I'm still squeezing these short reads in around other books. This group of four are, on the whole, a great improvement on the Season 24 lot - but then few would disagree that this was true of the TV episodes too. Certainly my Betamax off-air copies of Remembrance of The Daleks and Silver Nemesis (7 episodes fitting nicely on a 3 hour tape!) got played endlessly back at the time. Yes, you read that correctly, even Silver Nemesis.
So, in this batch we have the following, in transmission order:
Remembrance of The Daleks by Ben Aaronovitch
The Happiness Patrol by Graeme Curry
Silver Nemesis by Kevin Clarke
The Greatest Show In The Galaxy by Stephen Wyatt
Alister Pearson was well settled with his Target cover illustrations by 1989 when these were published. Remembrance is a bit cluttered and probably could do without Davros on the off chance that a reader hadn't seen the TV version. The Happiness Patrol and Greatest Show are simpler and more effective, with almost photo-realistic illustrations of McCoy. The Happiness Patrol in particular is well-observed in limiting visuals from the TV version, since Graeme Curry describes much of it differently to how it was depicted on the screen. Silver Nemesis is OK, but neither The Doctor nor Ace look much like the actors for some reason. Maybe it's the expressions he's chosen? McCoy looks like he's got a beak. Seems a shame when he's captured them both perfectly elsewhere.
Since we're always told never to judge books by their covers (thankfully for Gareth Roberts' Shada!) this is what I also think of the content:
Remembrance of The Daleks by Ben Aaaronovitch.
I don't have a massive amount to say about this book simply because it's brilliant from start to finish. I know the TV version virtually word for word from repeated viewings but I still loved reading this. Aaronovitch has clearly thought about how best to adapt his script for the page, and not simply fill in the gaps between the dialogue with some description. There's back story and development but not at the cost of the story being told, or the pace of the book. A few bits are tidied up and there are occasional subtle changes as well, which make some aspects and events work better on the page than they might if literally translated from the TV version. I firmly believe that the seeds of the later Virgin 'New Adventures' were planted with this novel. It's not a childrens' book, it's a book for an intelligent early teen. I know that originally these Target novelisations filled the gap of later video and DVD releases, but by this point the BBC were regularly releasing videos. No doubt many of us would be less keen on re-reading these books now if they were just a literal equivalent of watching the episodes. Aaronovitch ensures that reading this story can be just as rewarding as watching the episodes.
The Happiness Patrol by Graeme Curry.
I don't recall ever seeing or reading any interviews with Graeme Curry so it'll be interesting to see if he's on the forthcoming DVD release. I was keen to re-evaluate this story, as it's one that's recently gained in fan popularity it seems. My issue with the TV version at the time was mainly with the visuals - spiky pink hairdos and mini skirts are not necessarily 'happy', and it seemed at times that the production team were confusing it with 'The Sexiness Patrol'. The 'Bertie Bassett' Kandyman got plenty of comments at school, I recall, and these were not wholeheartedly negative - which was rare at the time.
I get the feeling that Curry was not taken with the TV visuals either, as very little description on the page is recognisable - particularly the Kandyman. But this is very much to the book's credit. It's another novelisation that is looking to be 'adapted from the TV programme' not a faithful representation of it. Freed from the distracting visuals the story gets a chance to shine, and it does. Curry has little to offer in story terms and characterisation in addition to what was included in the TV episodes, but there is some valuable back-story. The book's limitations are the story's limitations - it's difficult to believe that in practical terms the Doctor can swan in and raise a successful revolution in one night. It's not a wonderful novel, which is a shame after Dragonfire and Remembrance, but it's a solid addition to a range which is clearly looking above and beyond being a video cassette in print.
Silver Nemesis by Kevin Clarke.
This was pretty awful, I'm afraid. Kevin Clarke has taken his TV scripts (extended versions, agreed) and added a bit of description between the lines of dialogue, essentially. It's a lazy affair when it could so easily have been so much more. The TV version is a non-taxing watch that trundles along nicely but on paper the limitations and structural inadequacies of the story are laid bare. There's no sense of tension or drama at all. It's like a formal dance: the various groups enter, they take their positions, they all come together, then they move around the space, then they all come together at the end. Even then most of them die in a vague order like taking a bow at the end of a show. Clarke puts the scheming, manipulative Doctor at the centre of the story, as the choreographer of the dance so to speak - but the story is that there is no story. All the interesting stuff went on before in an untold adventure with possibly the 2nd Doctor and Lady Peinforte back in sixteen something. Does the author take the opportunity to develop that back story here, where he can, given the freedom of the printed page? Nope.
The Doctor is pretty much passive throughout the whole farrago; there's never much of a sense that the plans he's laid will come to anything other than the fruition he wants. Silver Nemesis is a runaround, basically. It's like episode two of Planet of The Spiders spread over three episodes and without a hovercraft. Bits of validium change hands, baddies follow other baddies into crypts, out of crypts, and occasionally shoot at one another. Ace randomly has some 'teenage' moments in an effort to remind the viewers that's what she is, and the Doctor swans around and does what he wants to do. The only aspect that could be considered an improvement on the TV version is the building site setting for the climax , rather than a disused aircraft hangar. Ace's cat and mouse with the cybermen is far less one-sided and much more dramatic. But she's still firing gold coins into their chest units with a catapult, which miraculously kills them, and she still has a 100% success rate. This must be the most embarrassingly weak Cyber squadron ever: one sniff of gold and they have a fit of the vapours, poor darlings.
In what may be an effort to justify the book's title, Clarke starts to refer to the Nemesis statue as 'silver Nemesis' after a while. It seems unnecessary as the statue isn't really silver or specifically silvery. And anyway, does it matter? Probably not. It suggests that the author isn't confident he can trust his audience, and needs to guide them.
All told Silver Nemesis is a wasted opportunity by Kevin Clarke to do something challenging and exciting; it seems his novel writing is just as bland and uninspired as his scriptwriting.
The Greatest Show In The Galaxy by Stephen Wyatt
Phew! That's what I felt on reading this. It's pretty fab and a welcome success after the tarnished Silver Nemesis. I enjoyed the TV show more than I expected to (struck as I was with fears of a repeat of Season 24) and it's not a story I've over-watched since. It thoroughly engaged me throughout and Wyatt, like Aaronovitch and Curry, has clearly thought about the book as something independent from the TV script. As with The Happiness Patrol there's not a vast amount of new material, but dialogue is used well and is often paraphrased by the narratorial voice where it's not absolutely necessary and where the pace needs to be maintained or increased. There are nice character moments and bits of development which are again tailored to the written page more than the TV screen. I felt I could better appreciate Captain Cook's exploits seeing the exotic place names written down too!
It's an improvement on the previous year's Paradise Towers but one problem is shared between the two stories: Wyatt still stumbles over the time factor. It was not clear how long everyone had been living in Paradise Towers but the suggestion was that it was a very long time. Again here it's hinted that The Psychic Circus has been running for many years, and they seem to have been settled on Segonax for many years too, after touring for a long time. But it's only ever been the same set of performers running it. Do they seem old enough to have been running a circus for maybe twenty plus years? Possibly. The Whizzkid, though, is clearly a geeky teen so how old was he when he was in correspondence with a member of the touring circus troupe if they've been on Segonax for years? Were his letters written in crayon? Plus if he was a real geek he'd tell Morgana the name of the performer and try to meet them!
But that's a minor quibble and less of a distraction here than it was with Paradise Towers.
I don't know if Peter Darvill-Evans as editor was specifically liaising with Andrew Cartmel at this point or planning the 'New Adventures' range, but there are further suggestions in this novel that the Doctor was scheming behind the scenes and may have known what was going on all the time - like with the other three books this season, and very much the case with Season 26. That seems to me like a conscious range editor decision, in line with the TV production team, not just a coincidence - and with an eye to developing spin-off stories. This was exactly what I was looking for when I thought about revisiting these 7th Doctor novelisations.
I should add before I close that the schoolboy in me sniggered at chapter 4's 'Ace got really angry with the Captain about fingering the Doctor in this way.' (p.43) Ooh, matron!
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