A Doctor Who season in print: 24, somewhat off Target...

No doubt you'll all be eager to know what I read between Volumes I&II of Ferdinand Count Fathom..? Yeah, I know, as if..!

Last year I started reading / re-reading the Virgin Doctor Who New Adventures books from the early 90s, in order. I've not got very far yet. Then when I was in close proximity to my old Target novelisations over Christmas I thought I'd skip back and do the 7th Doctor stories in print from the start, to see if there were any 'seeds' sown for the NAs before the Timewyrm came came about. Also I don't think I read all of these books when I bought them at the time. So, recently I finished the Season 24 stories and here's what I thought of them all:

Time and The Rani, by Pip & Jane Baker. Put simply this is the worst Target novelisation I've ever read. It also has the most uninspiring cover of any Target novelisation I've seen (and that includes Earthshock & Terminus!) I have some affection for the TV version of this story - it's fun, camp and easy on the eye. I liked McCoy straight away and visually the episodes have impact. On the page it's a great opportunity for the verbose Bakers to expand and develop the story and the vocabulary of their readers. They don't. The prose is dull, and often condescending - even for a book aimed at children / young teens. Why do the Tetraps speak English, but write in backwards English (as the authors point out to us needlessly)? Do they also read backwards? Is this important or just the authors trying to find a clever gimmick? I'm betting my entire fortune that it's the latter. It's possible that P&J's word processor developed a fault in the draft stage, adding an unnecessary exclamation mark to the end of every line of speech and inner thought given to the Rani. Either that or she's constantly got her eyebrows raised. I'll have to watch Kate O'Mara's performance more closely on the DVD to check, but I suspect that this is another instance of lazy, careless writing from a pair of uninspired old hacks who couldn't be arsed to take any pride in what they were doing, just to fulfil a contract and pay for the next week's shopping. It's only for the kids after all, and what do they care?

Paradise Towers by Stephen Wyatt. This is the start of a series of excellent covers for the McCoy range by Alister Pearson, with a nice brooding Doctor centre-stage. I had high hopes for this book. I have a generally good opinion of the TV version until epsiode four when Richard Briers turns his ham dial up to 11 while everyone else is still bubbling away at 8. So without that distraction did the book succeed? Not really. Without the actors bringing the lines to life the characters and the humour falls a bit flat and I started to question plot holes and logic that hadn't really occurred to me while watching it - like how long had everyone been there? A long time, it's suggested. So why isn't everyone much older? Or were the Kangs left there as babies, to drag themselves into adolescence? Middle-aged Kangs might have been much more disturbing... Kroagnon's lair sounds much better on the page - far grander than the pair of neon broccoli florets atop a piece of unlit rostrum that we got on TV, and more happens when the hairdryer descends over the Chief Caretaker to suck out his brain. But overall I felt that the book added little to what had been achieved on screen and this was a shame.

Delta and The Bannermen, By Malcolm Kohll. This was a quick and enjoyable read, and has the best printing error of the whole Target range:
'The Doctor suddenly realized that the shelf he was peeing over was an inch-deep in dust.' (page 54)
That would surely have warranted a 15 certificate for the DVD!
Kohll has thought about the novel and injected some ideas and scenes beyond a basic script-to-page exercise, fleshing out some of the characters more fully - particularly Billy and Burton, and adding a whole lot of extra stuff at the beginning about the Bannermen and the toll station. This was the first story this season where the author has taken advantage of the opportunities of the printed page over the limitations of the TV screen. Developing characters and aspects of the story is one thing, but having the Bannermen turn from evil bullies into a basket weaving collective at the end, because they don't fancy being mercenaries anymore now Gavrok's dead, is a bit too far out of leftfield all of a sudden. I wanted to smile but it jarred too much, like the author was forcibly trying to be wacky and humorous - and it was out of keeping with the other 130-odd pages of the book. The novelisations have definitely improved as the season has progressed so far though.  

Finally we come to Dragonfire, by Ian Briggs. The best cover so far, by a long shot. This was considered the pick of a duff bunch at the time, although Delta and the Bannermen seems to be more highly regarded now. The last time I watched this on video (before I donated it to a charity shop) a few years back I was appalled at how bad it was, with shoddy performances from normally excellent actors - like a bad kids TV comedy programme. Although I liked Ace at the time with hindsight I've often felt she was a bad choice for a companion - she's a screwed-up kid with issues and attitude. You can't write effectively for someone like that in the kind of programme that Doctor Who was back then (or ever was or will be?) and Dragonfire was a fine example of pantomime expressions and the limitations of 'bog off bilge-breath'-type dreadful teenage curses.
Imagine my delight, then, to discover that this book was excellent - worlds better than the other three offerings and worlds better than the TV version. Briggs is an intelligent, thoughtful writer who (like Kohll, but more successfully) has really considered how best to adapt his story to the novel form and what possibilities this offers him for development, explanation, background and atmosphere - so we get bucketloads of each. He even explains the cliffhanging cliffhanger, making it a sensible idea! There's no denying that Glitz got worse with each return appearance in the show, and he really is a pantomime brokersman here, waiting to have a custard pie thrust in his face by the Dame. But I actually cared about most if not all of the other characters on Svartos; I felt Belazs' frustration, Kane's simmering hatred - I never got any of that from the TV version.

What is unfortunately very clear from these novelisations, though, is that no one really knew who Mel Bush was. She never comes to life on the page. It's a shame, as subsequently the Big Finish audios and some of the BBC PDAs have done the character far more justice and allowed her to 'live' a bit. Here she does a lot of posturing, delivers a lot of opinions, and wanders off doing her own thing so the Doctor can get involved in other action with more interesting characters. I just don't believe the production office at the time thought her through well enough. She was a gimmick, a two-dimensional tool for publicity - in short she was Bonnie Langford, not Mel Bush.

What's also great about these Target novelisations is that at around 140 pages they're a good short read on the commute to and from work (if you don't mind being seen reading this kind of thing in public!) and getting through a book every other day keeps them fresh.