The most interesting
aspect of novelizing a story that is already pretty dark by the standards of
what Doctor Who stories were doing at the time in terms of violence and
gore. The Stones of Blood, as a television story, already shows quite a
bit of blood being poured onto the stones, but it would only be shown for a few
seconds to allow the intended effect to take hold before getting back to the
story. Terrance Dicks however decides to
use Doctor Who and the Stones of Blood,
unlike many of his Doctor Who television stories, as a way to add to the more
horrific elements of the series. His
descriptions of the blood being poured on the Ogri would be spine chilling for
a child and are realistic for an adult.
It’s done in a pretty graphic way for a children’s book and keeps very
much in line with the original script of the story. The actual story itself, outside of Terrance
Dicks’ usual stunning prose to guide us through a story, is a screen to page,
word for word adaptation going off the original edits of the story with an
extended death scene for De Vries which was cut for its graphic content. One complaint I had with Dicks’ adaptation
was how he made the second half of the story just drag on which might be
because he doesn’t have Tom Baker’s expressive acting to draw from. The cliffhanger for Part One as written in
prose works much better than it does in the visual episode. Dicks takes the cliffhanger from Romana’s
perspective which allows us to get into her head and actually believe it is the
Doctor who is trying to throw her off a cliff.
To summarize, Doctor Who and the Stones of Blood is a
novelization that takes the best elements of the story and improves on it. The biggest problem with the story is that
the second half has a lot of pacing issues, but if you can deal with that
you’re in for a pretty fun exploration of a story that is sure to chill the
blood. 90/100
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