Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters
- greatbigquiveringp
- Jan 17, 1974
- 2 min read
Simultaneous with Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion, Malcolm Hulke, the second big beast of the early Target range, enters the arena. On this evidence, he's every bit as influential on the series as Dicks but, oddly, possibly not for another 14-17 years, which might just equate with when people who read this as a child started writing for Doctor Who.
This is glorious stuff. I love all the stuff about Dawson's mother and Quinn's father and how sad they are, even as Quinn is much nastier than he was on TV. I love barking Barker and the way he makes every situation worse with blind aggression and cry of ‘for England!’, I love the way Lawrence doesn’t even care about the potential of the project he’s leading and desperately tries to shift the blame and then shift job for the sake of his career. Yes, they are all a bit caricaturish but they’re reflective of real people in the real world in a way that generals who want to spend the evening in looking at their medals isn’t.
And it feels angry. It feels like Hulke fiercely wants to indoctrinate every child he can get his hands on and show them the horror of the adult world where everyone’s just out for themselves - no wonder he felt '‘Doctor Who’ in particular is a great opportunity to get across a point of view' (in an interview from the 1970s, available at https://drwhointerviews.wordpress.com/category/malcolm-hulke/). I would, though, dispute his idea that 'In my stories, the ‘baddies’ aren’t really bad because they’re doing what they think is right' because Lawrence, Masters and K'to clearly aren't and Barker and Morka, though they are, are clearly mad.
Anyway, click on the right to wallow in this novelisation's magnificence.
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