Doctor Who and the Leisure Hive by: David Fisher

 

Doctor Who and the Leisure Hive was written by David Fisher, based on his story The Leisure Hive.  It was the 69^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

This is a book which I listened to the audiobook reading immediately after the horror inspired Doctor Who and the Brain of Morbius, which created for an interesting mood as on television, The Leisure Hive is not a horror story, but a comedy with most of the jokes surgically removed by script editor Christopher H. Bidmead in an attempt to make Doctor Who a more serious science fiction program.  That of course doesn’t work when David Fisher had already contributed three heavily comedic scripts with The Stones of Blood, The Androids of Tara, and The Creature from the Pit as well as contributing the original idea to what would become City of Death.  Doctor Who and the Leisure Hive as a novelization immediately reinserts much of the dry humor due to David Fisher being tapped to write the book himself, two years after airing and enough time to move past the Bidmead style of Doctor Who.  The first few chapters are extended sequences detailing the opening shots and the history of the Argolin/Foamasi conflict, done in tribute to Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

 

The backstory for the conflict is actually a gift, it allows the reader to understand the conflict and a lot of the motivation for the side characters who on television never really got enough time to develop naturally with Lovett Bickford’s rather odd direction.  This does cause an interesting pacing issue as there are stretches of this book where the Doctor and Romana do not appear while the final three chapters, which are less than one-third of the book, encompass all of Part Three and Four, which makes me wonder if Fisher knew that his story wasn’t highly regarded so attempted to build a comedy heavy first half to offset the rather bland second half which involves a takeover, mistaken identity, and the same weak conclusion that we saw on television.  Luckily Fisher does make the story in general more interesting, with some of the intrigue of Mina’s dealings appearing on a scene on a futuristic Earth instead of confining most of the action to the actual Leisure Hive, and the buildup towards the Foamasi’s appearance being done with more flair than them essentially showing up right at the end.  There’s also some genuinely horrifying moments when the tachyonics generator malfunctions, killing its volunteer while Fisher describes the blood, guts, and pain the man experiences.  It hits the reader like a brick which is incredibly important for setting up the actual danger of the situation and is followed up on when the Doctor is aged with some genuine existential dread brought in.

 

Overall, Doctor Who and the Leisure Hive is a good example of a Doctor Who author taking the chance to improve on aspects of a television story, however, not enough to make this an amazing story.  There are still the flaws inherent in The Leisure Hive even if the tone has changed to a more dark, absurdist comedy as it still reflects the issues of a slow moving plot with a back half compressed far too much.  6/10.