Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars by: Terrance Dicks

 

Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars was written by: Terrence Dicks, based on Pyramids of Mars by: Robert Holmes and Lewis Greifer writing under the name Stephen Harris.  It was the 27^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

Whenever I find myself reading a Terrance Dicks novel there’s an immediate sense of comfort.  Several of my own reviews have discussed just how easy going his style is.  It has been said Dicks is responsible for the literacy rates of generations of British schoolchildren.  Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars is an interesting example of his style leaning particularly hard into the pulp fiction roots of both his style and Philip Hinchcliffe’s time as producer on Doctor Who.  Pyramids of Mars is a story exemplifying this, it’s a take on reanimating Egyptian mummies with diversions, because this is science fiction, into taking inspiration from Chariot of the Gods.  It's the latter point that the fandom does have a tendency to ignore or simply write off as part of the pulp fiction roots of the show and the serial in general.  The idea of the Osirans, or as they are in Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars the Osirians, as a near all-powerful alien race that influenced human culture is at best a dodgy decision despite being in an excellent serial.  At worst it is playing into a very long history of conspiracies aimed at denigrating “non-Western” cultures, mainly non-white cultures.  These stereotypes feel more present in the novelization with Dicks leaning heavily into those specific origins.  There is an added prologue recounting the Egyptian myth of Set killing Osiris which is a particularly fun little addition, but it does add in the context of the gods as aliens and making it explicit science fiction.  It does at least introduce little kids to Egyptian mythology since that is clearly the target audience of the novelizations in general.

 

The real step down for Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars is that despite some additions, there’s also an epilogue of Sarah Jane discovering through newspaper clippings that the entire story was written off as just a tragic fire and mix-up, and being a fairly quick read, this is a story that just loses a little bit of its luster when it isn’t being performed.  It’s perfectly fine to read about Sutekh, but without Gabriel Woolf’s delivery Dicks doesn’t do nearly as much to communicate the character’s presence to the reader which is a shame.  He just relies on the dialogue from Holmes’ original script which of course is good dialogue, but this is clearly entering the period where Dicks is writing so many of these novelizations he cannot quite keep up with the demands.  It’s still fairly early in the run of novels sure but it’s also his sixth novel of the year and because it’s one that was only about a year old, there isn’t enough time to really allow for a lot of that creative license that Dicks would write in novelizations like Doctor Who and the Web of Fear or his first Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion.

 

Overall, Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars, while translating the story well enough to the page, it does exacerbate some of the underlying problems with the nature of the story and a lack of creative license does mean that it is just the TV story a second time.  The lack of performances does mean the final episode being similar to Death to the Daleks is just more apparent, though the additions are nice.  8/10.