Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons
- greatbigquiveringp
- May 15, 1975
- 1 min read
I know this one is a well-loved novelisation and, the treatment of Jo aside, I can see why - the descriptions, character details and pace are all great. It's a fantastic showcase of what Dicks does when Dicks does good.
However, the novelisations have had a habit of pre-empting one of the features of the new series, something articulated just in the nick of time for this by Phil Sandifer in his review of 'The Eaters of Light'. He points out how Rona Munro feels like a call-back to a 'pre-”tone meeting”' era of Who when 'scripts [didn't] bother with the idea that your climactic scene has to pay off some thematic thread'
Now, it's not quite true that the novelisations have quite followed the new series trend in terms of the climactic scene but, when at their most literary, they have brought thematic threads to the fore in adapting the TV scripts. Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons doesn't.
It does do some nice work explaining the Master's about-turn at the end but it's not a track laid down in advance as well as the Controller's in Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks . Further, any attack on commercialism or modern-day factory owners is scattergun at best, much as it was in Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion.
What it is, though, is probably the best proto-DVD collection novelisation yet and so, thanks to it's enduring popularity, it demonstrates how well Dicks writes for his market. Click on the cover for a more detailed look at his genius.
コメント