelization, for children mind you, feel very adult.  Ian Marter had the Don Bluth method of being able to put children through anything as long as there is a happy ending.  This novel has a scene where Major General Ruttlidge, a minor character who it was implied to be killed on television, actually forced to shoot himself in bloody detail.  The murder of the driver from Episode One is also expanded upon which is great especially when you take into account the fact that Episode One only had a script to go off of.  I feel Marter had the chance to watch the original tapes or at least had notes as several Troughton adlibs were left in the novelization.  The adult nature of this novelization actually makes it stand out considering it is just an adaptation of the television serial with no real deviations outside of some inner thoughts of the characters, which help out with getting the atmosphere across which is usually lost in the transference from a visual to literary medium, and adding in some scenes, it would be on par with the story.  The only change is the spelling of Electromatics to Electromatix in International Electromatics to make it sound more futuristic.

 

To summarize, The Invasion is a novelization that takes the very few flaws the original televised story had and added in some supplementary material as a way to keep things fresh for readers looking to compare and contrast them.  100/100