Doctor Who and the Talons
of Weng-Chiang was written by Terrance Dicks, based on The
Talons of Weng-Chiang by Robert Holmes.
It was the 37th story to be novelized by Target Books.
Doctor Who and the Talons
of Weng-Chiang is one of those novelizations that had
been published many a time. It was one
of ten published in the United States complete with introduction by Harlan
Ellison, was republished in the 1990s, and is adapting a story that is
generally loved despite the racism. The
initial publication in 1977 is right on the cusp of when Terrance Dicks became
the prime author of the range, and his workload was increasing meaning that Doctor
Who and the Talons of Weng-Chiang, compiled with the fact it is a
novelization of a six part story, is a fairly briskly paced affair leaving
little room for deviation from the televised story. Dicks does attempt some additions: some of
the unnamed characters are given either names or backstories, some characters
are renamed only slightly, and the story actually opens with a magic trick to
set the mood instead of the television serial’s opening right at the end of the
performance. It’s the only significant
addition to the story itself, which just goes along at a fairly regular pace,
Dicks performing his usual trick of converting the dialogue to prose and adding
some descriptions and the occasional inner thought to make Doctor Who and
the Talons of Weng-Chiang a very readable novel. The character of Chang is presented as
slightly more intelligent here, he has been moving his act from theater to
theater so not to arouse suspicion.
Now the racism baked into
The Talons of Weng-Chiang is largely still present in Doctor Who and
the Talons of Weng-Chiang. Yes,
there is no John Bennett in yellowface, but a lot of Robert Holmes’ general
tribute to orientalist Victorian literature remain unchanged. Dicks even goes so far as to explicitly make
Chang Chinese and not a white man in yellowface, acknowledging an aspect of
Victorian society that did in fact happen and easily could have made the
television serial less racist, but somehow Dicks doesn’t really do that. There just really isn’t any attempt to engage
with Holmes’ script, but then again that’s never been the purpose of Target
novelizations, it’s to recreate the television serial so kids can experience
them in a world without repeats. It’s
just that The Talons of Weng-Chiang is perhaps the Doctor Who
story intrinsically linked with its racism that there’s a sense that even the
novelization (not to mention later script release) would engage with it.
Overall, Doctor Who
and the Talons of Weng-Chiang is a perfectly decent Target novelization,
but sadly even without the problematic elements at the center of the story, it
loses a lot from not having the performances or David Maloney’s direction.
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