Target: Four To Doomsday

'The ship was like a city.' Ah, back on familiar ground with a typical Terrance Dicks scene-setter. And no more of that Bidmead national stereotyping... Oh. 'Members of twentieth-century Australian culture are not noted for shyness or reticence. Tegan could be exceptionally forceful, even for an Australian.'

Meet Nyssa's Homeric epithet: 'an attractive-looking girl with brown hair and an aristocratic, somewhat haughty air.' She doesn't say the famous 'Yes' in the opening console room scene, but 'All right'. She speculates privately about whether Adric is ordering her round for sexist reasons, or because he's higher in companion seniority.

The control room makes the Doctor think of a giant pinball machine.

Nyssa finds the Principia quite interesting, in an elementary sort of way.

During the conversation about the equipment that reduces matter, Tegan starts thinking about the way Aunty Vanessa met her end.

Tegan's female fashion drawing is wearing 'high boots', which Enlightenment's human form on screen isn't.

At the meal, it's Bigon who introduces the term 'sodium chloride', saying that avocadoes are best eaten with a pinch thereof. Adric picks up the term and repeats it back - which perhaps makes more sense, he's a mathematician after all, not a chemist.

The conversation with Kurkutji is bizarrely different: the Doctor is outright astonished that Tegan speaks his language, whereas on screen he's just mildly surprised that she speaks the right dialect. Tegs replies 'He's an Australian, like me — an Australian Aborigine!' which is laudably inclusive but makes it sound like everyone in Australia speaks that language. I'm learning a lot of surprising facts about Australia in these last few Targets.

Lin Futu 'either failed to understand the Doctor's joke, or was polite enough to ignore it.' Much better handling than the crass screen version.

Persuasion and Enlightenment's way of alternating their speeches makes it seem to the Doctor as if both voices come from the same brain.

The dances at the recreational take place in a different order, presumably because on the page they don't dominate the action so much and it isn't therefore so important to intercut them for variety.

Tegan finds Persuasion all the more upsetting because he is (in a way) her creation.

Monarch accuses Bigon of having thought the Earth is flat in both versions. Pythagoras - Bigon's contemporary - believed the earth was round.

Adric and Nyssa find a pool in the hydroponics chamber with frogs in it.

At the end of the sword fight the blade can be seen projecting from the defeated warrior's back, just below the tenth thoracic vertebra. (Did Eric Saward write this bit?)

It's Nyssa who asks Monarch if the Greek warriors are androids, not Adric. This allows the narrator to have Adric fascinated by Monarch throughout the conversation, so his 'conversion' is more convincing. (Is it actually real or not?)

After the 'that which one fears' line, Monarch adds 'Why should I harm you - when soon you will be one of us?'

There's half a page of positioning before Tegan starts trying to work the TARDIS: TD is clearly expecting the question 'How come Adric and Nyssa have flown it, but Tegan can't?' He says 'her training as an air-hostess had given her some basic technical knowledge' - about how to operate a time machine??? Her subsequent frustrations are condensed into one or two scenes, and she doesn't trample on the TARDIS manual: instead she, oddly, takes her shoes off and tramples on them.

As she recovers from hypnosis, Nyssa says that the Urbankans were going to turn her into a robot. Presumably this didn't make it onto the screen in case people thought 'So who'd notice?'

The Doctor claims to bowl a very good googly, not a chinaman. (TD clearly as unamused by this Chinese gag as he was by the first one).

At the 'enough of these recriminations' line, Monarch excellently waves 'an expansive claw.'

The Doctor thinks carefully about how Monarch has been able to control Adric - not so much hypnotism, more personal domination combined with 'some quite genuine concern for the boy'. He realises it's that concern which has saved his own life several times - I think TD is trying to address the problem of why Monarch lets the Doctor off the hook so many times in this story.

Persuasion doesn't freeze when his chips are ripped out, he collapses.

Enlightenment says 'Farewell' to the Doctor when she casts him off into space (though we shouldn't be able to hear her without air).

TD carefully explains that when Monarch returns to the throne room, he has atmosphere restored just in the throne room, not anywhere else.

The Doctor winks rather than wiggling his fingers when he taunts Monarch with the 'earthly' joke. Monarch takes a 'ray-gun' from a hidden locker when he leaves the throne room to confront him.

In the final scene, Adric doesn't make his odd non-sequitur remark about the time-curve indicator, and Nyssa doesn't collapse.