Doctor Who and the Brain of Morbius
was written by Terrance Dicks, based on The Brain of Morbius by Robin
Bland (a pseudonym for Terrance Dicks and Robert Holmes). It was the 33rd story to be
novelized by Target Books.
This is an interesting book considering The Brain
of Morbius was originally commissioned to be a serial by Terrance Dicks,
but it was rewritten by Robert Holmes enough that Dicks requested his name be
pulled. With Dicks coming back to do the
novelization you would think that an opportunity would arise to bring some of
the ideas the original script had, such as the surgeon Solon being a robot and
the planet of Karn being markedly different from what was on television. Dicks does not do that, however, electing to
make Doctor Who and the Brain of Morbius a near one to one translation
of the television story to prose with his usual style. As this is a Terrance Dicks book, it is
incredibly easy to read, though not the easiest as this was further abridged to
a second novelization as the short lived Junior Doctor Who range. The biggest change to the story in terms of
plot is the first chapter fleshing out the establishing shots of The Brain
of Morbius where a Mutant from The Mutants is killed by Condo and
its head taken to Solon. Much of that is
from the Mutant’s perspective, here described just as a crustacean alien, which
is horrific, one of the few pieces of horror from the story properly translated
to prose, as Dicks’ writing style doesn’t exactly translate to horror
incredibly well.
Despite the episode being translated incredibly well,
without the direction of Christopher Barry, the dark corners just don’t hit the
same way. Somehow the stakes feel less,
for instance when Sarah Jane is struck blind by the Sisterhood of Karn in an accident,
here it feels like almost immediately the Doctor is there to fix things and not
the genuine fear in the performance and direction of Sarah Jane possibly now
being disabled. In another example,
Condo’s death at the hands of Solon also feels somehow less horrific. On television, there is a blood splatter and
the viewer really has found something to like in Condo, but in print he just
dies. He is shot and dies in about a sentence,
so the visceral reaction and genuinely envelope pushing scene (for what Doctor
Who could get away with as a show primarily aimed at children) just goes by
with little fanfare. There are a couple
of interesting expansions, especially involving the history of Morbius and a more
outward insanity to Solon from the start, having destroyed several busts of
Morbius before the one he has standing at the start of the story. It’s still an adaptation of an already good story
that captures some of what makes the story work, despite the elements not
bringing everything together into a perfect picture or really improving on any
of the (very minor) flaws of the television story. 8/10.
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