Writing a Target novel to
a missing story that is then returned to the archives is interesting and Doctor Who and the Tomb of the Cybermen
is one of those few novels that has the opportunity. Yet I cannot help but feel that the
adaptation by one of the original authors, is just lackluster in comparison to
the original story. Sure The Tomb of the Cybermen had bad special
effects and the Cybermen really didn’t do much, but Doctor Who and the Tomb of the Cybermen is a novel that adapts the
story in such a slow pace that a lot of the original quality of the story. It’s a book of 140 pages with the first 50
pages or so being dedicated to just the first episode of the four part story,
then the next 40 for the second episode, 30 pages for episode three, and the final
20 pages for episode 4. It makes the
first episode which is exposition and set up feel extremely dragged out and
difficult to get through while the actual story feels rushed. There’s also quite a lot more wrong with the
structure of this book, mainly the prose itself. It isn’t like a novelization from Terrance
Dicks who writes with a pulp fiction style, but comes across as very dry for
the story. There are passages of dry
things obviously written based solely on the memories of Gerry Davis and the
scripts of The Tomb of the Cybermen
to make its story which you think would work.
The Doctor’s character and actions suffer the most as Davis is unable to
bring Troughton’s charisma into a novel.
Davis also suffers from writing structure as the book is split into
chapters which are supposed to end on a way to keep the reader interested and
this is an adaptation of a story with great cliffhangers. Yeah the chapters never end on the
cliffhangers and the imagery of the scene loses some of its radiance with this
change.
To summarize, Doctor Who and the Tomb of the Cybermen
is a novel that is stripped of what made the story a truly great story, even
though it does a straight adaptation of the original story. The problem is in the structure of the novel
is off and the performance of Patrick Troughton is missing. 50/100
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