Another Pip & Jane Baker adaptation to begin the Seventh Doctor era. It's the Sixth Doctor who's centre stage as we open: his last action is to try and set the TARDIS Hostile Action Displacement System, which he forgot to switch on earlier. The energy attack on the TARDIS is played up a bit to make it seem a more convincing reason for regeneration, or as P&JB choose to put it, 'Regeneration had been triggered by the tumultuous buffeting.'
Ikona is revolted by the feel of Mel's hair and unscaly skin.
We're given a description of the Rani's laboratory, complete with 'megabyte computers', but then told 'The Doctor was aware of none of this.' The Bakers don't feel the need to write from the perspective of any particular character, they write as if they're controlling a camera. (Or indeed cutting and pasting from a script.)
There's a reason for the Doctor's pratfall down the stairs: he thinks he's still 6ft tall, so his umbrella hand isn't quite where he expected.
When Urak goes to look for Mel at the TARDIS, he soon picks up her 'spores' - is she turning into a mushroom?
Style standouts:
'The real Mel's head was poked into something too - a halter!'
'Flight, the fugitive Doctor decided, should not be a rash skedaddle.'
'A paradox. By temperament poles apart from Beyus, the abrasive Ikona was about to experience the same foreboding.'
The Tetrap lair is repeatedly described as an eyrie, which kept making me think of it as high on a mountainside rather than underground.
The Rani is still in her first incarnation. The explanation about the tyrannosaurus in her TARDIS snapping its neck, used in The Ultimate Foe, is given again.
Mel comes from Pease Cottage, but that might be just over-zealous proof-reading.
The Tetraps speak Tetrapyriarban, which is English written backwards (like the Master's invocation of Azal in the Target of The Daemons). P&JB acknowledge this unusual relationship between the two languages but don't explain it.
The scene with the hologram of Mel has an explanation from the narrator beginning 'A hologram is...' Some of the other Target authors do use this children's book device - like Malcolm Hulke with the D-notices in Green Death - but they usually channel it through one of the characters. ('Sarah had once researched an article on holograms - weren't they some kind of projection...')
The Doctor and Mel's escape from the lab, while the Rani is calming the giant brain down, is enlivened by an extra scene where a Tetrap guard breaks a phial containing one of the Rani's deadly concoctions. It instantly coats his entire body in fungus and suffocates him. Very gruesome.
When the Doctor deduces that the Rani is trying to make Helium Two, there's an extra bit where she compliments him on his potential for brilliance. It reminds him of the debates they used to have at university, and he begins to think she isn't beyond redemption. It's just a ploy by her though.
The ornate flask of hornet antidote has a 'rocco' stopper. Rococo?
Another TARDIS dematerialisation sound simile for the list - the Rani's TARDIS departs with 'a bellow like a ruptured elephant.'
The scientists spend their journey back to their proper times in the comfortable lounge of the Doctor's TARDIS.
Once again I'm forced to admit that, despite the enduringly odd style, this Target did make me think better of the story. In general the Seventh Doctor's adventures do seem better once you've got a clearer idea of what's actually supposed to be happening.
