The Highlanders by: Gerry Davis

 

The Highlanders was written by Gerry Davis, based on his and Elwyn Jones’ story of the same name.  It was the 90^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

Sometimes there really isn’t much done with a Target novelization.  The Highlanders is one of those times.  Despite being a serial that is completely missing with a full set of telesnaps and one or two existing clips, it’s never been one that’s particularly difficult to understand or follow.  It’s just that Gerry Davis and Elwyn Jones’ script is one that just kind of meanders from situation to situation and falls into the trap of pure historical stories being motivated by getting the TARDIS team back to the ship so they can leave.  Were it not for the introduction of Jamie McCrimmon, it would be remembered as a fairly decent though highly flawed missing serial.  It was Patrick Troughton’s only pure historical and the last until 1982’s Black Orchid, but there are so many better options for exploring history.  This does have some great comedic bits of Patrick Troughton that informs his early performance as the Doctor.

 

The novelization suffers from being almost entirely too faithful to the television script.  Gerry Davis adapts it, as he was really the only one actually writing The Highlanders for television.  It was his fourth novelization but his first, Doctor Who and the Cybermen, remains his best for how it played with pacing.  Davis’ sense of novelization really hadn’t developed from the previous stories he has novelized: Doctor Who and the Cybermen and Doctor Who and the Tomb of the Cybermen both work off the original scripts and take out any ad-libs, The Highlanders follows suit.  The book doesn’t quite drag despite the meandering pace, Davis at least spends some time in the heads of the characters especially Ben and Polly (even if Polly is slightly mischaracterized as more of a damsel in distress).  The best bits of comedy are at least retained.

 

Overall, despite not having the same problems as Doctor Who and the Tomb of the Cybermen, The Highlanders suffers from Gerry Davis not making many choices when deciding how to adapt it to the page.  The ones he does make sadly weaken Polly into quite the damsel, only too relieved when the Doctor is rescued so he can make decisions for her and then terrified when he pushes to back into thinking.  It takes a story that was at best decent and just kind of brings it down to meh.  5/10.