City of Death by: James Goss

 

City of Death was written by James Goss, based on the television story of the same name by Douglas Adams from an idea by David Fisher.  It was the 166^th story to be novelized by BBC Books.

 

In adapting a television story to a full-length novel for BBC Books, authors have a variety of options.  James Goss took the time to do more than just transcribing the dialogue and actions of the television story City of Death which would have left the novelization quite short, especially as the story builds on the location footage of Paris being used without much dialogue as there is an extended chase sequence back to the TARDIS.  The way this is adapted is the pinnacle of Goss’s style and flair for making something visual translate to prose, by adding in several interludes with the characters who appear for only one scene: the artist who paints Romana, the tour guide at the Louvre, and the patrons played by John Cleese and Eleanor Bron all get to have small interludes which weave their way throughout the novel.  This even begins in the added prologue where Goss adds backstory between the opening scenes of the story on Hermann, Duggan, and the Countess with a small lead in for the Doctor in the TARDIS which are all things that didn’t need to be there yet they add so much character and flair to separate itself from the television story.  The advantage is being taken of making Paris feel like the City of Death as it’s essentially a character on its own, the city is alive and has a life of its own with active areas at night next to areas that are dead.

 

The one element of the plot added to increase the comic absurdity inherent in Adams’ script was the fact that Scaroth didn’t realize he was an alien until the end of episode one cliffhanger, something on television that only is there because that’s what Doctor Who does.  This isn’t a bad thing, but when writing it Goss had already committed to getting inside the character’s head, so he couldn’t just have the Count rip his face off for no reason.  He is explored by Goss as someone who has been attempting to act human but never realizing that he is not human so the uncanny valley of the character.  The idea is that he is an art collector who is doing the whole Mona Lisa heist to ensure that the funding for his time travel experiments can continue, something that gets the Doctor and Romana involved.  While they succeed as they do on television, a minor change is making it explicit that Romana being brought in to help on the time travel experiments so the plans can be brought forward.  There is also a lot more explicit disconnect between the Count and Kerensky, who here is shown to die from his perspective where the book takes a turn into black comedy for three pages before going back to the normal tone.  There’s also this weird moment added where the Doctor implies that Kerensky’s work will actually be remembered, but that might be another Kerensky which is just another aspect of humor injected into the story.

 

Goss should also be praised for not attempting to make City of Death the same length as Gareth Roberts’ novelization of Shada.  As this is an adaptation of a four part story, it doesn’t need to be over four hundred pages, yet still clocks in at around three hundred pages.  This doesn’t actually bring the story down at all as Goss’s prose grabs the reader from the first page and doesn’t let go.  There isn’t an attempt to imitate Douglas Adams’ style as Roberts’ homaging tendencies.  The famous lines are all there, but Goss allows City of Death to have his own mark on the story without changing any of the events.  Goss isn’t trying to improve anything as the story is already thought of as one of Doctor Who’s best stories anyway, indeed it is the story with the most viewers on broadcast (partially due to other channels being off air at the time). It makes the novelization work and perhaps be the perfect tribute to the story and the original author even if it had more time to be written than the original televised story.  10/10.