Doctor Who and the Seeds of Doom by: Philip Hinchcliffe: A Visit to Harrison Chase

Doctor Who and the Seeds of Doom was written by Philip Hinchcliffe, based on The Seeds of Doom by Robert Banks Stewart.  It was the 29^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

Philip Hinchcliffe becoming a writer for the Target Novelizations is an interesting idea especially when he is adapting the stories that he oversaw as producer.  He and Robert Holmes are responsible for creating the gothic horror element in Doctor Who, and he could easily inject that into the story he was writing a novel of.  Doctor Who and the Seeds of Doom doesn’t really do that too much more as it was already a gothic horror story.  So Hinchcliffe for the most part just novelizes the story word from word from the script which doesn’t change the quality, apart from a few little details.  First off when the first pod opens up and infects Winlett we get it from Winlett’s first person perspective.  The novel describes how Winlett feels a power come over him when he is stung, giving the implication that the Krynoid pod has a mind of its own.  The Krynoid is already infiltrating his mind.  Second there is a scene in Part Four where Chase’s butler comes into the cottage where Keeler, turning into a Krynoid, is being kept with food.  We don’t get to see the Krynoid/Keeler eat the food, but the novel adds one line to make the scene feel like we see him eat.  It makes him out to be a monster and it really works for the novel to have everything feel terrifying.  Finally the scene where Chase gets crushed by the composter, Hinchcliffe adds some description.  He adds description involving how the crushing bones sounded and a description of the blood spraying everywhere.  It adds an element of body horror to the novel.

 

To summarize, Doctor Who and the Seeds of Doom really only has one advantage over the television story.  It will take you less time to read through instead of the original story’s run time of nearly two and a half hours, whereas the book takes about an hour and you can read it on the go.  100/100