The Sensorites was a Target I read as a child, one of the many stories that would only see the light of day on VHS after I had practically grown up and had other things to worry about. The serial is not well loved I gather. But the book, I adored.
Nigel Robinson has turned in a book of two halves. The first part, set aboard the spaceship, is positively dripping with anticipation and claustrophobic dread as the unseen Sensorite assailants move in on the Tardis Crew who are at their mercy. The Sensorites even succeed where Dalek, Cyberman and Sontaran have failed in harming the Tardis by cutting out the lock.
The second part, by the nature of the Serial, is very different as the Doctor engages in making peace with this race and solving the mystery of the poisoned water, it's far more open and action orientated and again Robinson does an effective job in describing the planet and especially the action in the water tunnels.
The serial obviously suffered from the problem that The Sensorites, beings of power and mystery in the first half, turn into perfectly ordinary and not very distinct aliens in the second, the book is so well written that this does not intrude, however, it does have a problem that the serial did not have, The Sensorites do not have names. Poor Nigel Robinson has to spend the entire second half of the book delineating one character as "The Evil Sensorite" and a second as "The Sensorite's Senior Scientist". But it's The Evil Sensorite which causes the problem, as, despite being Evil, he is never given a motive and after a while this becomes very wearying. It's hardly Robinson's fault and he does his best to overcome this with an excellent narrative, to no avail, this single problem drags the story which is a huge pity. But if you can overcome it, there are some great riches to uncover here. The Sensorites is, for the most part, very enjoyable.
7/10
Showing posts with label Target. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Target. Show all posts
Tuesday, 23 June 2009
Wednesday, 17 June 2009
The Aztecs - John Lucarotti
The Aztecs is a damn hard book to review, mainly because it's basic, but no less brilliant for that.
Lucarotti adds nothing and takes nothing away. He presents us with The Aztecs serial in written form. It is an excellent script, and Lucarotti, having written it, knows exactly what it is trying to do and how and conveys this simply. The Aztecs pootles along in third gear doing everything well but not attempting or caring to reach greater heights as the Serial so effortlessly achieved through the efforts of the actors. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the book, it made me worried for our heroes when I was meant to be worried, it had me laughing at the Doctor's engagement and I enjoyed reading it immensely and the characters felt alive, however, there is just a slight sense that Lucarotti is on autopilot as he certainly was for Marco Polo, that he hasn't stretched himself in writing and that the novelisation of The Aztecs is better than Marco Polo is down to the shorter, more structured story and an amazing script rather than great writing. As a result, The Aztecs is a good book, but falls short of being a great book because Lucarotti made no attempt to get out of third gear. Lucarotti's third gear is bloody good, but it leaves me wondering what he could achieved with this book if he'd pushed himself.
7/10
Lucarotti adds nothing and takes nothing away. He presents us with The Aztecs serial in written form. It is an excellent script, and Lucarotti, having written it, knows exactly what it is trying to do and how and conveys this simply. The Aztecs pootles along in third gear doing everything well but not attempting or caring to reach greater heights as the Serial so effortlessly achieved through the efforts of the actors. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the book, it made me worried for our heroes when I was meant to be worried, it had me laughing at the Doctor's engagement and I enjoyed reading it immensely and the characters felt alive, however, there is just a slight sense that Lucarotti is on autopilot as he certainly was for Marco Polo, that he hasn't stretched himself in writing and that the novelisation of The Aztecs is better than Marco Polo is down to the shorter, more structured story and an amazing script rather than great writing. As a result, The Aztecs is a good book, but falls short of being a great book because Lucarotti made no attempt to get out of third gear. Lucarotti's third gear is bloody good, but it leaves me wondering what he could achieved with this book if he'd pushed himself.
7/10
Monday, 15 June 2009
The Keys Of Marinus - Philip Hinchcliffe
I am currently waiting for Keys to come out on DVD in a few months before I start to review the Serials/DVD's themselves, so that I can have a long run up to The Ark or something like that. But until then, this is one of the Serials I have never seen.
It was however, one of my Dad's collection of Targets that I read as a kid, it was thoroughly enjoyable then, and it is still enjoyable now.
The Keys of Marinus is a string of great ideas held together by a wafer thin plot that Iris Wildthyme has driven through half a dozen times. So lets forget about that bit. It does no justice to a series of great little vignettes that are best appreciated individually. The alien worlds that are here are spectacularly drawn (The suggestion that so many extremes are from a single planet makes my head hurt, so let's just posit that Marinus is a collection of planets). Hinchcliffe brings each area to life and throws danger around every corner. It's well written without a doubt and overcomes the problems of the plot easily.
Where Hinchcliffe succeeds in this novelisation is with the characters. Each one of the travellers is, in turn, stranded and placed in mortal danger, and they must rely on each other for survival. As Ian rescues Susan and Barbara in the Icelands through strength, grit, determination and sheer machismo, he himself must be rescued from execution by the Doctor's cunning, intelligence and ingenuity. Yet Hinchcliffe does not bog down in character, he simply lets us see how close these four have become by showing us how far they will go for one another. Each have their flaws, but together, this Tardis Crew can overcome anything thrown at them. Something that was never quite true again after Ian and Barbara left and the Doctor moved to the forefront of the show.
6/10
It was however, one of my Dad's collection of Targets that I read as a kid, it was thoroughly enjoyable then, and it is still enjoyable now.
The Keys of Marinus is a string of great ideas held together by a wafer thin plot that Iris Wildthyme has driven through half a dozen times. So lets forget about that bit. It does no justice to a series of great little vignettes that are best appreciated individually. The alien worlds that are here are spectacularly drawn (The suggestion that so many extremes are from a single planet makes my head hurt, so let's just posit that Marinus is a collection of planets). Hinchcliffe brings each area to life and throws danger around every corner. It's well written without a doubt and overcomes the problems of the plot easily.
Where Hinchcliffe succeeds in this novelisation is with the characters. Each one of the travellers is, in turn, stranded and placed in mortal danger, and they must rely on each other for survival. As Ian rescues Susan and Barbara in the Icelands through strength, grit, determination and sheer machismo, he himself must be rescued from execution by the Doctor's cunning, intelligence and ingenuity. Yet Hinchcliffe does not bog down in character, he simply lets us see how close these four have become by showing us how far they will go for one another. Each have their flaws, but together, this Tardis Crew can overcome anything thrown at them. Something that was never quite true again after Ian and Barbara left and the Doctor moved to the forefront of the show.
6/10
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
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
The Edge Of Destruction - Nigel Robinson
I first read The Edge of Destruction a long time ago. One of my Dad's Target's and long before I had the chance to watch the serial which I only saw recently on DVD. At the time it became one of my favourite stories, so it must have had something right.
It's a strange story, being set fully inside the Tardis, and yet one that is integral to the show, more so perhaps than even the Daleks, they are an outside influence, a Monster, albeit the most popular. The Tardis however, is part of the very basis of the Doctor's character. As Ian states in the very first episode, he doesn't expect to find the answer to the mysteries of Time and Space in a junkyard. The Doctor has changed faces many times, the Tardis however, has never changed, at least, not permanently.
Verity Lambert reveals in the DVD commentaries that the Tardis Designer wasn't particularly enthusiastic about working on the show and delayed the designs, only coming up with something at the last minute. Nevertheless, this last minute design became probably the most singular iconic image on television. For the first two stories, the Tardis is just a machine, but in Edge, it suddenly becomes so much more than that. This is the first inkling we are given that the Tardis is sentient. Something that even the Doctor at this stage seems unaware of. Of course, this idea has been built on subsequently until we get to humanoid Tardises in the EDA's, but in the 1960's, this was revolutionary. Without this story, we would not have the symbiotic relationship between the Doctor and his battered old Type 40, where one cannot be imagined without the other.
Perhaps this is why the story hit me so much when I first read it as a kid, because of the three opening stories, the first one defines the characters, the second defines the monsters, but this one defines the whole show.
I am probably biased then, when I say that Nigel Robinson's novelisation is excellent. It is nothing spectacular, but it goes far further than the serial in exploring the Tardis and transforming it effectively from a haunted mysterious edifice into something that is sheer awesome (in the correct sense of the word) in its concept and power.
Of course, the story goes much further than just creating the character of the Tardis, it also finally breaks down the walls of distrust between the Time Lord and the Human inhabitants after they've both been put through the wringer and Robinson handles this superbly, easily getting under the skin of all four travellers, moving from suspicion to distrust of each other whilst never losing the reader's sympathy in any of them. And the result is a book that is a delight from start to finish. Everything that can be achieved from the story is achieved and brought into sharp focus.
8/10
It's a strange story, being set fully inside the Tardis, and yet one that is integral to the show, more so perhaps than even the Daleks, they are an outside influence, a Monster, albeit the most popular. The Tardis however, is part of the very basis of the Doctor's character. As Ian states in the very first episode, he doesn't expect to find the answer to the mysteries of Time and Space in a junkyard. The Doctor has changed faces many times, the Tardis however, has never changed, at least, not permanently.
Verity Lambert reveals in the DVD commentaries that the Tardis Designer wasn't particularly enthusiastic about working on the show and delayed the designs, only coming up with something at the last minute. Nevertheless, this last minute design became probably the most singular iconic image on television. For the first two stories, the Tardis is just a machine, but in Edge, it suddenly becomes so much more than that. This is the first inkling we are given that the Tardis is sentient. Something that even the Doctor at this stage seems unaware of. Of course, this idea has been built on subsequently until we get to humanoid Tardises in the EDA's, but in the 1960's, this was revolutionary. Without this story, we would not have the symbiotic relationship between the Doctor and his battered old Type 40, where one cannot be imagined without the other.
Perhaps this is why the story hit me so much when I first read it as a kid, because of the three opening stories, the first one defines the characters, the second defines the monsters, but this one defines the whole show.
I am probably biased then, when I say that Nigel Robinson's novelisation is excellent. It is nothing spectacular, but it goes far further than the serial in exploring the Tardis and transforming it effectively from a haunted mysterious edifice into something that is sheer awesome (in the correct sense of the word) in its concept and power.
Of course, the story goes much further than just creating the character of the Tardis, it also finally breaks down the walls of distrust between the Time Lord and the Human inhabitants after they've both been put through the wringer and Robinson handles this superbly, easily getting under the skin of all four travellers, moving from suspicion to distrust of each other whilst never losing the reader's sympathy in any of them. And the result is a book that is a delight from start to finish. Everything that can be achieved from the story is achieved and brought into sharp focus.
8/10
Saturday, 13 June 2009
The Daleks - David Whitaker
How to start this review? That, out of the many hundreds and hundreds of Who books, this is the greatest? As it has been voted by the hordes of fandom? I almost don't need to go over the details, so well known they may be to the people likely to be reading this. That as the first published Who Story, Whitaker painted over the events of An Unearthly Child with a new beginning, a car crash in fog on a common. Writing from Ian Chesterton's 1st person perspective. The Glass Dalek.
But is it these elements themselves which make this book not just "another" Target book, but the pinnacle of Who fiction, if it is indeed such, achieved in the very first writings and aspired to unsuccessfully ever since? Or is it just hype, riding on the success of its monsters, nostalgia and the lack of any credible alternative?
It is very, very good. And it comes down to why Doctor Who is Doctor Who. That is, the people behind the show. The start of this extraordinary show was down to a very concrete understanding of the concept of the show. Something that was grasped totally by Sydney Newman, Verity Lambert, Bill Hartnell and many others, but especially David Whitaker. Almost certainly they were unaware at the time of what they were unleashing on the world, perhaps they only realised the sheer power of this character in their subconscious, but every single one of them at some level, believes in these people; Ian, Barbara, Susan and The Doctor. You can see it in every frame that Hartnell appears in. You can see it when Newman commissioned the pilot to be reshot in an era when this was unthinkable due to the high cost of production. You can see it in every page of Doctor Who and the Daleks. While other writers treat the characters as characters, Whitaker treats them as people. He helped to create them, he knows each and every one as intimately as the actor playing them. Perhaps more so.
Whitaker was of course a born story teller and he has no problem in expanding upon and, in my opinion, improving upon the television story. Taking the narrative from Chesterton's perspective is a brave choice, for although it allows Whitaker to give us plenty of insight into the characters that are only hinted at, if mentioned at all, in the show (Such as Ian and Barbara falling in love), it also means that the other three characters move offstage for fair amounts of time. This is dealt with confidently as Ian is allowed to fill the space.
Other characters are also fleshed out. The Thals conflicted nature between peaceful annihilation or war for survival is pushed further and the resolution is more satisfying than even the powerful tv scenes. Whitaker well recognised the crux of this story and gave it its due worth and as a result the Lake of Mutants and Cave Scenes are also far more harrowing than the budget and time constrained serial.
As such, in the hands of the writer who clearly understands every single nuance of his characters, The Daleks becomes not just a pinnacle of Who fiction, but a literary achievement capable of standing alongside other more noted novels. The story, indeed, is pulp, Terry Nation was a pulp writer, there are no twists and turns or surprises in this novel. It is a straight adventure with a few muddied moralities, as throwaway as Indiana Jones though no less enjoyable, but Whitaker, through Ian and Barbara, turns it into a story of Human Strength and Love and Triumph on a truly alien world. This book truly deserves its reputation.
10/10
But is it these elements themselves which make this book not just "another" Target book, but the pinnacle of Who fiction, if it is indeed such, achieved in the very first writings and aspired to unsuccessfully ever since? Or is it just hype, riding on the success of its monsters, nostalgia and the lack of any credible alternative?
It is very, very good. And it comes down to why Doctor Who is Doctor Who. That is, the people behind the show. The start of this extraordinary show was down to a very concrete understanding of the concept of the show. Something that was grasped totally by Sydney Newman, Verity Lambert, Bill Hartnell and many others, but especially David Whitaker. Almost certainly they were unaware at the time of what they were unleashing on the world, perhaps they only realised the sheer power of this character in their subconscious, but every single one of them at some level, believes in these people; Ian, Barbara, Susan and The Doctor. You can see it in every frame that Hartnell appears in. You can see it when Newman commissioned the pilot to be reshot in an era when this was unthinkable due to the high cost of production. You can see it in every page of Doctor Who and the Daleks. While other writers treat the characters as characters, Whitaker treats them as people. He helped to create them, he knows each and every one as intimately as the actor playing them. Perhaps more so.
Whitaker was of course a born story teller and he has no problem in expanding upon and, in my opinion, improving upon the television story. Taking the narrative from Chesterton's perspective is a brave choice, for although it allows Whitaker to give us plenty of insight into the characters that are only hinted at, if mentioned at all, in the show (Such as Ian and Barbara falling in love), it also means that the other three characters move offstage for fair amounts of time. This is dealt with confidently as Ian is allowed to fill the space.
Other characters are also fleshed out. The Thals conflicted nature between peaceful annihilation or war for survival is pushed further and the resolution is more satisfying than even the powerful tv scenes. Whitaker well recognised the crux of this story and gave it its due worth and as a result the Lake of Mutants and Cave Scenes are also far more harrowing than the budget and time constrained serial.
As such, in the hands of the writer who clearly understands every single nuance of his characters, The Daleks becomes not just a pinnacle of Who fiction, but a literary achievement capable of standing alongside other more noted novels. The story, indeed, is pulp, Terry Nation was a pulp writer, there are no twists and turns or surprises in this novel. It is a straight adventure with a few muddied moralities, as throwaway as Indiana Jones though no less enjoyable, but Whitaker, through Ian and Barbara, turns it into a story of Human Strength and Love and Triumph on a truly alien world. This book truly deserves its reputation.
10/10
Sunday, 26 April 2009
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
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
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