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imakandiway's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
otherwyrld's review
3.0
The Doctor Who re-reading experience. Comments on the books and the TV serial it covers, and my recollections of the story
So, I pick a book at random from the hundreds I have on the shelves to begin my re-read, and this is what I pick up. I definitely remember seeing this story when it first came out (I was 11 at the time), and to be honest I don't really remember much about it except for one thing. There were GIANT FRICKING SPIDERS in it, even though they weren't very good models of GIANT FRICKING SPIDERS, they were still GIANT FRICKING SPIDERS (I think you can guess how I feel about spiders, let alone GIANT FRICKING SPIDERS).
From what I can gather about this serial, opinions were divided about it. Many felt it was overlong, hugely padded and often badly acted (so, typical Doctor Who from this era then). On the other hand, this was Pertwee's last outing as the Doctor, and featured the first Regeneration that was actually described as such. Add to that we had another Time Lord living on Earth (who also Regenerates), a wild multi-vehicle car chase, our first hint that the Tardis is actually alive, an armed revolt with lots of death on the planet Metebilis 3, shenanigans in a Buddhist monastery in the heart of the British countryside, a psychic that dies a rather gruesome death, a bit of Venusian karate from the Doctor, a rather sympathetic depiction of someone with learning difficulties, a cameo appearance by former companion Jo Grant, and a final hurrah for the disgraced Captain Yates. And don't forget the GIANT FRICKING SPIDERS
On to the book then. Well, at only 120 pages you are hardly going to get a huge amount of characterisation. It's more of question of "this is what happened, then this happened, and finally this happened", though what characterisation we did get felt true to life. Being plot driven is hardly a bad thing, but the book makes this story feel a lot more exciting than the actual serial - with 6 episodes to narrate, that left just 20 pages per episode. The car chase alone took up 1 episode, for example. We get to know just enough about the human enslaved by the spiders on Metebilis 3 to feel for them when they finally revolt, inspired by the Doctor of course. The final confrontation between the Doctor and the Great One in the deadly radioactive crystal cave is suspensefully written. Sarah Jane acquits herself well here, proving why she is regarded as one of the best companions for the Doctor. The Brigadier and UNIT provides the comic relief. There is an interesting amount of Buddhism is this story, prompted by the Producers interest in the subject, which is generally well handled (even though in the serial the two Tibetan monks were played by white actors, and the attitude shown by Jo Grant to her Indian porters in the Amazon felt like it belonged to a much earlier era - this was still the 1970s, after all, and blatant racism was pretty much the norm).
At the heart of this story is the idea that the Doctor needs to hold himself to a higher standard than ordinary people, one that has been much more clearly explored in New Who. By stealing the blue crystal in the first place (in an earlier episode that was alluded to in this book but not elaborated on), the Doctor sets himself up for his own fall. In the end, the only way to make amends is to sacrifice his own life for the greater good. At least he succeeds in freeing the human slaves from the GIANT FRICKING SPIDERS but the cost there is also high, with widespread bloodshed as the slaves turn against the human collaborators.
There's not really much else to say about this book, except that Terrance Dicks was the author of a huge number of Doctor Who books, and as he was the script editor at the time this serial came out, he probably had a better handle on who the Doctor was than anyone else had at the time.
So, for one last time GIANT FRICKING SPIDERS!. What more could you want in a book?
So, I pick a book at random from the hundreds I have on the shelves to begin my re-read, and this is what I pick up. I definitely remember seeing this story when it first came out (I was 11 at the time), and to be honest I don't really remember much about it except for one thing. There were GIANT FRICKING SPIDERS in it, even though they weren't very good models of GIANT FRICKING SPIDERS, they were still GIANT FRICKING SPIDERS (I think you can guess how I feel about spiders, let alone GIANT FRICKING SPIDERS).
From what I can gather about this serial, opinions were divided about it. Many felt it was overlong, hugely padded and often badly acted (so, typical Doctor Who from this era then). On the other hand, this was Pertwee's last outing as the Doctor, and featured the first Regeneration that was actually described as such. Add to that we had another Time Lord living on Earth (who also Regenerates), a wild multi-vehicle car chase, our first hint that the Tardis is actually alive, an armed revolt with lots of death on the planet Metebilis 3, shenanigans in a Buddhist monastery in the heart of the British countryside, a psychic that dies a rather gruesome death, a bit of Venusian karate from the Doctor, a rather sympathetic depiction of someone with learning difficulties, a cameo appearance by former companion Jo Grant, and a final hurrah for the disgraced Captain Yates. And don't forget the GIANT FRICKING SPIDERS
On to the book then. Well, at only 120 pages you are hardly going to get a huge amount of characterisation. It's more of question of "this is what happened, then this happened, and finally this happened", though what characterisation we did get felt true to life. Being plot driven is hardly a bad thing, but the book makes this story feel a lot more exciting than the actual serial - with 6 episodes to narrate, that left just 20 pages per episode. The car chase alone took up 1 episode, for example. We get to know just enough about the human enslaved by the spiders on Metebilis 3 to feel for them when they finally revolt, inspired by the Doctor of course. The final confrontation between the Doctor and the Great One in the deadly radioactive crystal cave is suspensefully written. Sarah Jane acquits herself well here, proving why she is regarded as one of the best companions for the Doctor. The Brigadier and UNIT provides the comic relief. There is an interesting amount of Buddhism is this story, prompted by the Producers interest in the subject, which is generally well handled (even though in the serial the two Tibetan monks were played by white actors, and the attitude shown by Jo Grant to her Indian porters in the Amazon felt like it belonged to a much earlier era - this was still the 1970s, after all, and blatant racism was pretty much the norm).
At the heart of this story is the idea that the Doctor needs to hold himself to a higher standard than ordinary people, one that has been much more clearly explored in New Who. By stealing the blue crystal in the first place (in an earlier episode that was alluded to in this book but not elaborated on), the Doctor sets himself up for his own fall. In the end, the only way to make amends is to sacrifice his own life for the greater good. At least he succeeds in freeing the human slaves from the GIANT FRICKING SPIDERS but the cost there is also high, with widespread bloodshed as the slaves turn against the human collaborators.
There's not really much else to say about this book, except that Terrance Dicks was the author of a huge number of Doctor Who books, and as he was the script editor at the time this serial came out, he probably had a better handle on who the Doctor was than anyone else had at the time.
So, for one last time GIANT FRICKING SPIDERS!. What more could you want in a book?
nwhyte's review against another edition
http://nhw.livejournal.com/896496.html[return][return]Dicks has taken a Third Doctor TV story which by all accounts (I haven t seen it) was decidedly average and turned it into a cracking good read. It was one of the first of his many many Doctor Who books (and he s still at it), and for those of us (like me) who occasionally mock the by-the-numbers approach of his later efforts, it s very much worth re-reading the earlier ones to remind ourselves of how good he was at turning dodgy special effects and occasionally wooden acting into a novel that caught the spirit of what he, as script editor, had no doubt hoped and intended the original TV version to be.
vellichorblues's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
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