Black Orchid by: Terence Dudley

 

Black Orchid was written by Terence Dudley, based on his story of the same name.  It was the 115^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

The last time I looked at a novelization by Terence Dudley, I kept things intentionally short because Dudley stretched a two-episode serial into a five-hour audiobook.  Going into Black Orchid, I was hoping that Dudley had learned from those mistakes.  Black Orchid’s audiobook is 5 hours and 12 minutes.  Now, it isn’t as bad as The King’s Demons, but then again, Black Orchid on television is a stronger story anyway.  But it is far from a good story and once again has Terence Dudley largely misunderstand how to construct a narrative and adapt a script to a novel form.  Take for instance the extended play by play of Part One’s cricket match, something that takes up quite a lot of time without actually moving the plot forward, and barely establishing characterization.

 

Dudley as a writer clearly knows that anyone picking this up would already like Doctor Who, so he doesn’t seem to think of a need to really give any of the characters an introduction or characterization.  Compound this with a writing style that substitutes synonyms without any sense of sentence structure, plus repeating plot points and the communication of plot points between characters, you have a recipe for an incredibly padded novel.  There is a specific moment in the novel where Dudley actively references The King’s Demons and opens the novel with Tegan happily traveling with the Doctor and company, even though this is right near the end of her tumultuous time on the show as combative towards not getting home.  The sense is that the TARDIS team in Black Orchid just kind of hates each other, Adric in particular is always referred to in terms of being almost unhygienic and always stuffing his face.  It’s very possible that this is where Gary Russell got his idea for characterization of Adric in Divided Loyalties.  Tegan is generally fed up with having to explain Earth concepts to Adric and especially Nyssa which the latter has no basis in how the characters were portrayed on television.  Yes, Nyssa has always been weakly characterized in her television appearances, but here Dudley makes her kind of helpless and unable to navigate any sort of situation without looking for an out.

 

The Doctor is also particularly out of character, coming across as almost pro-colonialist in places.  Black Orchid on television has always had this undercurrent of ableism and racism, the villain is someone who was disfigured and his mind has snapped, while there is an indigenous character generally made out to be in service to the white British aristocracy.  The novelization makes the Cranleigh’s have a higher aristocratic status, and Dudley’s prose rarely refers to George as George, he is almost exclusively described in terms of being grotesque and inhuman.  He is placed in the situation of monster and the Doctor in the novel just doesn’t question it, there is a poor lampshading of the Cranleighs thinking hiding him is better than sending him to an asylum, but that is one line in a full novel.  Latoni is also referred to rarely by name but as ‘the Indian’ and is given a deeper characterization of mysticism and the idea of worshipping vengeful gods because that is apparently all indigenous people are to Terence Dudley.  The Doctor barely acknowledges the humanity of either character, really leaving a bad taste in my mouth throughout.

 

Overall, Black Orchid is just another example of how Terence Dudley is not a good writer nor is he really a fit for writing Doctor Who.  The book is so stretched that it makes a novelization that is in prose less than 200 pages take over five hours for the audiobook to be read without adding any substance.  But hey, there’s cricket, and the aristocracy.  3/10.