The Curse of Fenric by: Ian Briggs

 

The Curse of Fenric was written by Ian Briggs, based on his story of the same name.  It was the 158^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

Most fans attribute the novelization to Remembrance of the Daleks as the test run to see what original Doctor Who fiction can do in novel form.  It was published in 1990 and given no limit on its word count, something that fans were incredibly receptive to Aaronovitch’s style, so much that it would be reprinted in 2013 to represent the Seventh Doctor in book form for the 50^th Anniversary celebrations.  Fans forget, however, that this was not the only book given that commission: Ian Briggs was asked when adapting The Curse of Fenric to novelization form to also take advantage of an expanded word count.  This has the added effect of making this the longest novelization by wordcount to be published before the Virgin New Adventures began publishing and provided novelizations for The Power of the Daleks, The Evil of the Daleks, The Paradise of Death, and The Ghosts of N-Space which would be full novels.  Interestingly enough, the longest audiobook thus far of the Target novelizations is Ghost Light which is nearly 30 pages shorter than The Curse of Fenric yet the audiobook is two hours longer.

 

In adapting the script to television Ian Briggs was able to restore several scenes which were deleted as the episodes themselves overran and restore the structure to its original intent.  The four part version of the serial, while still brilliant, was a production Nicholas Mallett was unhappy with.  Notes were compiled by Mallett and composer Mark Ayres to eventually convert the story into a film version, something which would happen in 2003 for the DVD release, but Briggs also structures this like a film.  While there are the cliffhanger moments from the four episodes, they are not constricted by being in four 25 minute segments.  The story itself already lends itself to a novel format, with the perfect extrapolation for character expansion and taking some of the themes to be expanded in very important ways.  Perhaps the most interesting theme to be explored is the theme of sexuality, something that was there in the television story since Maiden’s Point is an important location and the Haemovores as vampires inherently make this sexual.  The novel makes a lot of the sexual themes explicit with several character additions, most notably Mrs. Hardaker having a dead child out of wedlock making her an outcast, and the relationship of Millington and Judson being of two repressed gay men ho have hurt each other because of the society they are inhabiting.  The former really makes you understand why Hardaker works as this spinster figure in parallel to Jean and Phyllis dying and becoming vampires as they are outcasts themselves.  Jean and Phyllis are essentially innocents in the story, sure they are implied to be sexually active characters which is why Hardaker is so hard on them and drives them to their deaths, while Millington and Judson are implied to have been helping each other.  Millington is especially portrayed as a man wracked with guilt due to being explicitly responsible for Judson’s accident which disabled him.

 

There are also additions to the character of Nurse Crane, while her role on television is important she does not get much focus, but here there is this added fear that she might be a double agent for the Soviets, explaining explicitly how the Russian soldiers were guided outside of Fenric’s supernatural assistance.  Briggs also adds five interludes in the form of historical documents charting the history of Fenric, the prophecies around Fenric, and the wolves themselves which make for interesting moments adding to the mystery.  The two taken for the history of Fenric that stand out the most are a mythic story a la One Thousand and One Nights exploring the first game the Doctor played with Fenric using an ambiguous incarnation of the Doctor (though it’s possibly William Hartnell or Tom Baker in the role and unlikely to be an appearance by the Other based on the characterization and using the moniker of the Doctor) and a reminiscence of Bram Stoker being inspired by stories of Fenric and the Ancient One for Dracula, both adding to the gothic quality of the story.   It also allows some name drops of the working titles of the story Powerplay, Black Rain, Wolf-Time, and The Wolves of Fenric.  Finally, an added epilogue helps complete the arc of the story for Ace (which on television ran throughout the season but is adapted to be a bit more self-contained as this is the climax of the arc and fallout revealed in Survival).  It is the origin for her fate in Set Piece, living in Paris in the 1800s to her heart’s content, possibly continuing the Doctor’s own work, though here meeting him briefly after they have parted ways.  Briggs also continues the thread of Ace being the first companion to be mature, explicitly having had sex and continuing the implied LGBT themes of Battlefield and Survival on television with attraction to Jean and Phyllis.  There are also scenes played from her perspective exploring her emotions surrounding her mother and growing up.

 

Overall, The Curse of Fenric is a perfect example of a novelization expanding upon a television story and making it work as a story and novel in its own right, not being afraid to change things from its source material and just letting the story be explored more than a visual medium ever could.  It is a riveting read from start to finish and perfection on an already brilliant story.  10/10.

Frontios by: Christopher H. Bidmead

 

Frontios was written by Christopher H. Bidmead, based on his story of the same name.  It was the 91^st story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

Christopher H. Bidmead novelized all three of his television stories for the Target novelization range fairly close to their original airdate, Frontios being the closest, published not even a year after the television story was aired.  This is interesting as while this certainly isn’t out of the ordinary it marks one of the first times the majority of a season’s stories would be put out within the year making the writers have less time to actually flesh out their stories.  This might be why Frontios is a story which takes most of its cues from the original television stories without any real sense of expansion.  The Doctor, Tegan, and Turlough still arrive on Frontios outside of the general remit of the Time Lords which scares the Doctor and finds the last of the human race struggling to survive.  People are being eaten by the earth, the current leader of the colony is losing his mind, and there are things beneath the surface which cause a race memory to emerge in Turlough.  The plot beats are there so it is really interesting to see how Bidmead’s prose develops a very stark story with scientific and desperate themes and how he turns up the pulp horror vibes.  Under script editor Eric Saward there really isn’t a whole lot of pulp in Doctor Who, yeah there is danger and dark themes (especially in Season 21) but in Frontios on television the direction by Ron Jones is one of those directorial styles which are just fine and the script only plays up the desperation.  The production design also is really lacking, especially with the Tractators and the Gravis which are clearly trying, all of the actors are trying (especially the Gravis), but they just don’t work.  The novelization of Frontios allows the desperation to play out with a lot of the dialogue being stark and simple, giving it a ragged feel for all of the characters, and by the time the Tractators, their technology, and the Gravis appear Bidmead makes the shift to horror work really well.  It’s really only a book that’s let down by not making any plot changes, the stuff with the Time Lords is even made more explicit as a threat while not amounting to anything.  They just get a few mentions because it’s apparently dangerous for the Doctor to be here.  Same with Turlough and the race memory, we don’t get any further idea of Turlough’s past, just this tidbit though Tegan is a lot of fun in the book, especially when she’s on her own.

 

Overall, Frontios as a novelization works about as well as its television story outside of being a bit longer and still not doing anything to explain why the Time Lords might want anything.  Turlough doesn’t get depth but the colony itself has more life and the horror elements are actually played up throughout.  8/10.

Full Circle by: Andrew Smith

 

Full Circle was written by Andrew Smith, based on his story of the same name.  It was the 71^st story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

It’s always been interesting to me that in 1980 Barry Letts, John Nathan-Turner, and Christopher H. Bidmead allowed Full Circle to enter production.  Not because it is some terrible story that should never have seen the light of day, on the contrary it’s quite a good story about cyclic evolution and bureaucracy interfering in societal development, but because it was submitted by Andrew Smith who was only 17 at the time.  A teenager writing for a professional television project is something you wouldn’t really expect, but since the Doctor Who production office accepted open submissions and Letts, Nathan-Turner, and Bidmead were looking for new talent (only two authors for Season 17 would have contributed before, David Fisher and Terrance Dicks, both having ideas ready to go and easily adaptable to the vision plus Dicks’ close friendship with Letts) Smith’s proposal was accepted on its strengths in the form of Full Circle.  What makes this especially interesting is that two years later a 19 year old Smith would also write the novelization, his only novel.

 

The novelization of Full Circle is another perfect example of how Doctor Who changes from television to prose, mainly in expansion.  On television, despite being four episodes, the story is actually quite short with the middle two only coming to 22 minutes instead of the more common 24 to 25, though the story is bookended by 24-minute installments.  A lot of the expansion to the story doesn’t come from adding any events, but Smith really gets to show off his skills as a worldbuilder.  While on television the bureaucracy of the Starliner’s society is there, in novel form it is brought to the forefront since you get a lot of the internal motivations of the other Deciders.  Take for instance, Draith chasing Adric in the swamp before Mistfall, on television we don’t actually get much of who the character is but in Smith’s novelization he feels more caring for Adric, trying to catch him to help and calm him.  Or for instance the bond between Adric and Varsh, who don’t actually feel like siblings for much of the television series, but here there is a tender bond between the two and the symbol of his rope belt is also vitally important to who Adric is and why he joins the TARDIS in the end.  Finally, you have the Marshmen themselves are actually given a culture and language whereas on television they were just sort of there.

 

That being said, Full Circle is far from a perfect novelization.  It does improve on the worldbuilding, but there really isn’t as much capturing the personalities of the Doctor, Romana, and K9, they’re kind of background characters in the story already, Romana being taken over by the spiders in particular really feels like a damselling made worse here by the way Smith writes it.  Still it is a genuinely great time of a novel but is still a little uneven in places from being written by a 19 year old based on a story written by a 17 year old.  8/10.

Doctor Who and the Sontaran Experiment by: Ian Marter

 

Doctor Who and the Sontaran Experiment was written by Ian Marter, based on the story The Sontaran Experiment by Bob Baker and Dave Martin.  It was the 45^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

The Sontaran Experiment is the odd one out for Season 12, only written because Robert Holmes and Philip Hinchcliffe decided to only use one six-episode serial per season so a two episode gap was created and filled by Bob Baker and Dave Martin writing a story meant to be made cheap and on vacation.  The story is a simple runaround on Earth with a Sontaran called Styre performing experiments on humans to continue their war with the Rutans and enter the Milky Way, made less interesting by Kevin Lindsay’s ill health and Tom Baker injuring himself so the battle at the climax is underwhelming.  It was also a choice for novelization that apparently nobody would take except for Ian Marter who of course starred in the story as Harry Sullivan, which should tell you all you need to know about The Sontaran Experiment.  Because of this you would expect Doctor Who and the Sontaran Experiment to not work as a novel, but interestingly it's a lot better in prose form than it ever was on television.  Ian Marter certainly understands that a lot of the ideas for Sontaran technology has potential and that potential is grown, the robot scout is an actual threat and not just a really flimsy prop that trundles on wheels, but hovers above the ground to stalk its prey which creates this great tension.  The pit that Harry falls in is actually a pit, though there is some humor added as the Doctor berates him for falling into something that’s essentially out in the open.  Styre, renamed Styr, himself is upgraded to an almost cyborg-esque creature where Marter uses the prose to make him sound more terrifying than any Sontaran has ever been, which in turn makes the danger actually feel real.  Sarah Jane’s torture in particular goes to some dark places as her psyche is explored and deconstructed so her fears can create a genuinely chilling chapter.  This is still done in the Target novelization format, and Marter also doesn’t let the story overstay its welcome as this isn’t like other two-part story novelizations which somehow find ways to stretch the format to its limits, the prose is only about 120 pages and the audiobook is 3 hours and 6 minutes.

 

Overall, Doctor Who and the Sontaran Experiment is a great example of the Target novelization format being used to take a story that on television is incredibly bland and make it into something genuinely engaging.  Sure it’s not going to be one of the absolute best Fourth Doctor stories, but it makes the story worth engaging with and experiencing in this way at least once.  7/10.

Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters by: Terrance Dicks

 

Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters was written by Terrence Dicks, based on the story Carnival of Monsters by Robert Holmes.  It was the 28^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

To me Carnival of Monsters has always been one of those Doctor Who stories that some seem to underestimate.  It’s sandwiched between The Three Doctors and the massive two story epic Frontier in Space and Planet of the Daleks so it kind of gets lost in the crowd of the tenth anniversary celebrations, but it’s a story that I have always had a soft spot for.  Now, a review of that story is still forthcoming though something I intend to eventually write along with the rest of Season 10.  Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters, likewise, is a Target novelization which has kind of been lost in the novelizations published around it: immediately before are titans like Doctor Who and the Space War, Doctor Who and the Planet of the Daleks, and Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars while after it is Doctor Who and the Seeds of Doom and the first Hartnell novelization since Doctor Who and the Crusaders, Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth.  So it is interesting to see that while Terrance Dicks was already scribing several novelizations (of the five listed he penned three), Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters feels somewhat special.  The novelization doesn’t so much as add things to the events, sure there are some minor alterations, the sonic screwdriver being absent and some of the descriptions of the Drashigs, but this is one that while clearly written based on the scripts but like Barry Letts’ decision to cut the final shot on repeat, there is a genuinely interesting few changes from Dicks to make Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters work.

 

The plot is the same, however, Dicks has rearranged some of the scenes which changes much of the pacing of the story and makes it work as a book and not as a television serial.  Instead of opening on Inter Minor, we open with the Doctor and Jo arriving, helping create an actual sense of mystery that the S.S. Bernice might not actually be a ship in the alien ocean.  This also allows Dicks to explore the dictatorship on Inter Minor, not by adding new characters or a plot of revolution of the Functionaries but by exploring our three officials and exploring how they react to the chaos the miniscope brings.  This slows some of the things down and makes some of the novel feel a bit of a drag, especially as there are sequences that are just functional in communicating the events of the story, perhaps because Dicks was already writing quite a few scripts and didn’t have as much time to explore what he could do in each one, especially with Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth bringing the First Doctor to a brand new generation of children, it means that this book suffers slightly.

 

Overall Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters is still great, it’s a story that has always been underrated and the novelization continues to understand what makes Robert Holmes’ script work.  There are some improvements especially in Dicks converting to prose in the Inter Minor segments, but the Doctor and Jo’s plot is one that honestly works better on television as while you can hear the characters they aren’t given as much of an inner life as the rest of the characters.  8/10.

Superior Beings by: Nick Walters

 

It took several novels but finally after so much time we have a second good Fifth Doctor novel to be published by BBC Books.  Nick Walters’ third Doctor Who novel takes the Fifth Doctor and Peri to an apparent utopia, a garden planet perfect for exploring Peri’s skills as a botanist and give them a vacation.  Perhaps what makes Superior Beings work is that the Fifth Doctor and Peri for the first time have perfect characterization.  This could be because Big Finish Productions had been releasing Doctor Who audio dramas for over two years by the time this novel was released, indeed Red Dawn was already released and Justin Richards’ characterization seems to be the blueprint for making a Fifth Doctor/Peri relationship work and I suspect as editor he was able to bring Walters on board with the proper characterization.  The Fifth Doctor in particular shines more like the older Davison’s portrayals, with some added snark at direct moments which cut through what had been quite the bland portrayal of the character up until this point.  The opening chapters with the Doctor are a delight as here he is brimming with life and emotion, and Walters makes it feel like shackles have been lifted now that Tegan and Turlough have both left.

 

It is actually Peri who perhaps shines the most throughout Superior Beings, as Walters decides to explore just what someone growing up in the 1970s and 1980s in Maryland would actually be like.  Peri as an “American” on television wasn’t really a thing, Nicola Bryant is attempting an American accent and John Nathan-Turner’s baffling and borderline abusive forcing the accent on the actress is well documented (even when she wasn’t performing plus Bryant recently coming out to document the backhanded abuse of power by Nathan-Turner), and after Peter Davison left before the end of Season 21 the character was quickly shifted from a plucky college student to this jaded woman trying to deal with a Doctor who is very unstable.  Walters really picks up on the pluck throughout the novel to expose her to the wonder of the universe, even if Superior Beings is a book which is quite dark throughout.  Heck, this is a book where Peri is propositioned for sex through a cultural misunderstanding, the people on the planet are in such bliss that there genuinely wouldn’t be a reason for people not to engage in sexual behaviors.  There’s also so much violence, and the book itself ends in a very dark manner with a lot of the characters dead, yet you never get the sense that Peri is losing her sense of wonder.  It’s very much an are you kidding me, there’s still a whole universe to see and of course it can’t get any worse.  This doesn’t mean Superior Beings doesn’t have it’s problems, the plot itself has this tendency to meander in places and the characterization of the supporting characters genuinely leave a lot to be desired, but the main threat of the Valesthke is wonderful with this sinister religious undertone as there is a sense of things possibly being bigger.  The title itself is a bit misleading however, implying some sort of genetic engineering plot which doesn’t really happen.

 

Overall, Superior Beings is honestly a book I can recommend if you actually want good Fifth Doctor content.  The characterization of the regulars is the best the BBC Books has to offer and Nick Walters brings this great tension and suspense to the rest of the book which makes it all worth it, despite some issues with things not quite adding up to their full potential.  7/10.

The Inheritance Cycle: Eragon by: Christopher Paolini

 

Let’s take a minute before I get into this book to discuss Star Wars: A New Hope and the work of Joseph Campbell.  Joseph Campbell was an American writer whose literary work and analysis is most well remembered for focusing on the nature of stories and story structure.  The Hero with a Thousand Faces is where he first referred to the hero’s journey and the monomyth (a term taken from James Joyce).  These concepts essentially posit that every story has the same structure and characterization from the point of a protagonist.  A summation of the journey is a call to adventure which is then rejected, before the hero suffers a loss to push them onto an adventure (crossing a threshold which will transform the hero), a mentor figure guiding them through initial challenges before often being excised from the story, more challenges for the hero before a descent into the abyss for the low point and death of the hero, a rebirth for the hero leading to a final transformation and the eventual return to the previous or new status quo.  While this is fairly vague, it should be as it is describing archetypes in a story and not literally every story to the letter.  There are variations, omissions from the format and additives depending on genre and what an author is attempting to accomplish, but essentially stories follow some sort of hero’s journey style structure.  I bring up Star Wars: A New Hope because in writing the seminal science fiction film, George Lucas adheres to the hero’s journey to the letter in a science fiction coating.  Luke Skywalker is the hero, Princess Leia’s message for Obi-Wan Kenobi’s help is the call to adventure, Luke’s responsibilities on the farm stop him from initially going off to find Ben Kenobi, the death of his aunt and uncle are the crossing of the threshold, there are challenges in getting to where Leia is being held while Luke begins to learn about the Force, the death of Kenobi at the hands of Darth Vader is the death of the hero, and the final challenge to overcome is blowing up the Death Star, ending the film with the ceremony declaring Luke a savior of the galaxy.

 

I spent so much time on this preamble as discussing Eragon is a difficult task.  Published independently in 2002, it is the first book in The Inheritance Cycle written by Christopher Paolini who was only 15 years old when he begun writing.  I bring up this age because while the series sold incredibly well, well enough to be picked up by a traditional publisher for release in 2003 with the three sequels coming in 2005, 2008, and 2011 respectively, it is a book that in recent years has garnered a lot of criticism for being wholly unoriginal.  While this criticism is harsh, it is not an inaccurate criticism, as the plot structure and characters of Eragon follow George Lucas’ interpretation of the hero’s journey, as seen in Star Wars: A New Hope, almost down to the letter, including where the initial Star Wars trilogy would go in subsequent films though instead of science fiction, this takes the form of epic fantasy specifically inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien in terms of setting, Ursula K. LeGuinn in terms of magic system, and Anne McCaffrey in terms of how the dragons work.  Yet, I don’t wish this review to be seen as bashing Paolini, since when he wrote this book he was a teenager doing what any teenage writer would do, take the interesting elements of the stories he clearly loved and smash them together to form his own narrative.  I do wish to dispel the idea that Paolini was just using the hero’s journey, as if this were the case there would not be analogues to every major Star Wars character, Eragon is Luke, Brom is Obi-Wan, Murtagh is Han Solo, Arya is Leia, Durza is Vader, Galbatorix is the Emperor, and the only real new character is Saphira, Eragon’s dragon, who really doesn’t have a Star Wars analogue.  Saphira as a character is a lot of fun, she has this smug sense of importance and continually grows, though some of her teasing feels like Paolini wanting to have a reason to reveal information to someone whenever the plot requires it.

 

It’s when Paolini isn’t sticking to the Star Wars script or writing a Tolkein homage that Eragon is allowed to shine, some of the towns Eragon and Brom visit as well as the opening chapters do manage to be engaging and give kernels of interesting ideas and characters, as well as an exploration of the magic system where Paolini is allowed to get the interesting bits across.  The writing and prose are at best average, you occasionally get a good one liner or even a scene, but this is clearly a book that has been edited to make a 15-year old’s prose presentable.  This makes it perfectly readable, though the simple style is enhanced if you are a younger reader, as this is a book explicitly marketed towards children (I’m only reading this since Paolini is releasing two books next year and has announced it is being adapted into a streaming series for Disney+).  Paolini throughout has this great sense of childlike wonder with a protagonist that will be easy for children to imprint themselves on, though one that does at least have some struggle.  Eragon as a character is at least partially falling into the Mary Sue trope, but like any character labelled with that particular trope it isn’t always accurate.  The length of the book also makes this a great example of a gateway to epic fantasy, this first book clocks in at just over 500 pages but rarely do you feel that length.  The worldbuilding also shines through Paolini’s imagination coming across in a map and several varied cities, using the work of Tolkein as building blocks.  The final sequence of the book while clearly inspired by sequences in The Fellowship of the Ring in particular are interesting and deal with a resistance movement who has their own motivations and potential for backstabbing our heroes.  It does fall down by ending with essentially the tease that the plot of Eldest will at least in part be following The Empire Strikes Back for Eragon as a character.

 

Eragon as a book is not really a good book, but it is not one that I can bring myself to thrash.  Any adaptation will have to contend with the fact that it was written by someone who was very young, though luckily by the time it was published traditionally Paolini was 20, nearly 30 by the time the series was finished.  After this book Paolini has the chance to make some experience work to improve his craft.  Is it a book I’d recommend people read if they’ve already read a lot of fantasy?  Most definitely not, it is a book that does tropes and sticks to them without understanding what makes tropes work, but it is a decent enough gateway fantasy and it is a series with potential.  It’s a series I will be covering (prior to this I had only read Eragon itself once) and while I am perhaps a bit hesitant to give it a score since it was written initially by a child, I can only give it a score of 5/10.