DOCTOR WHO AND THE CAVE-MONSTERS
by Malcolm Hulke
First published 17 January 1974*, which puts it between Invasion of the Dinosaurs Parts One and Two (or Invasion and Invasion of the Dinosaurs Part Two, if you prefer (or is it Invasion Part One and Invasion of the Dinosaurs Part Two?))
*http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Doctor_Who_and_the_Cave-Monsters
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"I know you hate England. But there are some true patriots around, people who love their country"
Hulke loves doing a novelisation so much that this first one’s publication coincides with his last work on the TV series. He positively wallows in the luxury of no restricting monster costumes, no script editor diluting his concepts, no Barry Letts changing his ending, no Caroline John turning Liz into an actual character…
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Alright, it’s not all brilliant but there’s a quality of prose and strength of voice that makes him stand out. Chapter 3 demonstrates the former wonderfully, Hulke concisely sketching a background for Miss Dawson, her brothers all gone to scientific jobs abroad while she’s ‘left at home to look after their ailing mother’ who uses her illness to manipulate Miss Dawson into never leaving. Hulke makes clear that the passage of time is what really depresses her as ‘The years rolled by’ and she fears that it will soon be too late to escape a lonely fate: ‘people would stop asking, 'Why don't you get married?' and replace it with the dread, 'Why didn't you get married?'’. How tortuously she has felt the years slip through her fingers is artfully emphasised by the fact her mother died of ‘incredibly old age’ leaving Miss Dawson ‘At last free’ and makes it plain why she should latch on to Dr Quinn so easily, absolutely and faithfully, partly because her mother fashioned her into ‘such a faithful daughter’ but mainly because she has no time to waste – ‘he was single’ so ‘She was immediately attracted to him’. There’s no generals eager to spend an evening in with their military memorabilia here.
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And even if there were, they’d be very much servicing Hulke’s second quality, the whole story woven through with a clear outlook on the world and a desire to promote it. I should make clear that I don’t actually think Whitaker is xenophobic and sexist (certainly, his TV work suggests otherwise) and I’m not sure how deliberate Strutton’s call for the workers to take command is – those reading s are definitely there but how consciously they were wed to the narratives, I wouldn’t want to guess. Hulke, however, I am absolutely certain is on a mission to undermine in the minds of the nation’s youth any attraction they might feel towards a celebration of personal ambition or the comforting certainties of a Little Englander mentality.
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Dr Quinn serves as Hulke’s chief lesson in the perils of the desire to be recognised and remembered. Chapter 3 hints at his motives, both in his lament that he’s ‘given all my life to science’ but ‘always been someone else's assistant’ and in the parallels between his and Miss Dawson’s backstories. Like her, he has been overshadowed his whole life by a parent, his father ‘a world-famous scientist’ who dictated the course of his career, pushing him into physics. Unlike her, he doesn’t feel free following their death, striving instead to escape their shadow, seeking fame equal to Charles Darwin whilst dismissing of the inventor of the radio because his name isn’t remembered. To make sure the reader does not make too many allowances for Quinn’s history, Hulke gives him an unnecessary but clearly villainous coda to his plan, killing the reptile men once he has stolen their secrets. This is not a good man turned to a bad path out of scientific curiosity, this is a man who will ruthlessly risk and do anything to ensure personal recognition.
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Dr Lawrence is much the same: ‘He wanted to do something with his life, to be remembered by future generations, like Faraday or Edison’. It is made clear that other scientists do not think like Quinn and Lawrence – ‘It was a job that many other scientists would envy’, plus Miss Dawson’s excitement at the ‘benefits to mankind’ the project might bring – but also that Lawrence and Quinn suffer the same misconception. Hulke italicises ‘do’ in both the above thought and in Quinn’s father’s admonishment against geology ‘Learning about the history of our planet doesn't do anything’, drawing attention to the slippage between its meaning, creating something of benefit to mankind, and its usage, being recognised as an important individual. As with Quinn, Hulke ensures that Lawrence’s personal ambition cannot be confused with scientific curiosity, first when the discovery of ‘an entirely separate life-form’ attracts no interest from him beyond that it ‘exonerates’ his handling of the project and then when he attempts to escape the failing project to save his career prospects even though, since the reasons for its failure are all external, it could still be of massive benefit.
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The desire to leave a mark is also felt by the reptile men, Okdel saddened to tears to discover that ‘his civilisation had completely vanished’ and become ‘completely forgotten’. It means that even the one member of the species who can see the need to accept humanity’s presence on the planet still feels the need to assert pre-eminence, asking that ‘it would be understood that we are the superior race?’, and so makes clear, even as he embarks on trying to defuse it, that a tension between reptile and human is inevitable. As Quinn and Lawrence see scientific endeavour as a competition for glory rather than a joint pursuit of betterment, so the different races see civilisation. That is why Morka’s insistence that Okdel has ‘betrayed’ his race inadvertently echoes Barker’s accusations of ‘traitor’, because loyalty is all about propping up supremacy, as symbolised for Barker by the Queen; why K’to is so upset by the destruction of the destructor which would have ‘returned our planet to what it was when we were the masters’ – it has been established that there are enough places they can live as the Earth is now but they desire mastery; and why the Brigadier seals the caves, because not everyone shares the Doctor’s enthusiasm for peaceful coexistence.
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This is mirrored by the xenophobia expressed by both sides. Hulke’s perspective is seeded early with the Brigadier’s unprompted patriotic fervour regarding Wenley Moor’s power generation. As he talks of making ‘Britain great again’, the other characters are distinctly unimpressed and view the sentiment as ‘very silly’ and this frames how to read Major Barker’s view on world events, situated even more locally in England. When he starts talking about how ‘England was once the heart of an empire’ and ‘will rise again’, we already know he’s ‘very silly’ but the desperation in his spiel also makes him unnerving in a way the Brigadier wasn’t. He throws around empty superlatives such as ‘the greatest empire the world has ever known’, he compares the economic turmoil of the 1970s with the most unfavourable point of the Second World War in 1940, he thinks of the rest of the world facelessly as ‘a pack of hungry wolves’ and he blames both ‘the bankers and the trade-unionists’ for the demise of his ‘great heritage’, perhaps not actually unreasonably, and later communists Chinese and Russian, fascists and Americans for the sabotage, showing he’s happy to lash out at all sides and has no ideological position for moving forwards, just an empty fury that a mythical past isn’t present.
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Again, as with Quinn and Lawrence’s ambition, Hulke ensures there’s no doubt that Barker is a foaming lunatic as his enthusiastic patriotism erupts with increasing fervour as his mistaken reading of the situation becomes clearer, shouting at the reptile people he still denies the existence of even as he catches sight of them about how they ‘hate England’ and then shooting one of them. His failure to properly consider what is happening even becomes the greatest threat to humanity as he carries the reptile virus out from the caves. Inevitably, this is one of the spanners in the works of any peace plan and Barker is shown to have previous, his analogous backstory involving his shooting a surrendering IRA sniper in Derry~Londonderry in a ‘moment of anger’ and ‘Without a second’s thought’ – in other words, endangering the fragile prospect of peace in one of the conflict’s most precarious arenas – and then seeming stunned that he’s ‘asked to resign’.
The desire for complete mastery that cannot allow the other side to survive stems from the xenophobic revulsion each side feels for the other. On the human side, this is largely expressed through astonishment, such as the Brigadier’s instinctive dismissal of peace talks, though the race memory-induced mania that overcomes some of the Wenley Moor staff might also count as a form of revulsion. It makes it easy for the likes of Masters to dismiss them as unequal with humanity: ‘You call lizards "people"?’ The revulsion is clearer from the reptiles, who feel ‘disgust’ for the ‘unclean’ ‘furry creatures’ who are ‘vermin’ and ‘the lowest form of life’ in their eyes. Inevitably, both sides converge on the same final solution to the problem, K’to releasing a ‘deadly virus’ to eradicate humanity and Masters proposing the ‘animals’ be ‘exterminated’.
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Throughout, touches like Masters’s call for the extermination of the reptile men or Barker’s past experience in Northern Ireland ensure Hulke’s message about the real world cannot be misread. He also makes certain that the antagonists are not simple monsters: the Doctor expresses sympathy for Quinn’s desperation to escape his father’s shadow, Barker is ‘a really brave man’ as well as ‘A fool’ and K’to, like Okdel when he realises their civilisation is gone, sheds ‘A watery tear’ when the opportunity to rebuild it is lost. Even protagonists such as the Brigadier, earlier tainted with a hint of Barker’s blind patriotism, can be read to express some xenophobia, seemingly only able to like the Doctor because he has some ‘human-like’ qualities and of course in charge of sealing the reptiles’ caves at the end. Hulke, the first writer to match Whitaker’s prose, has also remedied the worldview Whitaker’s novelisations propounded, giving birth to a firm yet human moral outlook for the Doctor Who range.
‘Miss Dawson was worried. She had been one of the first scientists selected by Dr. Lawrence to work at the re-search centre, and she was thrilled to get the job. All her life she had had to live in London, which she had come to detest, because of her elderly mother. Her brothers, older than her and all scientists, had got married and gone to live in America and Australia. Miss Dawson had been the one left at home to look after their ailing mother. True, she had had some interesting research jobs in London, but whenever she saw an advertisement for an electronic scientist needed abroad, or even in another part of Britain, her mother's health had mysteriously taken a turn for the worse. The years rolled by, and people stopped calling her a 'young woman' and said instead 'such a faithful daughter'. Sometimes she met men who seemed to want to marry her; but her mother always knew somehow, and promptly became ill again so that Miss Dawson even had to stay away from work to look after the old lady. In her heart Miss Dawson feared the moment when people would stop asking, 'Why don't you get married?' and replace it with the dread, 'Why didn't you get married?'
‘Miss Dawson's mother had died, of incredibly old age, a year ago. At last free, Miss Dawson immediately applied for, and got, this job at the research centre at Wenley Moor. Derbyshire wasn't exactly Australia or America, but at least it was some distance from London, and it was the start of her new life’
‘She was immediately attracted to him. He was rather older than her, and had had a terrific amount of scientific experience. Also he was a very kind man, always friendly, and with that trace of a Scottish accent that fascinated her. Above all, he was single. He had been married, but his wife had died in a car accident some years ago’
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‘I've given all my life to science, Miss Dawson. But somehow I've always been someone else's assistant’
‘Your father was a world-famous scientist and over-shadowed you. Now you are once again playing second fiddle, as assistant to Dr. Lawrence’
‘As a boy I was interested in geology. My father thought that rather childish. Learning about the history of our planet doesn't do anything, like making wheels go round''
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‘“Wouldn't you like to know someone who is as famous as Charles Darwin?” Miss Dawson could see now that Dr. Quinn was not the quiet little man she had imagined’
‘I shall kill them first, after I have found out all that I want to know’
‘It was a job that many other scientists would envy. The pay was very good; but money wasn't the only attraction. He wanted to do something with his life, to be remembered by future generations, like Faraday or Edison’
‘her mind was filled with the excitement of the project. To turn nuclear energy directly into electrical power, without using a turbine in between, could bring enormous benefits to mankind’
‘“At least that exonerates me,” he said smugly. “Is that your only reaction,” said the Doctor, “to the existence of an entirely separate life-form in the caves—that it exonerates you?”’
‘“Is there any chance I could get out of this place? […] get another job somewhere.” “With your qualifications,” said Masters, “I should think that very easy. We have posts open in laboratories and research centres all over the country—for junior technicians.” He smiled again. “You don't really want to be the first rat to leave a sinking ship, do you?” “I know that if I remain here, and finally this place has to be written-off as a total loss, you people in the government will always hold the blame against me!”'
‘“We have cities,” said Okdel, “great domed cities in valleys waiting for us to return.” “No,” said the Doctor. “This must be hard for you to understand, but there is no trace of your civilisation on this planet.” […] Okdel seemed deeply affected to learn that his civilisation had completely vanished. “Nothing of us has been found?” […] Okdel swayed slightly from one side to another, and from the depth of his throat there came a gentle whining sound. The Doctor thought this must be the reptile man's way of showing grief. Then a single drop of liquid slid from one of Okdel's eyes. The old reptile man was crying. “I am very sorry,” said the Doctor. “It must be sad to realise that you are so completely forgotten.” Okdel stopped swaying. He did nothing to conceal the single tear, which had left a glistening path down the scales of his face’
‘“We are a peace-loving species,” said Okdel. “But it is difficult for us to think of apes as equals.”’
‘“If your plan is acceptable to the other species,” said Okdel, “it would be understood that we are the superior race?”’
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'“these days people don't talk about superior and inferior races. Everyone is equal.” “Every one of the humans is equal,” said Okdel. “But we must be respected”’
‘With the destructor we could have returned our planet to what it was when we were the masters’
'“You propose that vermin shall take our world?” said Morka. “They have already taken it,” said Okdel. “We can but hope for the smallest share.” “You have betrayed us,” said Morka’
‘“Do you realise that is treason, sir?” said the Major, then quoting from the law, “"Assisting a public enemy at war with the Queen"!” He turned to Okdel and Morka. “This man is a traitor! If you, gentlemen, are true soldiers you will have nothing to do with him!”’
‘there are still large areas in the world today very similar to the conditions in which you knew the planet, and these areas are hardly touched by Man. With your technology you could build cities in those parts of the world which Man has ignored’
‘Liz turned to him. “Doctor, not everyone thinks like you...”’ – Liz is strongly implicated here, seeming to include herself in ‘everyone’.
‘“That'll show 'em!” said the Brigadier. Everyone looked at the Brigadier, as though he had said something very silly. “Show whom?” asked the Doctor. The Brigadier had to think for a moment. “You know,” he said, “foreign competitors. A discovery like this will make Britain great again.” No one seemed very impressed with this’
‘England was once the heart of an empire, the greatest empire the world has ever known. But the bankers and the trade-unionists have destroyed that great heritage. Now we are alone, backs to the wall, just as we were in 1940, only there is no Winston Churchill to lead us. The whole world is snapping at us like a pack of hungry wolves. But the day will come, Miss Shaw, when England will rise again’
'“Why should communists cause these power losses?” said the Doctor. “They hate England, that's why.” Barker started to warm to his subject. “They train people to come here to destroy us.” “I see,” said the Doctor. “Are these Chinese communists or Russian communists?” “There's no difference between them,” said Barker. “And if it isn't them, it's the fascists. Or the Americans”’
‘I know you hate England. But there are some true patriots around, people who love their country’
‘he couldn't remember escaping. Still, the mind can play strange tricks. Obviously he must have escaped or he would not be in this cave now, a free man’
Barking Barker’s backstory: ‘in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, leading a group of soldiers who were trying to pin down an IRA sniper’ … ‘As Major Barker called on his men to break cover and arrest the sniper, shots rang out from a sniper in another building, instantly killing the young soldier next to Major Barker. Without a second's thought, Barker aimed his revolver at the sniper standing with his hands up in surrender, and shot him dead. For that moment of anger, Major Barker had been asked to resign from the British Army and to find another job’
'“Having been associated with the Doctor for some time now,” said the Brigadier, “yes, I'm willing to believe in anything. But the idea of having peace-talks with them—that's another matter”’
'“I think it's got something to do with race-memory,” said the Doctor. “There was a time when Man was very weak and always at the mercy of the same terrible enemy, just as mice are always afraid of cats”’
'“People?” said Masters. “You call lizards "people"?”'
‘“Because I am a man of science,” K'to said, “does not mean that I lack feelings and passions. I have no wish to share the world with furry creatures. They are unclean. Insects sometimes live in their fur. They disgust me”’
‘“They are still mammals,” said Morka, “the lowest form of life!”’
‘He has been infected with a deadly virus which may destroy all his species'
‘"The objective fact is," said Masters, "that we cannot make this place work, at least not until these animals have been exterminated"’
‘The Doctor felt rather sorry for Dr. Quinn. “I imagine being the son of a famous scientist isn't easy,” he said’
Of Barker: ‘“That's a very brave man, Liz. A fool. But a really brave man”’ But is he? Does he actually ever help anyone?
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‘He was staring at the destructor as it slowly melted with heat. A watery tear ran down the scales of his cheek'
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‘you could always settle an argument by appealing to the Doctor's vanity. It was a little human-like quality that the Doctor had, and was one of the reasons why the Brigadier liked him’ – this is actually rather sweet but the bite is definitely there in the context of the story
Hulkisms
This is almost plausible: ‘"We only know about the reptiles whose fossils we have found," said the Doctor. "But what if for some reason the more intelligent reptiles hid themselves away in shelters under the Earth's crust?"' - so long as no individuals ever suffered an accident anywhere its body might be preserved and they always without fail cremated their dead. There is of course the much more plausible possibility that we just haven't found those fossils yet but that's very much not what the Doctor's driving at.
The disease reaches Paris: ‘“Both nurses,” said Sergeant Hawkins, “from the Royal Free Hospital, London, going away for the weekend”’ - how complicated is the concept of quarantine, which the Doctor immediately suggested was needed. First, they let Barker get taken to hospital and then, while dealing with that – and so appreciating the Doctor was right – several of them are responsible for letting Masters (who is bizarrely determined) just waltz out. Their response to finally finding him and the two people they infected is to seemingly put them in open wards in more hospitals, at least judging by the ease with which two nurses are infected. Furthermore, they don’t seem to have told those nurses or made any attempt to quarantine Royal Free. This was so utterly easily containable at so many stages!
‘“If the virus strain knows what it's about,” said Dr. Meredith, “it'll soon find a way to overcome the antibiotics”’ Why exactly are antibiotics considered likely to have any effect on a virus in the first place? Why does a doctor seemingly believe in ‘knowing’ viruses? And why is the Doctor’s solution to not having yet found a cure to keep giving everyone more antibiotics, like they’d need a top-up or something (‘Give him some more antibiotics’)? Don't antibiotics tend to come in a distinctly planned course?
Both of these simply got a 'what the fuck?' in the
margin:
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‘“How many sugars, Liz?” “One,” she said. “To keep
that figure of yours,” said the Doctor. “Very wise”'
‘The Brigadier pushed Liz towards him. “She's got hysterics,” he said’
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Return of the Educational Remit
Not at all crowbarred in: ‘Liz had once visited the famous caves at Lascaux in southwest France. Those French caves had been discovered by four schoolboys back in 1942. They were playing a hide-and-seek game, and one of them fell into a deep hole in the ground. He called to the others that he was in some sort of cave, so they scrambled down to see. To their amazement, they found themselves surrounded by drawings on the cave's walls—drawings of animals and hunters made by some Stone Age artist tens of thousands of years ago’
And with added lampshading: ‘"The coelacanth," said Dr. Quinn, as though giving a lecture, "caught off Natal in 1938, and thought to have been extinct for seventy million years"’
‘"Professor D. E. Hughes, a professor of music, invented radio in 1879, and built a primitive transmitter in his home in Great Portland Street, London. I bet you thought Marconi invented radio!"’
‘there is no trace of your civilisation on this planet. The Earth's crust is always moving. You are fortunate that this shelter has not been crushed to pulp by some internal movement of the crust’
Height Attack!!
The reptile men are ‘well over six feet tall’
Miscellania
That's a lovely horizontal section of Wenley Moor research centre and the reptiles' shelter at the start of the book.
The only mention of ‘Silurians’ comes when Liz gives it as a password on arriving at Wenley Moor research centre.
Oh dear: ‘The voice of Doctor Who…’
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Nice bit where, though the eyes of a Silurian, the Doctor temporarily becomes the Frock Coat: ‘The creature with silver buttons tried to stop the Frock Coat from touching the dead creature’
Odd little details. Is it simply plot mechanics or an attempt to explain why UNIT aren’t better than they are?: ‘Every foot of the field telephone cable had to be wound back on to the drum, and this slowed them down’ and ‘"If we are trapped again," said the Brigadier, "that is something I could explain to my superiors. But if I lose one foot of that wretched telephone cable, there will be an investigation into the waste of public money"’
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A phrase I'm going to try and start using: ‘a knife-and-fork tea’
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