A Target triple: Ian Marter’s Fourth Doctor Target novelisations

I’ve been on something of an unconscious Ian Marter roll of late it seems. Having recently read Harry Sullivan’s War for the first time for an article in CSO Issue 3 – coming soon (http://csofanzine.blogspot.co.uk/), I then found myself reading The Ark In Space (1977) as a ‘quick win’ after a difficult read (see my previous Blog post for more about quick wins!); I enjoyed the book so much I immediately reached for The Sontaran Experiment (1978) to find out what happened next (as if I didn’t already know, ha!), and then I thought ‘I’m enjoying these Ian Marter books, why not pick up The Ribos Operation (1979) as well since it’s overdue another re-read’, so I did. Then I looked up Ian Marter’s bibliography and realised I’d done a fortunate thing – a thing possibly worth blogging about, so here I am.

These three books were the first three novelisations undertaken by Ian Marter for the Target Doctor Who range, and the only Fourth Doctor stories he adapted. They are quite extraordinary entries into a range that, with the best will in the world, didn’t serve the Fourth Doctor that well. Gone are the heady early days of The Auton Invasion or The Doomsday Weapon (both 1974), where page count seemed unrestricted and stories were adapted with a passion and originality that would become difficult to sustain as the output increased and rested largely on Terrance Dicks’ shoulders alone. Many of the Fourth Doctor Target stories are, alas, perfunctory script-to-page efforts, ever briefer, often racing to the finish line so the author could move on to the next one. They are still good, fun reads, and Dicks usually puts a little more effort in on those stories he wrote himself, but on the whole they lack something special.

It’s only really at the end of the run of Fourth Doctor stories that the situation starts to change in any real sense, where the original TV authors start to take more of an interest in adapting their own work for the page and the books become a little more colourful and flavoursome. The Leisure Hive, Full Circle and Warrior’s Gate (all 1982) from the final season of Fourth Doctor adventures are refreshing and engaging in particular.

But, swimming amongst the earlier efforts we find three titles by Ian Marter.

I wouldn’t dare deny Terrance Dicks the honour of novelising his own story Robot to open the Fourth Doctor’s term in office (Doctor Who and The Giant Robot, 1975), but personally speaking if Ian Marter had started running with The Ark In Space and proceeded to novelise all the other Harry Sullivan stories or even all the other Fourth Doctor stories, I’d be far from disappointed. These books capture a last vestige of that pioneering spirit which originally gripped Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke. They tell the story, but they’re not afraid to go above and beyond, to challenge the reader, to stretch the imagination and paint wonderfully embellished pictures that raise the material way beyond what was or could be achieved on television, BUT – and this is key – without losing the feel that this was also televised Doctor Who, still the programme we watched and loved. Certainly The Ark In Space and The Ribos Operation books are much longer than had become the norm by that time, and as a consequence they don’t feel rushed or compromised. But they also don’t feel overlong – they feel like a good value read; they’re as long as they need to be, that’s all.

Ian Marter’s supreme skill is in creating atmosphere through strong and vibrant images. The Ark In Space is Ridley Scott’s Alien manqué, with the space station setting and the Wirrrn lurking in the shadows. Noah’s transformation is truly monstrous as he describes the Wirrrn flesh seeping out through his uniform. The Earth of The Sontaran Experiment is scarred by the solar flares and becomes a much less forgiving backdrop. The cloying nature of the Sontaran’s oily breath lingers over much of the action, like a small steam engine chugging and powering his way around the terrain and polluting the cleansed air. In The Ribos Operation the wintery setting, with its full-bodied culture and characters, is enriched by the monstrous Shrivenzales’ stentorian breathing in the frozen shadows and their claws sparking off the stone floor, adding a purely natural threat to proceedings - a fact of life that the locals have come to live with and not a situation engineered for the story. He writes confidently, with pace and flare, and a real eye for the reader picturing the action in all it’s often gory or grotesque splendour.

The way The Seeker fulfils her own prophecy and commits suicide at the end of The Ribos Operation is horrific, and there’s a feeling in all these books that Marter enjoyed pushing the envelope in terms of taste. These aren’t children’s books, in my view; they’re fine for the oft quoted ‘intelligent twelve year old’ (I was one once). And the stories benefit from baring their guts from time to time and not being too sanitised. Super space-age weapons never hit their victims in these novels without some sort of grim description of the damage caused. No one is ever blasted and forgotten, there’s always searing damage, a charred aroma, thick smoke or whatever – it comes alive so much more in the description.

Marter isn’t afraid to change little things as well as embellishing them – generally names. Space station Nerva in The Ark In Space becomes Terra Nova is his adaptation (and repeated in The Sontaran Experiment), the Wirrn gain an extra ‘r’ to become Wirrrn – perhaps a more insectoid name, perhaps a suggestion that they have West Country roots, perhaps even a simple yet consistent typo? Styre becomes Styr, maintaining the trend for snappy four-letter Sontaran names (Linx, Stor, Varl etc.) The pronunciation could be the same, it’s up to the reader whether he’s ‘Stire’ or ‘Stir’. The TARDIS takes our heroes to Earth at the end of The Ark In Space, instead of the three transmat booths (which don’t appear in Marter’s version) and it delivers them at the beginning of The Sontaran Experiment, although it disappears again afterwards thanks to the faulty receptors, allowing for the transmat beam to be intercepted as broadcast at the beginning of Genesis of The Daleks, so all is well in the end with this minor diversion and continuity is maintained. On Ribos the Graff Vynda-K becomes The Graff Vynda Ka. Maybe he thought an altered spelling would guide the reader to an easier pronunciation (questionable), or maybe he liked to change subtle things as part of his ‘mark’?

The Ark In Space and The Ribos Operation were both scripted by Robert Holmes, often lauded as the finest of the Classic Series writers and definitely at the height of his brilliance in the mid-70s period from which these stories hail. They have an inherent richness of story and character, a clear wit and charm - but that's not to say that it makes adapting them for the page any easier; there is still plenty for the author to do to turn a decent story into a great novelisation. And he does just that. What may perhaps be more evident in these two books, though, is an affection and a respect for the source material.

One could argue that this is less the case with The Sontaran Experiment, where Ian Marter’s skills and creativity are particularly tested. There’s not a lot to Bob Baker & Dave Martin’s two-parter, really; it's got some engaging ideas but it's largely superficial, side-lining its challenging aspects for a more basic impact. It was only the third two part story the programme had done at that point (the previous two being First Doctor stories from 1964 and 1965), and there's a real sense with all of them that they are filler material, furthering the overall grander storyline but not of particular brilliance themselves in isolation. Two-parters wouldn't be revisited again until the Fifth Doctor's reign in 1982. This particular two-parter came about through a production experiment planned by outgoing producer Barry Letts to split a six part story into two productions, one four-parter completely studio bound and the other two episodes totally external filming / OB. It’s unlikely that this was a cost-saving measure and more a way to vary the prevalent trend for six part stories and maintain pace and interest (six-part stories tended to drag at times as the story thinned out). The unfortunate result is that Baker & Martin’s story feels like it's just something to bridge the gap between The Ark In Space and Genesis of The Daleks - two of the best stories the programme had made up to that point.

The author clearly knows that he’s got some pretty thin material to work with, and there’s a real danger this book could come in at half the length of a standard Target novelisation – essentially a pamphlet more than a book – in lesser hands.

The fact that it becomes a very rich, visual and engaging read that naturally fills out to a good length is testament indeed to his skill and creativity, to his eye for embellishment without a sense of padding, and his firm understanding of the characters. The focus really is on the Sontaran, Styr, and his experiments. Episode one runs on the page pretty much as it does on TV, but the episode two material is expanded in line with his focus on the title. There’s less of the Marshall awaiting Styr’s report in order to green-light the invasion, which is most noticeable at the end of the story. Marter knows how lacklustre the dénouement was on TV so he does his best to work around it. Styr instead becomes an obsessive sadist, a psychotic hell-bent on dishing out torture to show his own supremacy, regardless of its value to military intelligence. When he is finally overcome and the Doctor cuts the link with the Sontaran fleet one gets the feeling that Styr’s senior officers have already dismissed him as a rogue element and that’s why they don’t invade, rather than the TV version with its twee ‘we have your invasion plans, so go away!’

The Sontaran Experiment was never going to become a classic Doctor Who story, even with Ian Marter’s best efforts, but it’s way above the mediocrity of mere 'filler' as a book and that’s more than can be claimed by the TV story it was based on.

It’s worth noting that if The Ark In Space and The Sontaran Experiment had  gone out as one umbrella six-parter (in the way that The Invasion of Time did in 1978, essentially a four-parter with an associated two-parter tacked on at the end) we would have got one book covering both stories. Splitting them like this means we get two cracking novelisations, which added together come in at pretty much double the length of a standard six-part story novelisation like The Invasion of Time. Result!

There’s a lovely internal consistency to all three of these books. The author nails the character of the Fourth Doctor completely, as well as his companions. Sarah Jane’s irritable affection for Harry’s bumbling old school ways is played up a little more on the page but this just adds verisimilitude to her as a progressive, independent role model. Surgeon Lieutenant Harry Sullivan is never written better than by Ian Marter – there’s clearly an affinity there between character, actor and writer. The TARDIS scenes between The Doctor, Romana and K9 towards the beginning of The Ribos Operation are still frosty and juvenile, but they seem a little less cringe-worthy on the page than they do on screen and there is a consistency to Romana throughout her first adventure that was perhaps lacking on screen as Mary Tamm worked her way into the character. But the Doctor is still the same Doctor as the one from those earlier stories, just lacking a ‘best friend’ to banter with until Romana gets more settled into her ‘assignment’.

The ear trumpet makes regular appearances in all three stories, and it’s rewarding to the reader to spot that the collection of items removed from the Doctor’s pockets in The Ribos Operation are the same as those removed from his pockets in the earlier books, and that his bags of jelly babies are always slightly melted – which is unimportant to the story but is the kind of charming addition to detail that helps raise these books above the quotidian.

If I had to pick a favourite from these three stories then it would have to be The Ark In Space (both as a book and as a TV story actually). Ian Marter lays his cards firmly on the table with his first book and it really is brilliant from start to finish.

The only aspect of these novelisations that doesn’t sit well with me is that the author has the Doctor regularly addressing his female companions as ‘my dear’. That’s a very Third Doctor thing to say and it jars every time it comes up, because it doesn’t fit with the way the Fourth Doctor speaks. He can get away with calling the TARDIS ‘my dear old thing’ in The Deadly Assassin, but it’s difficult to conjure the sound of Tom Baker’s voice delivering a line that includes ‘my dear’ in a heartfelt way to an actual female.

However, if that’s the only negative (and truthfully I feel that it is) then it really is clutching at straws. Ian Marter’s Fourth Doctor novelisations breeze in like a breath of fresh air. They have energy, depth, gore, atmosphere, and at no point do they ever talk down to a juvenile audience or offer any comment at all on the quality of the story they are telling. They are three jewels in the crown of the Target range, and of these jewels The Ark In Space is clearly the lump of jethryk.