A review by saroz162
Doctor Who: The Underwater Menace by Nigel Robinson

2.0

This is a fairly straightforward late-stage novelization of a frankly terrible script. Robinson, God love him, tries - but there's just not a lot to work with here; the plot is entirely made up of rushing back and forth with no real sense to any of it. He does manage to expand the scope a little, removing some of the budgetary considerations and giving a couple of secondary characters a little background. The most significant thing about the book, though, is that it "corrects" the villain's comeuppance, which in the broadcast version is quite callous even by the Doctor's standards. Here, it's unavoidable, and Robinson manages to tie it into another character who simply disappears in the TV story.

Would I read it again? No. Would I have been good with it when I was 11 and read Targets regularly? Probably. I still have an issue with it not really having a story, though; it's just a series of incidents, and that really shows.