Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Target: The Ribos Operation

This is an Ian Marter novelisation so there are many changes, too many for me to list without losing the will to live. As a sampler, in the first few pages the Doctor summons K9 into the console room with a dog whistle, the console room is full of shadows, the exterior windows of the TARDIS are visible from inside (cf Ark in Space), K9's nose blaster is referred to as a 'radiaprobe', the Tracer is the 'Locatormutor core'. I really don't like the names IM comes up with for equipment, they seem inappropriately Hartnellesque.

Interestingly, the Guardian doesn't make the 'Nothing will happen - ever' threat, rather he just tells the Doctor menacingly that he will undertake the task.

The accent assumed by Garron is Bermondsey, not Somerset. And later he does a 'Knightsbridge' one, whatever that might be. The Doctor has the strange diction from the Season 12 Marter novels, where he rarely uses contractions and sounds very little like the Fourth Doctor in general.

There are four or five scenes where Garron, Unstoffe or the Doctor are manhandled by bulky, brawny soldiers. Similarly the Graff Vynda Ka (not K here) is a young, sleek, fit man rather than the slightly fussy type we see on screen.

After the Graf has discovered the bug, and is waiting for Sholakh to come back with the money, he amuses himself by trying to make two scorpions fight inside a circle of hot ash on the hearth. They won't, so he shovels the hot ash over them and crushes them. Unusually for a Marter change I found this very effective as characterisation (did the Graf bring the creatures with him, or are they native to Ribos, I wonder?)

There are various other touches: the sunlight of Ribos is green, the use of the catacombs as a mausoleum is very much played up and there are the usual violent Marter sound effects - scrabbling Shrivenzale claws striking showers of sparks and the charging whine of the laser spears (the latter constantly referred to). I don't entirely hate this - it's the same energetic description that keeps his Dominators novel going - but ultimately I would have preferred a Terrance Dicks adaptation with less noise and a Doctor that I recognised.

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