Target: The Twin Dilemma

Eric Saward again - and he's keen to thrust details of his expanded world on us. None of them appear in the screen version so I shall mention only the most interesting ones. Such as that Professor Sylvest fears his sons and keeps thinking about killing them, and that he drinks a lot and is seeing a woman behind their mother's back. Oh, and cats are superintelligent in the same way as dolphins in the Douglas Adams universe.

(There's an exhaustive analysis of the continuity differences appended to the PDF version of the Target. Thanks to the author thereof. And don't come after me Mr Saward, I bought a copy of the book and I have a receipt for £2 to prove it).

We don't see the Doctor choose and change costumes - he and Peri leave the console room, and return with him wearing the new costume. During the strangle attack, she is particularly horrified by the expression of enjoyment on the Doctor's face. And when she tells him what he did, he screams in horror. His various personality changes are effectively described from her point of view in terms of archetypes - Victorian actor, prophet, Sherlock Holmes.

It was Edgeworth's idea to teleport down alone to capture the twins. He wanted to avoid a worse scenario - it's darkly hinted that a member of his crew enjoys excessive violence. (Lt. E. Saward no doubt)

Sylvest talks to the Intergalactic Task Force, not the Special Incident Room. (Though I suppose the Room could belong to the Force). Later, we don't see the two officers back at base at all, the action is all presented from Hugo's point of view.

There's a long, violent back-story about how the Time Lords tried to kill Azmael, and about how the gastropods got going on Jaconda.

Hugo is able to detect the freighter because Azmael accidentally switched off the deflector. There's a digression about time, and types of heroism. Here and throughout the book, Hugo is motivated at least partly by greed. He's not the professional police officer we see on screen.

Mestor creates a giant blue 'Turneresque' (!) fist-shaped cloud above Titan 3, with which he attacks Hugo's squadron.

Peri deliberately uses the word 'Doc' to wind the Doctor up. There's an exchange about his infant theories about the stork bringing babies which presumably is part of the Holmes persona rather than being drawn from Time Lord culture. And this brings the Doctor's mind onto jelly babies.

Peri realises the havoc that a deranged Doctor could cause across space and time, and decides to play along with his delusions in the hope of bringing him back to normality. But it's hard work: she has to try hard not to sound like 'the traditional dumb sidekick.'

A certain part of the Doctor's anatomy is described as 'ridged and commanding' - but it's just his pointing finger.

The narrator tells us that the twins have matured under the rough treatment they've been getting recently. 'Fear may not be the best regime to form and mould children's characters, but...' They write on a blackboard when they're at work on Titan 3, not a sort of glass/paint board.

Although the revitalising modulator dissassembles Azmael into his component molecules, he remains conscious throughout the process. There's a long digression about the invention of the machine.

There's none of the stuff about Hugo wandering round the TARDIS looking for his power pack.

One of the reasons Azmael remembers the drinking bout he had with the Doctor is that he had to pay for it, as the Doctor didn't have any money on him.

Peri makes a much more extended exploration of the dome on Titan 3, finding inter alia a cooker she can't operate, and a wine cellar which causes her to decide that whatever happens to them, she won't die sober. The instrument console reminds her of her prom - either there are things about proms which TV has not taught me, or that's really terrible, perfunctory American characterisation.

The Doctor doesn't take any inspiration from the twins' equations, or even notice them apparently.

When Peri and the Doctor return to the TARDIS, Hugo doesn't threaten the Doctor with his gun. Indeed the weapon isn't mentioned.

Back on the freighter, there's yet more back story about Azmael and Jaconda - the inhabitants saved him from the assassins sent after him by the Time Lords (in the earlier back story).

On arrival at Jaconda, the Doctor sees a child in the distance, and reasons with Peri that they don't have the time or resources to save him. The point is academic anyway as he scurries off in fear.

Hugo's shown to be in very definite danger when his boots stick in the gastropod slime. Using the gun to cut himself free is the Doctor's idea. (I still don't see why Hugo doesn't just step out of his boots).

When the Doctor interrupts Azmael's child-bullying session, and Drak goes for his gun, Romulus and Remus watch 'in eager anticipation of violence.' They must know this is a Saward adaptation.

The Doctor's reaction to Mestor's plan to move the planets is brought forward to a new scene where a projection of Mestor appears in the laboratory. The Doctor isn't in the throne room at that point and doesn't know Peri is safe until she's brought into the lab.

Azmael is extra humiliated, as well he should be, by his failure to realise that Mestor's plan will make the planets collide with the sun.

While the Doctor's thinking in the lab, he has a reverie about his past companions. Turlough is 'the only companion who had seriously tried to kill him.' I love the pedantic qualification there. Jo tried to kill him under hypnosis at least once, and she was pretty serious about it as I recall.

There's some splendid Adric hate here - he's capering in a 'dance of death', he'd aggravated everyone on board the TARDIS with his 'childish antics', and he'd died without the Doctor ever being able to fully praise him, help him or ultimately like him. Even the Doctor hated Adric?

When the Doctor picks up the acid vials, there's yet another digression, about the inventor. ES uses 'dehydration' to mean corrosion of metal, which has nothing to do with removing water from it.

The Chamberlain - whose name is Slarn - tries to bribe the twins into working out how to fly the TARDIS. We learn this in summary, as we do about Peri and Hugo's journey back to the TARDIS.

When the Doctor enters the throne room to confront Mestor - in the novel it's his first visit to the room - there's an effective description of the fine mosaics in the room ruined by slime and damp.

The Doctor doesn't encounter Peri in the tunnels on his way back to the TARDIS. But when he gets back, she perceives that his erratic post-regeneration behaviour is over.

Hugo's motivation for staying on Jaconda is to extort money out of Slarn for protection against the Jacondans.

During the final scene, the twins are exploring the TARDIS off-stage. The Doctor's 'like it or not' line is 'as bland and as sterile as it sounded', and Peri hopes that the he said it with a smile.