Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Target - Full Circle

This is one of my least favourite Targets - it's an author's recasting of his story, which can often be a problem, as we'll see in the Hartnell era, and it also reveals an unpleasant political subtext which I think the production team did well to exclude from the screen version. So, for what a comparison's worth in this situation, here goes:

We open with the Starliner crashing on Alzarius, with Marteresque description of burning corpses being dragged out into space. (Should be 'blown out' of course - vacuum doesn't suck, pressure blows). Alzarius is already a place of terror to the Terradonians; no-one who's been sent there has returned. They know all about Mistfall in advance, by the way. The damage to the Starliner is severe - we later find out it had to be welded back together.

In the TARDIS, we get Romana's unhappy thoughts about returning to Gallifrey.

Adric and Varsh are very close because their parents were killed in a forest fire when Adric was a baby.

We're told that the Deciders are controlling information, and hiding the contents of the System Files, as soon as we meet them. The ship's computer is more impressive, with a secret shaft down which Nefred descends to consult the files. In the book, by the way, Nefred (and the other names) are surnames.

The mists are made much more of - they don't just hang round the lake, they're in every scene, cutting visibility to a few yards.

Two extra Outlers are seen being killed by the Marshmen. Two more get offed when the Marshmen invade the Starliner later.

Romana makes Adric very welcome in the TARDIS with smiles and 'cooing'. This cannot be said to be visible in Lalla Ward's interpretation of the same scenes. Sadly she's repaid only with 'the foul stench of untended teeth' when Varsh takes over the ship.

Nefred and Garif's conversation about the System Files takes place in the engine room, not the book room.

We see the Doctor finding only a square of flattened grass where the TARDIS was. We also get an extended description of the Starliner's exterior from his perspective, which gives Andrew Smith the chance to have the Doctor effectively congratulating him on his own cleverness.

The citizens who encounter the small Marshman in the corridor aren't scared of it - they're all ready to kill it, which gives Smith the chance to write a Marter-style scene where the Doctor charges in to save it, knocking the citizens about and giving a self-righteous speech. This bit replaces the appearance of the netted creature in the book room - instead we have the Doctor being kept waiting there by the Deciders, and deconstructing their theatrical business with the spotlights.

The TARDIS still weighs 5 million kilos - 5000 tons - so it's still unclear how the Marshmen are able to move it. I know Smith is terribly impressed by them, but can they really be that strong? There's more Marteresque action when Adric is so enraged by Varsh closing the doors with Romana outside that he attacks him.

The joke about 'here's hopping' works, because the Doctor says 'short hops' and not 'short trips'. Obviously Andrew Smith thinks that's funnier than the fingers-crossed business, because he leaves the latter out. The scene where they recover Romana and K9 from the cave is done at much greater length, with various creepy touches like a spider crawling out of K9's neck hole and onto the Doctor's hand. The subsequent conversation about the psychochemical, and K9's head, is replaced by the Doctor's thoughts on the same subjects.

After the Marshman has killed Dexeter, and has paused in smashing up the lab, the Doctor tells the Deciders that it is fighting its animal urges. Login's information about another planet drawing Alzarius away from its sun prompts him to say that that explains the bubbles in the rivers - seismic activity releasing subterranean gas. Okay... We aren't shown any earth tremors though.

The Doctor associates the mess in Romana's room with the mess in the lab on the Starliner.

Later, when Romana collapses in the lab, the Doctor disappointingly doesn't say 'Quick, the serum!'

Once the Marshmen have left the Starliner, hundreds of them join in a conclave and, from the leader's POV, we're treated to the following chilling disease metaphor for racial impurity:

The non-people of the metal city had won this battle, but there would be others, and the people of the marshlands, the real people of Alzarius, would be triumphant and crush the arrogant ones for ever... They were the guardians of Alzarius, their lives dedicated to maintaining its purity from off-world corruption.
The non-people, they who had once been guardians themselves, had discarded this philosophy and had allowed the corruption of off-world to infect them. One day they would remove their corruption.


There's a lot more of this stuff, including an attempted justification on environmental grounds, but it's bad enough having to read it, never mind type it out.

On the plus side, we're told that the Decider oligarchy will be replaced by an elected leadership. Democracy for the Starliner, national socialism for Alzarius.

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