An Unearthly Child - Terrence Dicks

A few months on and I have enlarged my original scope for this blog. Originally I was going to look at just the Virgin and BBC Book ranges. That's expanded a little bit. Just a little. In a little under a year I went from owning nothing Who related, to owning pretty much every story. Still got a few dozen Big Finish stories to get hold of once my bank balance recovers, and the DVD's will still take a few years to be produced and there are two stupidly rare BBV CD's and most of the Charity Books that I probably won't get my hands on now, but nevermind. I'm starting my marathon Doctor Who Review blog, for the simple reason that with such a wealth of stories, I'm gonna forget much of it otherwise before I even get halfway through.

So without much further ado:

Doctor Who and An Unearthly Child by Terrance Dicks

Now I've read far enough into the books to know that Terrance Dicks writes for a job. He doesn't write for the benefit of being a great, or even good writer. He is a journeyman who, when given the right conditions, can turn in magnificent work, and who, when given a deadline and a limited page number, will fulfil his contract. This one is a contract job. Being honest though, it's barely that. There are lines so clumsily written that you wonder if Terrance didn't write the whole thing hungover sat with his typewriter in a darkened room with some kids watching the episodes in another and had them shout through descriptions of the action, which were then put down verbatim. This is in fact, the only book I've ever read where even the use of brackets has been embarrassing.


Ultimately this is for completists only. It is poorly written, almost shoddy work, basic on a ten year old's level. Something that had very little time put into it. It is a shame as the TV Pilot is of course one of the most wonderful pieces of television ever screened. The explanation for the poor novelisation is that Dicks was only given a week to write it. Dicks did his job, whereas he perhaps should have refused this particular job on the basis that writing a novella in a week is, while not impossible, a huge barrier to quality, as evidenced here. The frustration being that Dicks could easily have done this justice with a longer time scale.


1/10

The Eight Doctors - Terrance Dicks

This was the first appearance of the Eighth Doctor in print. It has an atrocious reputation and it's easy to see why. For the first major outing of a new Doctor, after the Telemovie (Which was also regarded badly, though I enjoyed it) it turns out to be not an outing. Barely an adventure. In fact, the Doctor only goes back to visit his other selves and pass on some advice and help some of them out of a spot of bother that occurs during or after a televised adventure. Managing to be both a boring premise and yet incredibly complicated is quite a feat, however Dicks cannot take all the blame. He's obviously been given an impossible brief by the BBC. Introduce a new Doctor and a new Companion to an audience who may well have only seen the TVM or never seen Who at all, introduce them to the premise of Who, deal with the inconsistencies of the TVM and fit it all into a story. I don't think there's a writer on Earth who could have filled that brief successfully.


But, and there is always a but, Terrance Dicks can't help being a good writer. There is nice stuff within this story. The Fifth and Sixth Doctors come across fantastically. Their parts are enjoyable and most importantly fun, regardless of the continuity implications of the Sixth Doctor part. All the other Doctors however, come across wrong. As is mentioned in all other reviews, the Third Doctor's chapter should just be torn straight out of the book and discarded.

So, as opposed to Terrance's other disaster in Book form (again the start of an era - An Unearthly Child), The Eight Doctors does have some merit, purely in characterisation. The plot being an unmitigated bomb site. Fortunately, due to the nature of the book, the adventures with the various incarnations can be easily found. Five and Six are definitely worth reading the once.

While not a complete disaster, this book contains absolutely nothing of value about the New Doctor or his new companion Sam and thus fails in the most basic part of its brief. Both remain essentially blank slates for the next book Vampire Science which is essentially where the Eighth Doctors adventures truly begin. A little enjoyment to be had here, if you look very selectively.

1/10