Target: The Five Doctors

'It was a place of ancient evil,' begins Terrance Dicks. He knows it's going to be hard work making this series of sketches into a readable novelisation, so he's opting for a classic opening to start on a high.

The console in the game room is clumsy and complex because it's an early model of a sophisticated device. The clip of the First Doctor is inserted at this point, because it's being watched by the 'Player'.

Like Nyssa in Snakedance, Tegan thinks in (a) and (b) bullet points when she contemplates the Doctor's TARDIS navigation ability. The new console is the result of repairs performed after the recent Cyberman attack - probably, but not explicitly, the one in Earthshock.

Turlough is 'good-looking in a faintly untrustworthy way.' Nice. The Eye of Orion differs from Earth only in the faint purple haze that hangs in the air.

The Brigadier and Col Crichton are talking before the UNIT reunion. I got the impression that on screen, the reunion has finished when we see them, though looking at the script it isn't explicitly stated to be so.

The Third Doctor is driving Bessie on a private test road - nice to see this nod to all the driveways and runways that have unconvincingly masqueraded as public roads in DW over the years.

Sarah Jane Smith lives in a flat, not a semi. TD, with just a few sentences, instantly recreates the Sarah of the Targets here, someone who I always felt was a different and superior person to the gulpy, petulant companion seen on screen. She's still a bit resentful about being dropped off so suddenly in Hand of Fear - though as the narrator fair-mindedly points out, she had just been saying she wanted to leave. Interestingly, the narration goes on to say that she had been expressing a wish to leave for some time before that.

When the Scoop appears, Susan Campbell is on her way to market in New London (a smaller, greener, more gleaming version of the old). David C was a big name in the Reconstruction Government, so she didn't see much of him for a few years, but now they and their three children are very happy together.

The Fourth Doctor is neatly described as the having 'the intellectual arrogance of the first, the humour of the second, and something of the elegance of the third'.

Sarah is rescued by the Third Doctor not from a gentle slope, but from the edge of a ravine.

The Master's 'one of my predecessors' scene is enlivened by the lightning bolt striking the corpse, making it 'dance and twitch in a ghastly parody of life'. Has Ian Marter taken over the writing?

The technician who tells Borusa that they can't retrieve the Fourth Doctor is not only a Time Technician, but an eminent Time Lord scientist. Good to see TD sticking up for tech types.

The Cybermen in this story are explicitly part-organic.

The First Doctor does not eat a sandwich while wearing fingerless gloves, like a half-starved scruffy old beggar.

The Castellan is suspected of seeking revenge for the events of Arc of Infinity. He only says 'No!' not 'No - not the mind probe!'

The Raston Robot has silver discs in its armoury as well as javelins.

The First Doctor explains 'easy as pi' to Tegan at some unspecified juncture after the action, though she still doesn't quite understand. Basically the successive digits of pi 3, 1, 4, 1, 5, 9, 2, 6, 5... are used as co-ordinate pairs on the 10x10 grid of squares, to indicate the safe ones.

Zoe's described as 'a very small girl with an attractive elfin face.' She and Jamie are said to have been the third Doctor's companions, I sincerely hope that's a misprint.

When the Fifth Doctor is trying to find the secret control room, he reflects that 'The way into a hidden chamber on Gallifrey might well be more complex than pressing the third carved moulding on the right.'

We see Tegan's thoughts as she works out a numbering system for the Doctors, just like with Jo in Three Doctors.

Sarah greets the Brigadier with a hug, not a handshake. She and Tegan wonder where the Fourth Doctor's got to. Don't we all.

Turlough has no faith in the TARDIS's invulnerability to the Cyber-bomb. Who can blame him given all the contradictory information we've had on that subject over the years?

When Rassilon appears, it's as a 'giant spectral presence' (and not some chuckling arse with a comedy moustache).

And when the Master disappears, Tegan thinks she sees his snarl hanging on the air like the Cheshire Cat's smile.

Finally: the Doctor's statement that the Time Lords will be furious that he's escaped is rewarded with one of Tegan's 'disapproving looks'. Can she do any other kind?