Doctor Who and the Web of Fear
- greatbigquiveringp
- Aug 19, 1976
- 2 min read
Is it just me or does the cover give away who's under the influence of the Great Intelligence? Mind you, that assumes you can recognise him from the single description of him as 'a tough old sweat', so maybe not.
Looking at the novelisation, I end up talking about various little ways Dicks tweaks things that Haisman and Lincoln can only get away with because the story unfolds over six weeks and would never be seen again. The one thing I don't address is Dicks's typical use of fierce, fluent pace to just drag you through, which let's you ignore little details in much the same way a month's gap does and think of this happily as a complete whole.
In a release that sees the Target range augment its proto-DVD approach with big Programme Guide-style chunks, its also probably worth reflecting on how the novelisations are effectively preparing the ground for the video range that'll eventually emerge in the 80s. Alongside the repeats, which are often cut-down and omnibussed, these are the probably the vanguard in terms of deserialising the show and making its presentation as a collection of stories. This might well have been the obvious approach ever since the programme adopted episode numbers, and The Five Faces of Doctor Who must have helped ease any concerns about archive releases, but it may have helped to look at carefully arranged shelves of randomly numbered spines when deciding the market would be happy with a random release schedule that picked episodes out from their eras.
Anyway, that's all I've got in the way of leftover thoughts from Doctor Who and the Web of Fear so click on the cover to the right for a decent into outright pendantry...
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