Marco Polo - John Lucarotti

The first of the missing serials, with only the Audio and the Target to go on, although an abridged reconstruction exists on the official DVDs and I hope to start collecting the Loose Cannon reconstructions soon.

Unfortunately the Target does not offer us much. With the reputed lavishness of the serial, it is in fact a huge let down. Lucarotti has written a tale of two halves. The first half, dealing with the travellers journey from the mountains to the court of Kublai Khan is rushed, extremely rushed. The second half, dealing with the time spent at court by the Tardis crew, is also rushed, though not as much as the first half.

This is perhaps understandable, given the sheer scope of the story and the limited space available in a Target Book, but very disappointing. Description is thrown out of the window and the narrative stripped almost to the bone, everything is dealt with in a perfunctory manner before moving on to the next set piece.

Having said that, when the book does finally slow down to simply jogging through events (instead of sprinting past them) in the Khan's court, it is great fun, the Khan comes across brilliantly and hilariously in print; as does his Wife, the Empress.

Unfortunately, that's about all there is to recommend the book, it does occasionally feel as hard a slog to read as Marco Polo had in getting to China as page after page passes without any characterisation or description to keep the reader interested and while the antics of the Khan provide a little compensation it is nowhere near enough. For a lost story, this is a wasted opportunity, much more so since Lucarotti penned the actual script.

3/10