Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters by: Terrance Dicks

 

Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters was written by Terrence Dicks, based on the story Carnival of Monsters by Robert Holmes.  It was the 28^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

To me Carnival of Monsters has always been one of those Doctor Who stories that some seem to underestimate.  It’s sandwiched between The Three Doctors and the massive two story epic Frontier in Space and Planet of the Daleks so it kind of gets lost in the crowd of the tenth anniversary celebrations, but it’s a story that I have always had a soft spot for.  Now, a review of that story is still forthcoming though something I intend to eventually write along with the rest of Season 10.  Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters, likewise, is a Target novelization which has kind of been lost in the novelizations published around it: immediately before are titans like Doctor Who and the Space War, Doctor Who and the Planet of the Daleks, and Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars while after it is Doctor Who and the Seeds of Doom and the first Hartnell novelization since Doctor Who and the Crusaders, Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth.  So it is interesting to see that while Terrance Dicks was already scribing several novelizations (of the five listed he penned three), Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters feels somewhat special.  The novelization doesn’t so much as add things to the events, sure there are some minor alterations, the sonic screwdriver being absent and some of the descriptions of the Drashigs, but this is one that while clearly written based on the scripts but like Barry Letts’ decision to cut the final shot on repeat, there is a genuinely interesting few changes from Dicks to make Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters work.

 

The plot is the same, however, Dicks has rearranged some of the scenes which changes much of the pacing of the story and makes it work as a book and not as a television serial.  Instead of opening on Inter Minor, we open with the Doctor and Jo arriving, helping create an actual sense of mystery that the S.S. Bernice might not actually be a ship in the alien ocean.  This also allows Dicks to explore the dictatorship on Inter Minor, not by adding new characters or a plot of revolution of the Functionaries but by exploring our three officials and exploring how they react to the chaos the miniscope brings.  This slows some of the things down and makes some of the novel feel a bit of a drag, especially as there are sequences that are just functional in communicating the events of the story, perhaps because Dicks was already writing quite a few scripts and didn’t have as much time to explore what he could do in each one, especially with Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth bringing the First Doctor to a brand new generation of children, it means that this book suffers slightly.

 

Overall Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters is still great, it’s a story that has always been underrated and the novelization continues to understand what makes Robert Holmes’ script work.  There are some improvements especially in Dicks converting to prose in the Inter Minor segments, but the Doctor and Jo’s plot is one that honestly works better on television as while you can hear the characters they aren’t given as much of an inner life as the rest of the characters.  8/10.