Strange Horizons Discussion Forum: The Doctor Who Novels of Ian Marter, by Nicholas Whyte

An interesting piece, that causes me to make several comments.

My impression is that in the 1970s and early '80s Target were much less bothered about getting the original writers than they later became, being happy to farm things out to the ubiquitous Dicks. However, a quick glance at my own shelf of Target novelizations gives a bit of lie to that, whch names like Barry Letts, Brian Hayles, and, particularly, Malcolm Hulke, turning up on the spines of '70s-published volumes. And I wonder if it wasn't so much that Target lacked interest in securing the original writers as that the original writers weren't interested in working for Target. Certainly, from about 1983/84, far more original writers, both those writing for the show at the time and those that had delivered their scripts over a decade perviously, novelized their own work; and I wonder if Target upped their rates a bit around then.

As I suspect you know, your comment about Terrance Dicks' novelizations oversimplifies. His early work, when he was novelizing Pertwee stories on which he had been script editor, is amongst the best the Target Range produced - Day of the Daleks in particular eliminates all the flaws of the broadcast version so effectively that watching it again becomes a frustrating experience, as one can see how much better it could have been. In the late '70s and early '80s, novelizing stories he'd had no involvement in, tied to Target's limit of 120 pages, and being asked to produce a great number in rapid succession, it's not surprising that his writing became formulaic in order to cope. In the later '80s, freed from the page limits, in less demand and so with more time, and writing in the Pertwee era again, the quality rises once more, with books like Inferno.

Why did Marter remove that line about Harry only being qualified to work on sailors? Of course, your reason may be correct. But I'd like to advance another possibility. I recall from an interview in Doctor Who Monthly, I think with Malcolm Hulke, that novelizers were given the original scripts to work from, but did not get copies of the broadcast episodes. "Well, my doctorate is purely honorary, and Harry here is only qualified to work on sailors" sounds to me like a Tom Baker improv, in which case it wouldn't be in the script sent to Marter, and its inclusion would then be entirely dependent upon his memory of what was said. (Many actors do not watch their own work on television, and if Marter was amongst these, he may never have seen the broadcast episode.)

The question over the removal of the transmat I seem to recall was answered in a DWM interview with Marter himself. Whilst it was possible to be reasonably sure that a viewer who saw the end of 'The Ark In Space' would next see 'The Sontaran Experiment', such surety did not transfer to the reader of Doctor Who and the Ark In Space. Hence both those novels are written with a conclusion that sends the Doctor and his companions off to unspecified new adventures. (Terrance Dicks doesn't follow this principle when novelizing 'Genesis of the Daleks', but there you go.)

Your comment on 'The Dominators' is mean, but accurate!