Doctor Who and the Masque
of Mandragora was written by Philip Hinchcliffe, based
on The Masque of Mandragora by Louis Marks. It was the 38th story to be
novelized by Target Books.
The Masque of Mandragora
is an overlooked Philip Hinchcliffe serial.
One of the few times the Hinchcliffe era really attempted a historical
setting (the other two being Pyramids of Mars and The Talons of
Weng-Chiang) and it’s quite resplendent in its Italian Renaissance
setting. It’s also one of four serials
to be written by Louis Marks who novelized none of his stories, three
novelizations falling to Terrance Dicks and Doctor Who and the Masque of
Mandragora falling instead to Philip Hinchcliffe. This isn’t the only serial Hinchcliffe would
adapt for the Target Books range of novelizations but in terms of adapting the
story it’s one of the ones that is perhaps difficult to talk to. While Terrance Dicks famously adapts stories
to be close to the story but with his easy to read style, Philip Hinchcliffe
shows that there was a clear reason as to why he didn’t really write for the
show. Doctor Who and the Masque of
Mandragora reads almost too straightforward in terms of what happened, making
the prose have a tendency to just be glossed over in reading the short
novelization. In its shortness there is
almost a paradox to the novel, it took me several days to get through because
of how bland Hinchcliffe’s prose is, not helped by The Masque of Mandragora
being a story which while having its fair share of action scenes, is more a contemplative
piece in many ways.
On television the story
was propped up by director Rodney Bennett’s use of location shooting in Portmeirion
to serve as Renaissance Italy, and sadly Hinchcliffe doesn’t really add much to
the descriptions. There’s a sequence
early on in the serial involving orange trees and the way Hinchcliffe
translates it makes it feel normal when in the serial we have a beautiful
forest and some sparkling dialogue leading into action. The only thing that really does sparkle is
the main dynamic between the Doctor and Sarah Jane, Hinchcliffe clearly being close
to Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen through their three years on production. Hinchcliffe actually does some small
additions to the dialogue for the Doctor in particular which makes for a pretty
fun addition, especially when putting the bombast of Tom Baker against the
villain Hieronymus and the Cult of Demnos.
The events of the story are there and it’s perfectly fine as a novel.
Overall, Doctor Who
and the Masque of Mandragora is essentially an example of why some people
are better suited to suggesting ideas to produce instead of writing, something
exemplified by Big Finish Productions as they adapted some of his unused ideas
with scripts by other people. It makes a
solid story come across as incredibly bland on the whole, making the shortness
of a Target novelization feel much longer and honestly leave me with little to
actually say about it. 5/10.
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