Target: Mark of the Rani

As the Doctor sets the co-ordinates for Kew, he thinks about the possibility of accidentally landing across the Channel and meeting Napoleon. He then strikes a Napoleonic pose.

The Master/scarecrow exudes an evil aura, or so we're told - even though there's no-one around to perceive it except us.

After the Doctor says 'There was silence deep as death,' we get this classic Pip'n'Jane sentence: 'The grim quotation merely vocalised the overwhelming foreboding of evil that plagued him.'

There's some research on show when the Doctor explains that Stephenson didn't get due credit for helping invent the Davy lamp. 'Do you know where we get the word "assassin" from, Susan?'

The Master tells the Rani that he escaped from Sarn when the extreme heat in the volcano caused more numismaton gas to be generated - this returned him to health.

Lord Ravensworth is a dedicated paternalist, so he finds the disturbances at Killingworth particularly upsetting.

Perhaps reacting against their usual tendency for periphrasis, P&J commit the following sentence during the trolley scene: 'Able only to raise his head, the Doctor was scared.'

After successfully dematerialising the Rani's TARDIS, the Doctor recalls a previous occasion where he ran his own craft into the Tower of Pisa.

Peri, apparently abandoned by the Doctor, worries about being stranded in the 18th century with its inadequate medical science.

The classic quotes just keep coming. 'In the Rani's TARDIS: 'The additional mucus caused the baby dinosaur's pink underbelly to float uppermost.' In the dell: 'In choreographed terror, she embarked on a complicated pattern of moves.' When the two renegade Time Lords argue: 'Acerbic recrimination consumed the dissident pair.'

(I think the worst one is 'Before the Doctor could deploy his facility for exhuming fallacy, he was thwarted.' It's a perfect example of a bad synonym looked up in a thesaurus. 'Exhume' doesn't just mean 'unearth' or 'expose', it has connotations of digging up bodies and (by extension) very old things which aren't any use.)

The 'Luddite' gang at the dell are already carrying the poles from which the Doctor is later slung. They have a sheep on the poles to begin with.

An epilogue shows us the Doctor and Peri at Kew Gardens. Peri isn't enjoying it as much as she might, because she keeps seeing patterns in the flowers - they all seem to have human faces...

(I rather liked that ending, it made the tree transformations in the dell seem creepy and sinister. In the screen version the ludicrous panto branch/arm defuses any horrific effect almost completely).

Despite all the awkward prose, this Target is an improvement on the screen version; it at least puts some pace and life into the story.