Target - The Daleks

As I'm sure you know as well as I do, the Target version differs substantially from the screen version. It's told in the first person, narrated by Ian, who is a realistic rather than omniscient narrator; we don't see anything he doesn't see, and I shan't note the absence in the Target of scenes from the screen version which don't have him in them.
The pictures, by the way, are all based on shots from the screen version. And they're often in the wrong places: for example there's a picture of a tray-bearing Dalek meeting Susan and Ian in the detention cell in the middle of the chapter where the Thals attack the city.
Also of course, for many years this was where the Target Doctor Who canon began: the first few chapters are an alternative account to episode 1 of Unearthly Child. But they have the exact same purpose: to get Ian and Barbara into the TARDIS and away from Earth, 1963.

Ian is a teacher but is looking for a job as a rocket scientist; he wears sports jackets, smokes and is rather the John Wyndham hero. Plain-speaking, decent, stubborn and upper middle class.

Barbara was a secretary with supply teaching experience who branched out into personal tuition. 'Extra cramming in special subjects.' She's proud and spends most of the book taking offence at Ian's presumptuous treatment of her.
She found herself employed at £20 pw (excellent money in 1963) by a doctor, to give his granddaughter, Susan English, a working knowledge of English history. One foggy night she insists on driving her pupil home - to Barnes Common....

And so Ian, who has just driven to Reigate and back for an interview, sees Barbara come staggering out of the fog after crashing into a lorry. Susan has vanished (into the Tardis - always so printed) and the Doctor is still on the scene of the crash because he's looking for her TARDIS key, which she's dropped.

His and Ian's first encounter is basically a translation of the AUC junkyard scene into this setting. Ian wants to know where Susan is, the Doctor won't tell him; the Doctor wants to get rid of Ian so he can leave in the TARDIS, and this makes Ian suspicious. The Doctor, by the way, has a supply of 'everlasting matches' which intrigue Ian.

Ian is not however led into the TARDIS by hearing Susan speak: he wants to use the 'police box' to phone the police. The Doctor tricks him and Barbara into walking away, but they have second thoughts and turn round to see him opening the police box doors. A fierce radiance shining from within gives the game away, and it's only then that Susan calls out 'Grandfather?' Ian and Barbara push past the Doctor and into the TARDIS; she faints, and he hits his head, but has time to be amazed by the size of the TARDIS control room. Absolutely characteristically, he compares it to a middle-sized restaurant, with room for at least fifty tables.

It isn't till Ian wakes up from his bump on the head that we get the Doctor's 'wanderers' speech, and then Barbara's exposition about how she came to know Susan. This is followed by a remix of the science lab conversation from AUC: Susan has the same mixture of extraordinary special knowledge and odd cultural lacunae, memorably thinking that 'Japan was a county in Scotland.'

The Tardis is much like the TARDIS, roundels and all, but has a lot of other wonderful paraphernalia, like corridors made up of pillars of coloured glass.

The Doctor is characterised largely through Ian's antagonistic exchanges with him: devious, powerful, intense, superior ('so superior I felt like kicking him') but shedding twenty years when he smiles.

The arrival on Skaro is a rehash of the early part of AUC ep 2, the speech about birds wheeling in another sky being transferred to when they're actually out on the surface.

From this point on, we converge much more closely with the screen version. There's still variation in detail: for example the TARDIS has an oil-and-water massage shower, and a shaving/haircutting machine, which gives Ian 'as good a barbering as I would have received at Simpson's in Piccadilly.' The food machine is there, too, though Ian complains of the hardness of the eggs, not the saltiness of the bacon.

Before Ian falls asleep - the TARDIS has 6 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms - he reflects on how perhaps travelling with the Doctor will deal with the restless search for fulfilment that's been plaguing him these last few years.

Next day, the 'That's not his name. Who is he? Doctor who?' line from AUC resurfaces, modified to 'Perhaps that's what we ought to call him - "Doctor Who"?'

Ian gives us an excellent description of the city: 'as if someone had commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to build a city and then someone else had come along and pushed thousands and thousands of tons of ashy soil all around it.' There's some extra suspense during their exploration of it - movements seen in the background and so on. And the Doctor is much more noticeably ill.

Our first encounter with the Daleks - 'a round metal thing about three feet in height, like an upturned beaker with a domed top. It had dull metal flanges all round it and three different kinds of rods sticking out in front' - is necessarily through Ian and not Barbara. The Daleks are at first less explicitly aggressive, demanding to know the cause of the Doctor's illness and saying 'You will all rest in a compartment we shall show you.'
Ian tries to run away because the Doctor has told him to go to the TARDIS and bring back his 'stimulizer' pills. He doesn't do the 'my legs' bit till he wakes up in the cell.

The Doctor is not taken out and interrogated: we learn about the Thals from Susan's report of the conversation she had with the Daleks while they were being brought to the cell. A Dalek then enters and exposits about the time travellers not having any anti-radiation drugs; this leads to a discussion of the capsules they found outside the TARDIS, to which the Dalek listens 'patiently' and then leaves - presumably to inform its colleagues, because it then returns and orders Susan to start walking. The stuff about the extent of the Thals' mutations is inserted here.

Ian then conks out from radiation sickness, and when he recovers, Susan has returned and recounts her trip to the TARDIS. Ian is deeply impressed by her courage, and indeed you don't have to be a John Wyndham hero to think the same, as she tells of staggering through the storm thinking four-headed, six-armed monsters might be after her.
She apologises to the Doctor for having arrived in the TARDIS 'saturated' with rain and leaving puddles all over the floor. There's some suspense with Alydon initially speaking to her from the shadows, like a disgusting mutant would, before emerging to show himself as 'the most wonderful looking man I've ever seen anywhere in any world.' There's some charming business with Ian involuntarily looking jealous and Susan jokingly apologising, and Barbara raising her eyebrows 'to agree to a future and secret conversation' about Alydon. (As if anyone reading this doesn't already know!)
There isn't any talk from Alydon about crops and rain, the Thals merely intend to search the city for food, and on her return Susan naively told the Daleks this and wrote the 'Su San' invitation at their dictation. Thus far her narrative in the cell. The Doctor then explains the Daleks' motivation, thus introducing young Shallow to the word 'jeopardy'.

Ian doesn't think much of the idea that the Daleks are powered by static electricity; neither does the Doctor really, as he says 'I know the use of static electricity may seem absurd but it is an answer, isn't it?'

The first attempt at the cloak plan fails: the Dalek is suspicious to see the time travellers standing in two pairs, and orders them together, giving them a demo of its gun-stick when they aren't quick enough. And it spots the block on the door and makes them remove it. But Susan cunningly asks for more water, which is brought later by another, more trusting Dalek.

Target Doctor has no truck with physiological relativism: the disgusting appearance of the Dalek creature (described in fair detail by the narrator) convinces him that they are right to oppose the Daleks and support the Thals.

There's a nasty moment where the lift guard Dalek notices that the Doctor is pulling Ian's Dalek along, and orders him to 'Step away!' Ian is able to bluff his way through, though. In the lift, it's a button-hook that the Doctor uses to disable the door sensor - a fine bit of Edwardian characterisation.
They help Ian out of the Dalek casing almost immediately, so there's no suspense as to whether he's still inside when the Daleks break through (it wouldn't work with him as narrator).
The object that they push down the lift shaft is specifically described by Ian as a 'sculpture'.

The conversation near the gateway - where the Doctor wants to use the Thals as a diversion, Barbara is disgusted, and Susan wants to go back and help them - is transferred to the observation floor, and it's Barbara who wants to accompany Ian and is ordered to do what she's told. She understandably becomes resentful about this - David Whitaker presumably seeing more narrative use for Ian/Barbara tension than the Doctor/Susan struggle for independence in the screen version.

Temmosus makes a better speech here, it's more focused and less rhetorical. And after the first Dalek shot, he makes everything stop by sheer force of personality, telling the Daleks that cooperation is the only way forward. They still kill him of course, but what a way to go.
Alydon is much more impressive in his first conversation with Ian. On screen we pity the Thals for being naive, on the page Alydon almost seems to pity Ian.

Ian has an initial discussion with the survivors of the city party (seven Thals were killed, not just Tecanda, who isn't named here) as they rest on their way to the encampment. The pacifism issue is brought up here, and Alydon says 'with a terrible sincerity' that rather than fight, the Daleks will have to exterminate them.

At the encampment, we don't see the maps of the solar system or the picture of the original Thal male, but the Doctor does the same basic speech about war, radiation and circular mutation. The Doctor doesn't get Ian's surname wrong here, or anywhere else in the story.
Barbara is annoyed at Ian's rude behaviour earlier, and the Doctor annoys him by giving him advice as to how to deal with her. This conflict replaces the argument on screen about whether they should put the Thals in danger by persuading them to help recover the fluid link. Incidentally, it's only the Doctor who's made up his mind to leave Skaro before he finds that it's missing: on screen all four of them are ready and willing to leave.

Rather than Alydon speechifying and Ian arguing with him, it's the Doctor who makes the speech. And we don't immediately go to the climax: there's a long interval where Ian tries to educate the Thals in the concept of hostility, by teaching them to box. They don't really get it, with amusing results. The Doctor finds this particularly amusing, and this winds Ian up to making his bluff of taking Dyoni to the Daleks.

After Alydon's big speech next morning, the Doctor very arrogantly uses a whistle to silence everyone and offer his services as 'general' for the attack on the city. There's no cooperative planning scene, it's all the Doctor's design. Nor is there any map; Ganatus is the source of their information, as he knows the terrain round the lake. Incidentally, Ian speaks of the lake as if he's already mentioned it to us - he hasn't.

The jungle surrounding the lake grows increasingly strange and mutated the nearer the party approach it. Ganatus tactfully pretends to stay close to Barbara because he enjoys her company, when actually it's so that he can help her. (At least that's what Ian tells us. It's his story and he's sticking to it.)
When they make camp, Barbara suggests building a raft to cross the water, but Antodus says ominously 'There are things in the lake'. This replaces Ian's premonitory encounter with the lake creature from the screen version.
There's then some banter between the Thals about eating Elyon if his food preparation isn't up to scratch, which is nicely macabre as it comes just before he himself gets eaten. There's no whirlpool on the lake by the way, Ian specifically tells us that the surface is undisturbed.

Next morning - after a hot drink of Ratanda - the party are attacked by a huge monster from the lake, but Ian fends it off with burning torches - and it's then attacked and eaten by its fellows. There's then a scene where Kristas climbs up the rock face with an improvised rope, which he then lets down so the others can climb up.

The narrative continues to stay with Ian, so of course we don't get the Barbara/Ganatus banter, though all the Nationesque stuff about splitting up and exploring separate tunnels is still there. There's no first or second rock fall, and no grousing about the journey being impossible or unbearable.The journey along the ledge begins after they use the rope to cross the chasm, and the chasm comes straight after the cavern that Ganatus falls into - whereas on screen the rope is used to cross a gap in the ledge.
Antodus doesn't get into any claustrophobic panic - Ian remarks that when he screams as he goes over the edge of the ledge, that's the first time any of the Thals in the party have shown fear. He doesn't sacrifice himself by cutting the rope either. And when he hits the water at the bottom, they hear some creature attacking him.
The final impasse isn't caused by a rock fall, they're just at a seeming dead end; there's a large hole above them which leads into the Dalek hydroelectric plant.

Their incursion into the city is shown in greater detail - they find a hydroponics room and a room full of spare Dalek rod attachments, which is where they meet Alydon.
Alydon recaps the business with the reflective plates, and explains about the Daleks' radiation bomb plan, and that the Doctor and Susan have been captured. When they discover the control room, Ian sends Alydon back down to the power plant with instructions to smash it.
The chief Dalek is made of glass, and is wearing the fluid link on a chain round its neck. Ian smashes its glass casing during the fight. But it isn't the damage to the control room that finishes off the Daleks, it's Alydon's work off-page down in the power plant. 'Then this... is the end... of the Daleks,' says the last one to die.
There's a sort of preliminary final speechmaking in the ruins of the control room, with Ian telling Alydon to keep life itself an ever-increasing thing of beauty, and the Doctor warning him to search for the truth (like he does in the final scene in the camp in the screen version).

He looked away from Alydon and weighed the fluid link in his hand. 'Be straightforward,' he went on. 'It's surprising how much trouble can come from a small deception.'

There's no business about compensators or tests of the soil. Instead, there's a final feast at which the Doctor makes another motivational speech, assuring the Thals that the Daleks are definitely all dead, and offering to come back and visit another time.
Susan doesn't get a cape and Barbara doesn't get any dress material.
Barbara is not with Ganatus: instead, Ian discovers her talking to Kristas - about how she and Ian can be reconciled. Kristas doesn't go away empty-handed by the way, he intends to propose to the lovely Salthyana, or rather to tell her, Thal-style, that he wishes her to remain at his side for the rest of their lives. Barbara says sadly that in Earth proposals 'the man asks the woman if she is willing.'

Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor outlines to Ian the advantages of him and Barbara staying on Skaro with the Thals - before inviting them to accompany him and Susan on their travels. 'The man always asks the woman if she is willing,' says Ian, thus letting her know that he overheard her wishes for reconciliation. And so they are reconciled. It's rather romantic actually, I wish I'd been able to appreciate that a bit more when I first read it.

Target - Survival

Once again, deleted scenes from the screen version are widely available, and where the novelisation uses those, I won't necessarily note it unless it's particularly interesting.

Dave, the doomed man washing his car, is still Dave, but he's Mr Aitken being called in to lunch by Mrs Aitken, who is an unimaginative cook and not his mum.

There's no clue that the 'man with cat's eyes' might be the Master. He's described from the cat's perspective as being 'on the other side of the door.'

Ace's last visit to the youth club prominently featured not only the music of Guns and Roses, but that of 'Spondy Gee'. Search for that and you only find links to the text of this novelisation...

After saying that 'survival of the fittest' is a glib generalisation, the Doctor adds that he warned 'Charles' that it would be misinterpreted. (It was Herbert Spencer's coinage, not Darwin's). Perhaps annoyed by the inaccuracy, Paterson calls the Doctor 'scrawny'.

Sergeant Paterson is a police sergeant, not Territorial Army, and consequently says to Ace 'We let you off with a warning, didn't we?' and not 'The police let you off with a warning, didn't they?' Later on she refers to him as 'that plod' not 'that TA twit', and when he pounces on the Doctor he's in police uniform, and refers to the Neighbourhood Watch as 'they', rather than implying that he himself is part of the Neighbourhood Watch.

The Doctor doesn't explain the punchline of the lion joke to Pace, or warn him to put his running shoes on.

When Ange asks the Doctor for 10p, he puts a gold coin from Psion B weighing several ounces in her Hunt Sabs tin.

When Ace first spots the Cheetah Person, she's impressed by its beauty as well as its menace.

The Master is not discovered in a tent; he becomes visible when the massed Cheetah People part to let the kitling through them. Very cinematic.

Midge is a much nastier piece of work both on the Cheetah Planet, and in Ace's memories. His later metamorphosis seems much more credible in the light of this.

The powers, habits and interrelationship of the Cheetah People and the kitlings are outlined at length in the Doctor's thoughts. The Master appears to have been associated with them both for some considerable time before this story opens.

Ace's anti-Cheetah trap attempts are described in some detail. The second trap is a technique she learnt from a commando in 1943 - 'last week'. Incidentally, the insights into her issues that she gained in Curse of Fenric are no use to her now, because they seem unconnected to the reality of Perivale. And while we're on the retconning, she was - so we're told - thrown out of the Brownies after a petrol bomb incident. I think we're straying into the Marmalade Atkins universe here.

When told about the Master, Ace does a comic summary of the plot so far. It is quite funny, but it's not really in her voice, she doesn't say things like 'I take it he has got those?' It's more as if, the plot being at the halfway stage, Rona Munro has come out in front of the curtain to joke with us while the actors have a quick break.

The big battle and escape scene with the Cheetah People is, again, in much more detail but essentially has all the same effects in plot terms. It gets Ace to the lake for the encounter with Karra, it gets Midge to safety, and it gets the Doctor into conversation with the Master. There's a long summary of their previous relationship and it's (humourously?) implied that their rivalry stems from their schooldays when the Master was a bad loser at chess ('that demon game that exists in every world,' as Fritz Leiber pointed out).

The scene where Ace gives Karra the moon water has - famously - a distinct erotic undercurrent. It reminds me of some of my better Secondlife encounters.

We see Midge and the Master appear back in Perivale outside the block of flats. The surroundings evoke deep distaste in the Master.

While the Doctor chases after Ace and Karra, Paterson bores the others with a continuing monologue about an SAS survival course he did. It's raining on the Cheetah Planet at this point.

The animal corpse that Karra invites Ace to dine on is one that they've just hunted and killed. Ace regains her humanity as a result of watching Karra eating.

There's an extra scene where the Master and Midge visit Hale and Pace's shop and rob the till. H & P are attacked by a kitling and transported to the Cheetah Planet.

When the Doctor and party arrive back in Perivale, Derek doesn't repeat the words of Ace's sarcastic speech of gratitude. He just says 'Thanks' quietly.

Midge's flat is decorated with heavy metal posters, and it's these that Ace is looking at when she makes the remark about pensions.

After killing Paterson, Midge and his goon squad locate Derek and kill him too. Poor lad.

Midge doesn't just die after the crash, he's kicked to death by his own boot boys. Serve him right too.

When the Master sees the Doctor lying in the rubbish pile he checks that he's dead (as he thinks).

It's the moon water that Ace wants to get for Karra to make her well again. This scene is very moving on the page, it took me by surprise rather.

Ace leaves the wasteground and meets Shreela, and they have a conversation about Ace's intention to once more leave Perivale. Ace asks Shreela to get her a can of petrol for 'one last bonfire.'

When the Doctor meets the Master at the TARDIS, he says 'Good hunting, Master?' Usually scriptwriters go to some lengths to avoid having the Doctor address him thus (there's a lone exception in Logopolis, I think).
The possibility of their fight destroying the Cheetah Planet is underlined by mass volcanic eruptions, which are much cheaper to do on the page.
The Doctor yells 'If we fight we'll die!', just that. And he's under strangle attack at the climax, not bone club attack.

The annoying woman who clutters up the ending is still there, but she's the 'What are you doing?' woman from the cat food scene, shouting out of a window, rather than just some arbitrary madwoman barging into the story.

There's no Cheetah Person to dispose of the corpses. Instead Ace has instead made a pyre with the motorbikes, put Karra and Midge's bodies on it, and cremated them with the petrol she asked for earlier. Okay...

The last bit is slightly different: it's the Doctor who proposes they go back home/to the TARDIS. And the final voiceover is not present.

Target - Curse of Fenric

Again, there are deleted scenes from this story which the Target uses, and I don't note all the occasions where the novelisation uses that material.

There's some opening pontification about where a story starts or ends, but this is a comparison, not a review, so I won't comment on it.

Part of Ace's costume is a pair of size 18 bloomers. She doesn't like that any more than we do. I must say I didn't think she was quite that big around the hips.

Sorin's men are guided ashore by a lantern placed by a local woman. The 'Everything in English' line is not used.

The wording of the letter of authorisation the Doctor forges differs from that seen on screen.

At night Ace perceives a dark, ancient power in the Doctor's face. After he leaves, she overhears Kathleen comforting her baby, and this causes her to shed a tear.

While Sorin is stealthily circling the camp fence, he ruminates about the Ultima project is specifically a Naval rival to the work at Bletchley Park. Meanwhile, Petrossian isn't fleeing an unseen foe, but being spoken to and killed by the undead missing commandoes.

Mr Wainwright is described as 'young'. I like Nicholas Parsons in this, but young he is not, even back in 1989. He is however correctly referred to as Mr Wainwright throughout: well done Ian Briggs for not committing the same breach of ecclesiastical etiquette as the authors of Ghost Light and Remembrance of the Daleks, to name but two.

Ace contributes an 'And me,' and a conspiratorial smile, to the exchange about Maidens Point which survives in a deleted scene.

The scene with Millington amid his Nazi regalia has some documentary evidence attached in the form of one of his schoolboy essays.

At the beach, Phyllis tries to ponce a 'ciggie' off Ace, only to be told that she's given up. 'What for?' asks 40s Girl puzzledly.

Ace's discovery of baby Audrey is a tense moment for Kathleen, she's afraid that the Doctor will get her into trouble. 'Women - they even smelled different,' thinks Millington after delivering his ultimatum at the end of this scene

When Judson and Millington are discussing Ace, Millington suspects her of being an Army spy from Bletchley. And the reason he had the Navy's rival project set up at this particular camp was specifically to learn the meaning of the inscriptions at the church. Furthermore, Judson was paralysed as a result of Millington - jealous of his attentions to another boy - attacking him during a rugby match at school, and Judson has been emotionally blackmailing him ever since.

More documents: a translation of a Viking saga reveals that the flask was brought back from the Silk Lands via Transylvania, where a black fog appeared and began to trail the Vikings across Europe.

When Jean and Phyllis lure Trofimov into the sea, he's drawn by the 'deep musk scent of the darkness in girls.'

The camp appears to be near Whitby: one of the documents quoted is a letter from Bram Stoker to his wife regarding the disappearance and exsanguination of a local girl, together with the coy suggestion that it might inspire Stoker with a story... If you like that sort of thing, you'll love this.

We don't see Perkins taking the Wrens' chess set - the 'bonfire of burning chess sets' is already in progress as the Doctor arrives.

Just before Miss Hardaker gets killed, we learn from her reverie that she had an illegitimate child who died young, and has been shunned by the villagers ever since.

The Doctor's reference to the Orient in the crypt gives Ace the chance to use an old Hancock gag. Sadly she isn't being ironic.

The faith that the Doctor uses during the Haemovore attack on the church is faith in his companion - he mentally goes through a list of their names. Ace can hear odd words from the creatures - which the Doctor tells her means that she's slightly telepathic. And she also thinks some interesting thoughts about 'the powerful Russian' and the idea of 'tumbling with him into oblivion.'

Sorin is thinking of other things just then: his family and all the workers by hand and by mind. When he brandishes the red star, its significance as the international symbol of the working class is explained by the narrator.

Another document, this one the recounting the Doctor and Fenric's original chess game, told as an Arabian Nights pastiche, translated by an ancestor of Judson. There's some truly awful humour about the 'Island of Dhógs and the White City' but an interesting bit about the Doctor subsequently leaving with the freed slave Zeleekha, who returns two years later bearing the Fenric flask and telling tales of fabulous travels among the stars.

After Sorin's capture, the Doctor and Millington swap talk about the 'status azure' Hindle-style suicidal defence plan.

The Doctor says 'Evil from the dawn of time', not 'since'. And Ace doesn't say anything about a wind whipping through her clothes: she employs a much better weather metaphor, about the heat causing them to stick to her. Unfortunately though she still does the bit about moving so fast that she doesn't exist.

Judson/Fenric doesn't accuse Crane of humiliating him, but he does reveal that she'd been a Russian spy all along.

Kathleen's escape is much embellished, although Ace doesn't do the bit about the empty house in Perivale. The photo is handed over before they leave the hut, and they don't just climb out of the window, they smash through the floor, and then they both drive through some Haemovores in the jeep before Ace stops, gives Kathleen the address, and watches her drive out of sight.

When the Doctor is listing the 'coincidences' that failed to convince him, Lady Peinforte's chess set is not mentioned.

Sadly, Bates and Vershinin don't revive in this version.

While Ace is taking her carthartic swim at the end, she doesn't have the 'always love you' thoughts - instead she has a vision of hundreds of Aces, each representing one of her emotions. She acknowledges them her own and lets them go, and comes to the surface.

The final exchange with the Doctor is absent. But: there is an epilogue set in Paris, 1887, where the Doctor appears to be visiting 'Dorothée' after some years. (Not that many though, as she's still a 'young lady'). She has her eye on a certain Count Sorin... the author returns to his opening ramblings about the circularity or linearity of stories, and at least he has some justification this time after such a strange envoi.

Target: Ghost Light

As is widely known, the screen version was heavily cut down to fit 3 episodes - some say to the point of incomprehensibility - and the Target retains much of the original material. I won't note every single example of an expanded conversation, concentrating instead on memorable bits from the novelisation which a new viewer might be surprised to find omitted on screen. That, after all, was the original purpose of these comparisons.

We join Ace shortly after the 'white kids firebombed it' incident, kicking open a door in the garden wall of an old house. In the overgrown garden she finds a stone lion

She briefly thought of childishly pencilling a pair of spectacles across the beast's stone face, but dismissed the idea as kids' book stuff.

(for anyone who doesn't recognise the allusion, it's to Edmund in Jadis' castle in The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe). In the TARDIS, there's some philosophical rambling about the Doctor as cosmic juggler, though it does come neatly to a point with the observation that he accepts Ace for what she is - a delinquent. She meanwhile is just wondering why he never changes his clothes.

We join the Rev Mr Matthews on his way to Gabriel Chase in the station dogcart. The time of year is September, and it's 5.52pm when he arrives at the house, and by 6pm the sun has set. Remember that please. Oh, and he sees the stone lion too.

The microscope in the observatory has a 'flywheel'. I thought a flywheel was a huge great heavy wheel for conserving momentum, not a delicate little focusing wheel.

Matthews sees a photo of Gwendoline and realises he's seen her in the audience at the opera. Very few Churchmen from this era would have visited a theatre, they were considered dens of immorality.The Doctor notes that a stuffed okapi is on show a couple of decades before they were discovered. Either a hint of upcoming oddness or a reproof to the nitpicker.Redvers is literally under the delusion that the house is a jungle - it's quite well described in his journal entries, which we read. He sees the carpets as beds of thickly matted leaves and so on. Unfortunately, we read that the date is September 19th - when sunset in Perivale was at 6.07pm in the pre-daylight savings time era. That's some 10 minutes later than the time of sunset established during Mr Matthews' arrival.

When Redvers holds the Doctor at gunpoint, the latter realises that he's too close to palm the bullets (?).

As Ace is taken away by Gwendoline to change clothes, she shouts that she isn't going to wear a bustle, and the Doctor urges her to try for some 'parlour-cred'. I think this must be what the 'OK Professor, you win' line in the deleted corset scene is about.There's an extra scene between Josiah and Nimrod where they argue about the cave-bear's tooth. It sets up the idea that Nimrod is ultimately going to leave Josiah's service.It's the Doctor's jumper that he says Mr Matthews doesn't like, not his tie. A sequence is inserted here before Josiah enters, with the Doctor playing boogie-woogie, and then the Moonlight Sonata, on the piano. Didn't really work as Seventh Doctor characterisation for me. Ace notices a dolls' house in Gwendoline's room - the inhabitants being a family of stuffed red squirrels. Gwendoline produces a box of cigars and offers her one to cement their friendship.

The Doctor distressingly refers to Ace's dinner jacket as a 'tuxedo', American-style. Later on he makes pointed references to Georges Sand and Vesta Tilley.

We hear the Doctor's thoughts about the progress of Ace's 'test' - which is after all ostensibly the whole premise of the story.

The last two lines of That's The Way To The Zoo are slightly different - and inferior to the screen version in my opinion. But 'white kids firebombed it' is there in all its glory.

The book in which Ace finds the term 'lucifugous' is Essays on the Unity of Worlds by Rev Baden Powell, who Platt refers to as Rev Baden-Powell, which is wrong in that (a) his surname is Powell and (b) Rev John Smith, Mr Smith, never Rev Smith. I couldn't find 'lucifugous' in the online version but we know that OCR still has some way to go.

Ace's breakfast has several extra items, and she's relieved that everything in the list isn't on the same plate. Mrs Grose brings it in on the Doctor's instructions: he's conducted a long interview with her earlier in the day.

There's an extra scene where Mrs Grose discovers Control in the drawing room and has to be revived from her shock with brandy, while Control returns to the basement. Mrs G walks off the job forthwith. The Doctor tells her to give his regards to Peter Quint (look that up and you'll find Henry James' story The Turn of the Screw in which a Mrs Grose features).

The reason Light is confused to find himself on Earth is that their next destination was a barren planet with a few social moss colonies.

The Inspector enters the scene with Light and Nimrod because he's being pursued by maids armed with machetes, who Mrs Pritchard has ordered to dispatch him. (That last is a deleted scene)

In the scene where Control saves Ace from Gwendoline, Control actually climbs into the room through the window, she isn't just already in there. The 'vicious little Victorian' epithet is transferred to the narration.

In between iusifying the Inspector, and calcifying Mrs P and Gwendoline, Light has been flying all round the world getting increasingly annoyed by the amount of change.

Before Light ladles up a portion of primeval soup, Ace does the same, and finds the Inspector's badge dangling off the ladle. The chapter, by the way, is called Beautiful Soup, which matches the other Alice in Wonderland reference in the earlier Ace's Adventures Under Ground.

The final exchange between the Doctor and Ace is just the same, but when he says 'Wicked.' he thinks 'That's my girl!'. I must say I think that is not an improvement.

Target: Battlefield

Marc Platt adapting an Aaronovitch script, and the result is exactly as you'd expect.

Like with Remembrance of the Daleks, there are very few changes to the central story, but there are a lot of extra background details.

A prologue shows us Arthur at the lake. Basically right, anything in this book that looks like mediaeval weaponry is a sophisticated technological device. I'm only going to tell you once, MP tells us hundreds of times. Likewise, the 'sisters' are from the Thirteen Worlds, etc etc etc. We see Arthur's meeting with Merlin, who talks rather like the Third Doctor but probably isn't him, what with wearing a brown felt hat and a tatty Afghan coat and having finger cymbals about his person.

Bambera gets the standard NA combatwank treatment. I can't stand characters who give distances in 'clicks'. She's also undergone the standard grittification process, spending for example a night on the whisky in her quarters at UNIT HQ.

The screen version takes place in 'the future' but that's handled pretty lightly - the Target is still coy about the exact year (1998/99) but goes into far more detail about everything else. Inevitably some of this stuff has been overtaken by history (few modern-day readers will be impressed by EPROM cartridges, or the reference to the ECU) but some of it isn't bad, like the idea that the 2CV runs on methane and the further developments in crisp flavours. Also thrown in are references to the warming climate, a colony of wild wallabies near the hotel and the Russians as top international cricketers.

We get Excalibur's POV during the gale when it signals to the falling TARDIS (yes, literally falling through the atmosphere due to gravity).

Mordred is first seen on the piss in a tavern - one of his problems is that, being immortal, he outlives all his drinking companions and has to find new ones. His current one is starting to bore him, and when he is summoned by Morgaine he leaves him excellently 'asleep among the last dregs of their friendship.'

The Doctor speculates that UNIT is 'probably coldly technological and characterless' without the Brigadier; a fair assumption from what follows.

Dr Warmsly has a big comedy dog called Cerberus, who is very funny indeed.

Ace notices that Liz Shaw's UNIT card expired on the 31.12.75, which favours the 'few years in the future' UNIT dating theory. The Doctor tells her to act like a physicist (not think like one).

Bambera has attended lectures at Sandhurst given by 'Chunky' Gilmore.

Doris got back together with the Brigadier after seeing a TV documentary about UNIT. I don't really like this sort of thing but I grudgingly enjoyed the presenter's remark about the 'terrible ecological accident at Llanfairfach'.

The Doctor notes that Winifred is a form of the name Guinevere (vice versa really).

The TARDIS is described as a 'Seventies type' police box - well, future or not, we know Ian & Barbara came from 1963 so it can't possibly be, unless '70s' is some internal police coding.

There's some soldierly characterisation for Bambera: for example, when confronted by the armed knights she immediately appreciates the construction and defensive capacity of their armour.

Ancelyn is explicitly said to have a mischievous expression on his face when he says 'I don't talk to peasants': this is not apparent (to me) on screen where it jars with the rest of the way he's portrayed.

I'd never noticed the 'Let this be our last battlefield' quote before. The reference stands out more strongly on the page somehow.

In flight over London, the Brigadier spots various landmarks where he saw action with UNIT - Covent Garden and St Paul's. (He wasn't actually at St Paul's when the Cybermen appeared, but never mind).

Ace becomes very resentful of the Brigadier when he mentions that the Doctor has had other companions. It's all about her, isn't it? (This is hinted at in one of the deleted scenes). She and Shou Youing get eyed up by a couple of UNIT squaddies, which probably doesn't help.

The Doctor refers to Ancelyn as a 'perfick' gentil knight. Chaucer said 'parfit', this isn't the Darling Buds of May.

He also has an 8th-century Arthur fighting the invading Saxons. Only a fool would try and argue about what century Arthur came from, but the Saxons had finished invading by about AD 600.

And he says 'There will be no battle here' but it's explicitly stated that 'he did not shout.'

When the Destroyer first appears he's rather coolly wearing a modern suit. Soldiers attack him from the hotel lobby, but are promptly destroyed.

Shou Yuing half expects another demon to turn up for her to deal with - the Monkey King.

The Doctor mentally compares the Destroyer against the 7,405,926 demons on the Talmudic table - a rare Target appearance for Jewish mythology, following Harry Sullivan's ideas about the Golem in Sontaran Experiment.

The Doctor consults a pocket watch given to him in return for supplying a 'couple of one liners in The Marriage of Figaro'.

When Bambera is last seen, she's wearing a ring with the emblem of Ancelyn's noble house. What a romantic image.

I feel about this Target as I do about Remembrance: if you're going to adapt a story in NA style, this isn't too bad a way of doing it. And similarly, the differences from the screen version are largely in the background details, so at least it doesn't give too misleading a picture of the original story.

Target: Greatest Show in the Galaxy

The return of Stephen Wyatt, once again adapting his own script.

The Ringmaster is never specifically said to be rapping, just 'declaiming'. He has the air of a professional - but perhaps one who's been doing the job too long. The prologue has a whole list of these suggestions of things that the audience might find disturbing about the Psychic Circus, or on the other hand, might not. The final one is that we might wish we'd decided to stay at home and watch television instead.

The Doctor isn't bothered by the disappearance of his juggling ball, nor does he go looking for it in the ceiling; but he's properly concerned about how the advertising satellite manages to materialise inside the TARDIS. All the pictures it shows of Segonax are of a green, verdant landscape.

The hearse and funereal clothes are a considered choice by the Chief Clown, partly because they give an impression of legitimacy.

Nord is not seen until the Doctor and Ace are at the stall. His bike is not said to have more than two wheels. He likes sandwiches rather than burgers, and threatens the Doctor's nose rather than his face.

The 'nice walk in the countryside' joke is not used; instead Ace complains about the distance between the Circus and the place where the Doctor chose to land the TARDIS. He on the other hand has some new lines about Segonax having once been green and pleasant, and having friendly inhabitants (Ace's line about being 'chuffed', which seems like a non-sequitur on screen, might be a remnant of this passage?)

When we meet the Captain and Mags we hear the earlier part of his lecture about the valley, which on screen is delivered when he arrives at the Circus in his jeep later on: the valley he's talking about is on Neogorgon and was full of electronic dogs' heads submerged in mud. The robot head in the sand on Segonax can speak, pleading for release, and then issuing threats.

Like his counterpart Nord, we don't meet the Whizzkid till he arrives at the fruit stall, and this happens several intercuts earlier than it does on screen.

Nord is still some distance from the Circus when he asks the clown for directions: the latter is on a high wire in the middle of nowhere.

It takes a couple of extra scenes to get from the robot head to the bus; I think their purpose is to show us the Captain's selfishness in not giving the Doctor and Ace a lift there in his jeep. He refers to Ace pointedly as 'your young "friend"', I have no idea what's being aimed at here. The bus's hippy interior makes Ace think of her Aunt Rosemary's interminable, Captain Cook-style reminiscences of the Sixties.

The Doctor doesn't include a crocodile sandwich in his list of requests to the bus conductor robot.

Captain Cook got his double-headed coins in return for a supersonic pencil sharpener.

'Let me entertain you,' says the Chief Clown to Ace as the robots drag her away.

In the Doctor's remarks to Mags at the pit, there's a reference to his advising Rameses II on traps.

We do not see the Whizzkid being picked out of the audience by the Ringmaster - this is merely anticipated by Morgana. There is however an extra scene at the cage, where the Ringmaster, Morgana and the Chief Clown are discussing the importance of finding a new act. The Whizzkid interrupts the Chief Clown with an eager request for an autograph, causing him to stare incredulously.

When the Whizzkid has met his end, his smashed glasses are excellently described as 'the sole remaining souvenir' of the Circus' greatest fan.

Mags is upset by the Whizzkid's demise, partly because it's forcing her to give up her illusions about the Captain, who she'd previously admired. After the silver bullet line, by the way, he boasts that he's played whist with the Card Carrying Dervishes of Tyrade, and won.

The werewolf transformation gets an extra bit of declamation from the Ringmaster, declaring that it's quite a surprise.

Ace thinks of using Nord's bike to get her and Deadbeat to the bus, but it isn't working again.

Morgana and the Ringmaster's disappearing act is slightly different: each box turns out to contain a series of concentric smaller boxes inside it, the last box being empty (not even the top hat).

Just before going into the arena, the Doctor explains to Mags that the Chief Clown is after the medallion now as it's his only hope.

The hearse actually crashes into the end of the fruit stall, rather than just being delayed by it. I expect the hearse hire company wouldn't have stood for that on screen.

'You know what I really like about you, Kingpin? ... you've stopped singing,' Ace tells him on the way back from the bus.

After the Doctor challenges the Gods by reminding them that he's fought against them all through time, the narrator adds that 'other free-wheeling and questioning spirits' have joined the same fight.

Mags is horrified by the final demise of the Captain.

At the denouement, the circus tent sinks into the ground (rather than just collapsing). Leaflets are scattered for miles around.

There's a nice coda in which Kingpin's invitation to stay is followed by the Doctor's reflection that this moment has come countless times before: 'The moment of farewell when others wanted him to stay. The moment of going gracefully.'

This is one of my favourite stories, and, like Kinda and Castrovalva, one which the Target first showed me the real virtues of when the screen version had gone right over my head on original broadcast.

Target: Silver Nemesis

Another self-adaptation - pretty much the norm in the later era - by Kevin Clarke. There's a problem with this comparison - the screen version people are most likely to see is the 'extended' video edition, and comparing to that would be like comparing to the DVDs including deleted scenes, which I've resolutely not done in previous cases. The problem is that I'm not 100% sure which bits are deleted scenes. The Ministry of Truth were hard at work on the history of this story before the 'Restoration' Team were even thought of. So I may have missed some Target additions where those additions are also in the 'extended' version.

There's an opening pan across space to Earth, which appears 'as a backcloth to some small theatrical performance taking place on a limited budget', and the Nemesis meteor.

Then it's straight to the Doctor and Ace at the pub on Sunday afternoon. The weather seen on screen is not very November-like, and here it's definitely said to be summer. (November 23rd 1988 was a Wednesday, so this can't be the same day as the action in Windsor and at the crypt anyway).

If you like jazz and think the Doctor should like it too, there are lots of descriptions of his thoughts in this book that you're going to enjoy. If you preferred it when he liked Buddhism, you're not so lucky. The band aren't famous enough for Ace to want an autograph, she just buys one of their tapes instead.

Intercut with this is the archery scene with Lady Peinforte (aiming at a blackbird not a pigeon) and the scene with the mathematician. The imminent demise of the latter is signalled when Lady P asks Richard, with sinister politeness, to close the door.

(The transcriber points out that the mathematician's prediction doesn't allow for the adjustment of the calendar by omitting 11 days in 1752. I wish that had occurred to me. Perhaps the Doctor included that fact in the information on the card?)

There's an appalling Rocketman-style cheat when the semi-Cybes attack by the river: 'The force of the bullets threw the Doctor and Ace headlong into the water.' Are they wearing bulletproof vests or something?

The Nazi scenes begin here.

'I always liked the Eighties. They were a time of great certainty in England,' remarks the Doctor after his miraculous escape.

Lady P and Richard materialise in the Princess of Wales Burger Bar in Windsor, which is empty. Most of their scenes have extra bits: for example, she mentions not being married, and when she speaks of reckoning with the Doctor, there's a flash of lightning on cue.

The Doctor doesn't put glasses on to hypnotise the royal protection squad. The portrait of Ace bit from the extended edition is included.

Nemesis lands on a building site - this is important later on during Ace's fight with the Cybermen.

Richard's prayers and good resolutions during the Cyber-combat are given at greater length. Very funny dialogue even without Gerard Murphy. The Cyberleader does not know who Lady Peinforte is. At least one policeman survives this scene.

The extended scene where the Doctor and Ace return to 1638 to burn the card that gave the mathematician his start, and to move the chess pieces, is not used.

It's giraffes, not llamas, that terrify Richard in the safari park. The narrator says that neither he nor Lady P can read the warning sign: surely if she has some Latin, she can read English too?

De Flores and Karl are not seen looking at a map. They don't appear until the Ring of the Nibelungen bit. The line about Wagner needing to be rewritten is postponed until they're in the crypt.

The sight gag with the Doctor pouring marbles into Ace's hands in response to her 'Have you lost your marbles?' question is not used. There's an extra line in this scene about having to keep the Cybermen talking.

The extended edition bit with de Flores throwing gold dust at the Cybermen in the crypt is used.

The applause at the end of the jazz transmission stirs long-forgotten memories in the Cyberleader.

Ace and the Doctor's chess moves with the bow and the Cybermen are preceded by a bit where the Doctor taunts the Cybermen for talking in a dull way. 'Everything's always "Kill him," or "Excellent"', he says, doing an impression of the Cyberleader.

There's no further visit to 1638 to fiddle with the chessboard and pick up the gold coins. The ones the Doctor gives to Ace are just produced from his pocket.

The highly amusing American lady is called Mrs Hackensack (not Remington). Having given her a comedy American name, KC has written himself into a corner and has to call her ancestors' house Hackensack Grange. Hackensack, like most stock funny American names, isn't remotely English but Dutch, so that's a very unlikely name for an English country house.

Lady P and Richard are astonished to be going as fast as 30mph in the car, as they would be.

The fact that the statue's landing site is a building site, not just a warehouse, comes into play when the Cybermen pursue Ace through the half-built house, with much plaster dust and shattering brickwork. This does make the fight rather more exciting. She climbs down a drainpipe at one point, which reminds her of sneaking out of her parents' house back in Perivale. 'I've heard of metal fatigue, but you lot are pathetic,' she shouts at the Cybes.

Although Ace seems to place the Nitro-9 on screen, I can't see her actually trying to detonate it. In the book, the detonator is crushed by the Cyberlieutenant before she can use it.

During the Doctor's instructions to Nemesis, he's described as 'the most mysterious being in space and time.'

In the final Lady P/Doctor/Cyberleader confrontation, some of her lines are missed out and shortened. She doesn't mention Gallifrey, the old time, or the chaos. But she also has some extra lines about the statue being the Doctor's creation, and when Ace says that she knows he's a Time Lord, Lady P replies 'And you think that is all.' The Cyberleader, by the way, doesn't say anything about the secrets of the Time Lords meaning nothing to them. Finally, Lady P isn't just dismissed from the exchange, she joins Ace in her horror at the idea of giving the bow to the Cybermen.

Once Richard understands what 'giving him a lift' means, he says 'methinks I hear celestial music.' This leads into the final scene - a return visit to the jazz pub and his referring to the barman as the potman. I much prefer the finish with flute/lute ensemble back in 1638 myself - as I do the Doctor's original response to the 'Who are you?' question. On the page, instead of enigmatically putting a finger to his lips, he winks and smiles as if he's in the opening credits.

I'm not so keen on this Target - it seems to fiddle unnecessarily with the enjoyable bits of the screen version without improving the story. But the extra Richard/Lady Peinforte bits are worth having, if like me you think that the duo are the best thing in the story by miles.

Target: The Happiness Patrol

Graeme C adapting his own script here. He fills in plot holes and gets things that were realised differently back the way he wanted. When this means trying to make the story grittier, I don't think he's successful, because the story is basically an allegory, and like all allegories, analogies and metaphors, the more closely you look at it the more it comes apart.

Daphne S is looking sad because her son's just been disappeared. She thinks Silas P might be trustworthy because he's reading a copy of the secret underground killjoy paper, The Grief - this isn't seen on screen till the scene where he tries to entrap the Doctor.

After meeting Trevor Sigma, the Doctor and Ace visit the Kandy Kitchen, which has a handy, clearly marked, unlocked external door. Something, though we're not shown what, is clearly present under the manhole.

We don't see the Happiness Patrol painting the TARDIS pink until after they have encountered Earl, and given him his smiley sticker. Many scenes are shifted back and forth relative to the screen version like this, from here on I'm only reporting those changes that seem to have a significant effect on the story. On the other hand, there's a lot less intercutting, we rarely leave and return to the same scene once it's in progress.

The Pipe People are the original inhabitants of Terra Alpha. They used to live off the wild sugar-beet in which the planet abounds.

The Happiness Patrol jeeps play ice-cream van chimes (their vehicles just make beeping noises on screen). And the Patrol themselves wear paramilitary uniforms - I suppose their base clothing on screen could be described as such. They are not said to have pink hair: only Helen A is definitely said to have the distinctive screen coiffure.

Trevor Sigma visits the Kandy Kitchen and converses with Gilbert M, who he met on a previous visit to Terra Alpha. His purpose is to interview the Kandy Man, who is introduced at this point: he is not said to be anything other than human - a powerfully built man in a lab coat, with red glasses and a bow tie. However, his skin is coated with what we suspect to be sugar, and his feet make sucking sounds on the floor as he walks. (I wonder if this is the original concept, or a post-production redesign?) He dismisses Trevor Sigma immediately.

Fifi is the last Stigorax on Terra Alpha. Helen A hunted her down personally.

The man being gunged is Andrew X, a subversive killjoy writer and the brother who Harold V has just spoken of. Although he published anonymously, the Patrol tracked him down by putting together all the local references in his writings. A lesson for all bloggers and Target comparators there.

Distracted by the call to start the execution, the Kandy Man accidentally cuts off his thumb. This annoys him as he'll have to waste time reattaching it. These hints that, while he may look human, he actually isn't, are quite disturbing in their cumulative effect.

Ace takes the piss out of Susan Q after being arrested, asking if she's Valerie V - Zelda Z - Wendy W? The 'blues songs' reference is expanded into a back story about her collection of blues 78s and previous occupation as a singer and dancer.

Following her 'disappearing act', Ace is rearrested and taken before Helen A, to be menaced by Fifi. During this scene Susan Q is brought in and roughed up. The 'Up the killjoys!' demo scene is then inserted before Ace and Susan Q both end up in the Waiting Zone.

There's some extra chat between the snipers, David S and Alex S, which establishes that Alex is the evil one of the pair.

We're shown the outside of Helen A's residence, with its neglected rosebeds.

On his way back to the Kandy Kitchen, the Doctor has an extra establishing encounter with the stage doorman at the Forum, Ernest P. During their next scene together, Priscilla P is on the doors, checking the theatregoers for killjoy tendencies by testing out jokes on them.

Ace and Susan Q's journey to the Forum under Patrol guard is interrupted by an attack from a killjoy sniper.

Having seen Fifi apparently crushed under the crystallised sugar, the Doctor instructs Earl and Susan Q to deal with Priscilla P, which we duly see them do.

The only time that the sex of the newscaster is mentioned, he's a man (always female on screen).

The Kandy phone is made out of twisty blue and pink sweets.

Having told Ace that she mustn't join in the 'wanton destruction of public property', the Doctor winks and says 'But in this case, yes.' Tsk.

Asked by Joseph C about the origins of the Kandy Man, Gilbert has a long reverie about how he came to flee Vasilip with the mind of his friendly rival, Seivad, in a suitcase. Helen A made him create a monster out of Seivad (whose mind was twisted with anger and injustice, and probably from being put in a suitcase too I reckon). 'He couldn't face long explanations,' remarks the narrator, and has him give the same short reply as on screen.

In the shuttle, Joseph C realises he's still holding Fifi's lead when he tells Helen A that she must have slipped his mind.

The manhole covers leading from the pipes up into the palace sensibly all have combination locks, but this doesn't hold the Doctor up long. He enters Helen A's office by sliding down a pole from the Patrol guardroom above.

The fleeing Helen A still has some courage while the muzak is playing - and is correspondingly disheartened when it's replaced by the harmonica music. The Doctor's final words in this scene are 'It's done' not 'Tis done'.

Priscilla and Daisy's final exchange is only referred to in summary. Ace wants to go after Joseph and Gilbert, but Susan says to forget it, as it was the Kandy Man who was evil, not Gilbert.

Target: Remembrance of the Daleks

Shades of the NA treatment from Ben Aaronovitch here - but there's also a hard SF theme fighting for dominance. Together with the lighter tone of parts of the original story this is an uncomfortable mixture, but one which makes for an interesting read.

The events of the story are almost exactly the same. There's a prologue where the First Doctor returns to 76 Totters Lane only to hear the words 'It's Susan,' and realise that he's about to be considerably delayed. Coal Hill is in Shoreditch (rather than just being filmed there). The French Revolution book is not seen (they got the cover wrong on screen anyway). Ace watches Muffin The Mule on telly, not the Unearthly Child continuity announcement. The 'cane-cutter' scene takes place in a different cafe, down by the docks. The vapourisation of Skaro by the supernova is seen.

The real differences are in the expanded character back-stories, so I'll present them character by character:

The Doctor - is very much the omniscient Cartmel Masterplan Doctor. There are some flashbacks to conversations between Rassilon, Omega and an 'other', who we are at liberty to think is him. He also hypnotises Rachel into forgetting the deductions she makes about fibre optics and holograms from watching him at work.

Ace - three characterisations at war here. Ace of the NAs, all explosive recipes, weapons obsession and awareness of Mike looking at her breasts. 'White kids' Ace, struck by the monocultural Coal Hill School. And shouty Marmalade Atkins Ace with her baseball bat, explosive deodorant cans and attempts to cook plutonium in the TARDIS microwave. The three Aces do not sit easily together.

Rachel Jensen - constantly amazed by the Doctor's abilities and knowledge to the point that it becomes annoying. Romantically involved with Gilmore during the war when she was in the WAAF (and may get together with him again after the end of the book). Also worked with Turing. Is Jewish, and at one point has a dream of her childhood synagogue with the Doctor in the rabbi's place.

Allison - same as Rachel really. 'She's doing it again. I hate it when she does that,' she thinks when Ace makes another casual tech reference. Exactly what I began to feel about her and Rachel's POV bits.

Sgt Mike Smith - running wild as a kid in bombed-out post-war London, he met Ratcliffe and was given chocolate and a lot of warped ideas about Jews and communists. Also has memories of service in Malaya.

Not UNIT - in the Dragonfire comparison I complained about the absence of the tea-and-grumbling style of military characterisation. This makes a welcome return in this Target, so one up to BA there. But there's also some rhapsodic specification porn about the FN-FAL rifle. Get out of it, this is a DW adaptation not the Commando War Picture Library. One of the chapter epigraphs is from a History of UNIT, and states that Not UNIT were indeed the origin of that organisation.

Gp Capt Gilmore - is only referred to as Chunky once, by his men, out of his hearing. It's clearly not a nickname his friends use. Good thing too - if ever a sound DW character was weakened by a silly name, it was Gilmore on screen. He's the conscientious CO who recalls his men's biographical details when they're killed. And he's disturbed (in a serious, 'I know what war is really like' way) by Ace's enthusiasm for weaponry.

The Daleks - this is where the hard SF style I mentioned comes in. There's much Dalek POV with descriptions of their support systems and technology. They have lots of little servo robots on their ships - and the ships have names. That last point made me realise that the style in these passages is rather reminiscent of how Iain Banks would write about Daleks, if he chose to do so.
It's implied that they achieved the final extermination of the Thals (well, I reckon they escaped). They have a special name for the Doctor. None of them like the Special Weapons Dalek, or 'the Abomination' as they think of it.
Humans 'make dangerous slaves' - an astute observation, since every time we've seen the Daleks employing unhealthy coughing humanoids, it's ended in disaster.
The Time Controller is still a plasma globe.

Ratcliffe - has 'the bearing of a soldier', which is odd because he was interned throughout the war for being a fascist. He has glorious memories of Cable Street so was probably in the BUF itself. The Dalek controller just appeared one day in his office. And he impressed Mike the week before the story opened by having advance knowledge of the Kennedy assassination!

Davros - is obviously the Emperor much earlier on in the action, thanks to some fairly broad hints in the description of his thoughts.

John the cane-cutter's son - is comforted by the thought of his alternate African self.

The vicar - is named Parkinson (incorrectly referred to as Reverend Parkinson. Rev John Smith, Mr Smith but never Rev Smith). He was blinded at Verdun. Another explicit reference to the Seventh Doctor's Scottish accent in his scene.

The Hand of Omega - is semi-sentient and gets several POV scenes.

Considering this Target as an adaptation of the screen version, I don't like it at all, it's hardly DW and the Doctor, for all the hints about his cosmic importance, is seen almost entirely from other people's point of view. As an experiment in writing DW in a contemporary way, it isn't bad, it's certainly better than the actual NAs though it has enough of their faults to put me off it.

(Thanks to Zone posters for corrections/quibbling)

Target: Dragonfire

Really wasn't looking forward to this one, as I find the story extremely dull and I didn't fancy reading Ian Briggs' treatment of it. But will I have to eat my words and say that it helped make the story more interesting, again?

Mel is standing on her head when first seen. Her stroppy attitude when offered a jelly baby makes the Doctor reflect that he never had an older sister.

The little girl, Stellar, has a best friend back at home called Milli-mind. It's made clear that the people in the Freezer Centre have stopped there on space journeys to stock up with food. It doesn't make it that much more realistic, but it's better than the screen version where it just seems like there's a contemporary supermarket in space for no good reason.

The Iceworld cafe is run by a man named Eisenstein, not Anderson. Ian Briggs wants to give the place more the ambience of the Mos Eisley cantina than the Children's BBC atmosphere shown on screen. Amongst the extra lines given to Glitz is one where, having failed to get the Doctor to help him get the hundred crowns, he appeals to Mel: 'think of the adventures we had together...'

The Doctor is able to correct Mel's pronunciation of 'Loch Ness' because he has an 'authentic Scottish accent' in this incarnation. I know that might sound like stating the obvious but it was never explicitly referred to on screen.

The 'real McCoy' joke is not used.

Ace doesn't tip a second milkshake over Eisenstein. Amongst the mess observed by Mel in her bedroom are many discarded items of underwear. The story of the explosion in the school art room ends with the first years' pottery pigs all over the sports field.

At the Singing Trees, Glitz refers to crowns and not grotzits when he sees the valuable crystals. There's an extra scene where he gets pinned under a block of ice and the Doctor saves his life, causing him to comment that the Doctor is an 'odd fish'. IB describes the Doctor, by the way, as having a peculiar face.

Ace resists Kane's temptation because she suddenly sees him as telling her to do as she's told, just like her parents and teachers did.

Glitz finds the Ice Garden and realises it's functioning as a planetarium.

The Doctor's actions at the ice cliff are carefully explained: he wants to climb down because that's the only way forwards into the tunnels. He hangs off his umbrella because the cracks in the ice that he's using for holds are too far apart, and the umbrella extends his reach.

Ace and Mel's climb down the cliff is much expanded. They use climbing gear, and there's this bizarre conversation:

'I think you've got that harness on upside-down. I think those tight straps are supposed to go between your legs.'
Ace looked down, and giggled. 'It's a good job I'm not a boy!' she laughed. Mel smiled - and then she began to laugh as well. This wasn't going to be a bit like they always showed it on telly!

One of Ace's Nitro-9 canisters springs a leak on the way down, and Mel saves her. Much bonding results. This comes to mind later on, when Ace and Mel hide from the undead crewmembers in a crack in the ice (not under some stairs):

She held Mel tight in the darkness. Her cheek was pressed against Mel's. She could feel her gentle breathing.

Bazin and McLuhan (the ANT-hunting soldiers) think and are described in traditional NA style - all lock-and-load and weapon specifications. I never find this impressive when it crops up in the newer Targets, I prefer the tea-and-grumbling style of soldiering of the UNIT era. (Which, significantly, was written by people who had fought real wars).

During the argument between Glitz and Ace about who's going to the Nosferatu to get the explosive, we're told that 'he always had trouble with feminists - usually because they were right and he was wrong.' It sounds like Glitz is thinking that but that doesn't make sense. Anyway, there's an extra bit where Ace and Mel disobediently follow him and find him waiting round a corner looking cross, so they go back and play I-spy.

All the docked spaceships have people crowding onto them to escape Kane's mercenaries, and he blows all of them up.

Stellar's mother orders Glitz to start looking for her child.

At the point where Ace takes the short-cut to her quarters, there's graffiti on the wall saying ACE 4 WAYNE (the book has a picture, very unusual for a late Target). Wayne, she explains, is her soft toy dog. She actually reaches her quarters here, only to be dragged away by Kane.

Stellar encounters Kane getting out of his fridge. She has Teddy tells him that he's sorry for disturbing him. Kane ignores Teddy and Stellar. When she takes Teddy out of the fridge later, she drops him and he shatters into bits, making her cry. Poignantly, the tears turn into ice crystals before they hit the floor.

Glitz takes the Nitro-9 from Ace's room and uses it to wire up the cryogenics chamber. The Doctor and Mel meet him here. She hitches up her skirt to climb over the detonator wires - on screen she's wearing trousers. The remaining mercenaries attack: although the Nitro won't explode, Glitz desperately throws Ace's toy dog Wayne (which he finds in her holdall) at them, and being full of nitroglycerin, it explodes.

There's no tannoy announcement from 'Captain Glitz'.

This Target does make the story clearer, but this time that still wasn't enough to make me enjoy it. Glitz is the best thing in it in either version.

Target: Delta and the Bannermen

Malcolm Kohll adapting his own script. My edition has DELTA AND THE BANNERMAN on the spine, which I trust is a mistake.

There's a TARDIS scene to start with with the Doctor and Mel's tea being interrupted by the tollport message, and some business about getting money out of the kitty. This was scripted but not screened, I believe, and similarly unscreened bits are scattered throughout the book. Some of them are just half lines and won't be noted separately unless they're particularly interesting. This is a comparison, not a dual text with critical apparatus.

Mel uses 'her best Spaniel look' to persuade the Doctor to take the prize holiday.

Only when the prize has been offered do we cut to the action on Chumeria. The Bannermen aren't just a mercenary band, there's a whole race of them, trying to take over the Chimerons' planet (they polluted their own one). Both species appear to live for thousands of years.

Hawk and Weismuller have been posted to Wales, England as a form of demotion. If they do well, they'll get re-promoted. They get their instructions to call the White House from a message hidden in a film canister inside a hollow tree.

Murals at the tollport depict various species of alien travellers: Mel recognises three of them, none of which have been involved in televised adventures.

Navarino is a 'tri-polar' moon.

Weismuller bemoans the lack of doo-wop on his radio (rather than of rock'n'roll). There are extra remarks from the unscreened bits of script in all these scenes with the agents.

It's not stated that the Doctor uses his umbrella to activate the TARDIS vortex drive.

Two Navarinos question Billy about his motorbike. They're impressed once they realise it's a form of transport.

After the unsuccessful navipod repair, the Doctor mentions that he used to have a sonic screwdriver. There's also an exchange with Billy here which makes clear that he didn't fancy Ray even before Delta came along.

At dinner the Doctor tells Mel to persuade Delta to come to the dance, as it might encourage her to relax and confide in them.

Billy turns up at the chalet with a bouquet in time for the Chimeron egg cliffhanger, instead of after the egg has opened.

Vinny, the camp announcer - er, the announcer at the holiday camp - is described as wrinkled, rather than the smooth young man seen on screen.

The 'special place' to which Billy takes Delta is a beach, not a riverbank.

Neither Ray nor Burton says anything in Welsh in the 'space buns' scene. (On screen she says 'Mae'n wir' (it's true) and he says something which I can't catch.) He doesn't ask to go for a spin in the TARDIS, but he wants to get one for the camp next year, and plans to write an article about it for Campers Weekly.

Vinny was Burton's batman in the army, which accounts for his wish not to retreat from the camp, and also of course for his greater age in the novel. Once Burton's got rid of the staff, he eats a bar of chocolate, something he always does in a crisis. From this point on he's given a lot of military thoughts about the Doctor's strategy and the importance of following orders.

Murray makes a rather ponderous response to Mel's remark about the Navarinos not needing to do much packing: Navarinos travel light because in their natural form they don't need clothing. She joins him in directing mental energy at the crystal.

Burton does not say anything about having been a major rather than a captain.

The American agents don't actually see the Bannermen ship coming in to land (perhaps the effect was too expensive for the Target!) Gavrok announces his presence with a piercing whistle rather than a horn call.

Mel feels guilty about the destruction of the Navarinos, because Murray delayed their departure trying to persuade her to come with them. The subsequent Bannermen attack on the motorbike convoy is very impressive, leaving the field cratered and burning.

Mel thanks Burton for his 'hostage' idea: he says that he's dealt with scoundrels like this before, and that it's all a matter of psychology.

Burton is very impressed by the Doctor's calm rescuing of him and Mel from the Bannermen: but he can't tell whether it's a clever ploy or just very valourous behaviour. Either way, it's good material for the work on the human condition he's apparently writing (hence the 'psychology' line earlier).

While the Doctor is busy off-screen (and off-page) with Mel's ribbon and the goat, Weismuller does some empty boasting about how he saw off the Bannermen who shackled him and Hawk.

The flight from Goronwy's farm in the cramped car comes with bonus humour along the lines of 'that's why they call it a Morris Minor'.

It's Bannerman Arrex who Delta shoots, and Callon who survives report to Gavrok. The script I've got has them the other way round.

Gavrok shoots Goronwy's radio halfway through Blue Moon, not the song heard on screen (Lollipop.) Attacked by the bees, the Bannermen take refuge in the reservoir next to the farm, getting stung every time they bob up for air.

'He must really love me,' thinks Delta when she finds out that Billy has been eating the royal jelly.

Hawk reacts badly to being zapped by the sonic cone - he starts staring into space and failing to help with the fire precautions, which causes tension with Weismuller.

'Those Bannermen will be sorry they ever left - er - wherever it was they came from,' Billy tells Delta stoutly.

The signal for the 'singing' to start is conveyed by tugging the speaker wire, the other end of which Delta is holding. Only then do the Doctor and Ray leave the roof.

Ray consoles herself for the loss of Billy, and the impending departure of her new friends Mel and the Doctor, with the thought that 'Wales wasn't that bad...'

Hawk recovers his courage once the Bannermen are tied up. 'That will teach you to mess with us earthlings,' he keeps saying.

Goronwy's symbolic explanation about the new young queen is omitted. In its place there's a scene where Billy and the Doctor collect a box of bits for the Vincent - this makes his gift of the bike to Ray seem better considered.

The Doctor's comment about how the Vincent might be improved is moved to just before Ray's departure, so that she gets to go out on a note of self-assertion with her 'best there is' comment.

The final scene (of the screen version) is slightly rearranged, the principal difference being that Goronwy invites the agents to come to tea one day. Weismuller seems pleased by this.

Unfortunately... there's an Epilogue with some really weak humour about the Bannermen captives planning to set up a rug-weaving collective, and an account of Billy's impressions of the brood planet and the galactic palace of justice. Delta and the Bannermen is only just serious enough a story to work as DW at all - this sub-sub-Adams whimsy tacked on the end just makes the whole story seem silly.

There are then final sights of the agents, Goronwy, and Ray, and a TARDIS closing scene. Goronwy's bit works best. My task as a comparator is done if I just point out that the Epilogue is all new material.

Apart from that Epilogue this is quite an enjoyable Target. DATB itself has grown on me over the years, and the novel recaptures the blend of fun and poignancy that makes it work.

(Thanks to Ohica for correcting my cheating memory re Lollipop/My Boy Lollipop)

Target: Paradise Towers

Stephen Wyatt adapts his own script for this Target. One of my favourites too, I get the impression he himself at one time was faced with winning the respect of a group of 'Kangs'.

The initial TARDIS scene is placed first, before our first sight of the last Yellow Kang. 'Leave her for the cleaners' as shouted at her is merely a symbolic threat, by the way; it doesn't suggest that her pursuers expect her to be made unalive. The poor girl's life in the empty Yellow Kang Brainquarters is described with some pathos.

The saddest thing in Fountain of Happiness Square is the fountain itself, dry and full of rubbish. Shallowtown had just such a fountain.

The doomed Caretaker's thoughts inform us that the Cleaners have only recently been fitted with huge claws, they aren't standard equipment. His walkie-talkie is actually a Long Distance Communication Expediter.

The Red Kangs fire not one arrow but two at the Doctor and Mel - pinning them neatly to the wall through their clothing. Mel finds that their style reminds her of samurai; also, the pat-a-cake greeting ritual is both risible and menacing.

The Doctor's impression of the Kangs is of an odd mixture of toughness and vulnerability. The Caretakers, on the other hand, have something solid and comforting about them, even if their uniforms seem to him like tatty cinema commissionaires' outfits.

Pex is closer to the original conception of the character - he actually does have big pecs and an imposing physical presence.

The Chief Caretaker can't quite remember how he acquired his basement 'pet'.

The Kangs get into the Caretaker HQ to rescue the Doctor by using a keycard.

Investigating Maddy's report of the disappearance of Tilda and Tabby, the Chief Caretaker asks Maddy whether she has eaten them.

The Red Kangs refer to their video, on which the Doctor shows them the Illustrated Prospectus, as the Picturespout. They ask him a lot of questions about other worlds, and are amazed to hear that there are no Kangs thereon. This 'gave them much to think about and discuss in the days to come.'

Only Bin Liner and Fire Escape accompany the Doctor to the basement, Air Duct is not selected or named.

The Blue Kang leader is called Drinking Fountain.

The possessed Chief Caretaker has a voice of 'soft steely power', rather than a pissed-up slurred drawl. And his uniform has turned glistening white.

Pex and Mel enter the Pool in the Sky via a carpeted corridor decorated with murals and potted plants.

The reason that the Great Architect (conveniently) forbade surveillance of the Pool in the Sky is so that it would never be overlooked by prying human flesh.

Kroagnon asks Pex why the latter wants to help him get rid of the 'mobile rubbish'. Pex says it's because he doesn't belong.

All the remaining Caretakers are present at Pex's funeral, not just the Deputy and principals.

The Doctor's hat-raise to the piece of scrap metal and Mel's 'No, Doctor' are left out, wisely I think because we have a better ending here. It is from behind the dematerialising TARDIS that the famous wall-scrawled words are revealed: PEX LIVES.

Oddly, that was how I remembered the actual episode ending in 1987, a good couple of decades before I got hold of the book. The memory may cheat, but then that's a good director's job.

Target: Time and the Rani

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.

Target: The Ultimate Foe

Pip'n'Jane Baker again. I won't be picking on their bizarre style so much in this Target: that isn't because it's not on display, but because it seems to fit this surreal story much better than it did Mark of the Rani.

The Time Lord space station is surrounded by a perpetual electric storm.

In the courtroom, the Doctor has worked out that the Inquisitor unconsciously displays uncertainty by adjusting her sash of office.

Glitz is shaking with fear on arrival because he thinks he might be dead. Mel pinches him to prove that he isn't.

The Doctor's cheeks are described as 'chubby'.

Glitz refers to 'grotzis' rather than 'grotzits' throughout.

Yrcanos is said to be the chief of a tribe on Ravolox - either that's a mistake or the Mindwarp novelisation establishes some startling new facts about him. Also, he apparently won Peri's affections 'by fair means or foul'. Intriguing.

Mel and the Master have an exchange via that's similar in tone, but not in content, to the one about compliments that was scripted but not used on screen. He taunts her with a question about whether red hair really denotes temper on Earth, and calls here a 'fiery vixen'.

When Glitz's harpoon-proof jacket is revealed, we're told that he sleeps in pyjamas made of Attack Repulsor Polycrenam pongee.

The infiltration of the Matrix was made possible because the Time Lords outsourced maintenance to the Elzevirs of Leptonica: the Master hypnotised their supervisor, Nilex. (He can't hypnotise Time Lords, apparently - doesn't the guard in Deadly Assassin count?)

Mel encounters a tyrannosaurus, not a dragon, in the Fantasy Factory waiting-room.

Have to mention one style issue: when P&JB are trying to say that the list of Time Lord names is definitely in the Doctor's handwriting, they say it bore 'the indelible curlicues of the Doctor's calligraphy.' Calligraphy is not a direct synonym for handwriting and indelible doesn't mean unmistakeable, even by extension.

The Master and Rani escaped from the tyrannosaurus in her TARDIS, because (as the Rani told him) it grew too large for the space and snapped its neck against the ceiling. He didn't believe her 'prosaic explanation' - and if ever there was a prosaic, anticlimactic explanation that is it - he prefers to think that he escaped because he's indestructible.

The sight of his TARDIS as a statue of Queen Victoria makes him reflect that even she is a lesser being compared to himself.

The Doctor's journey on the tumbril is accompanied by shouts of 'Madame Guillotine' and thrown tomatoes and cabbages.

The megabyte modem is still there, but it's spelt 'modum' throughout. We're led to believe though that it isn't really a modem, that's just Mel's interpretation. Working against this high-tech interpretation is the information that it contains vacuum tubes.

The insurrection on Gallifrey reported by the Keeper was sparked off by the Master spreading news of the High Council's machinations.

The final courtroom scene begins with a description of the room which seems to be from the Doctor's perspective. But then he walks into the courtroom. Very confusing.

There's an epilogue where the Doctor returns Mel to Oxyveguramosa, where she was before she was called as a witness. He has to do this as otherwise he can't go back to where he was at the start of the trial. Pleasingly, when she gets out of the TARDIS, there's another TARDIS next to it - the one from her own timeline. Inside she finds her own Doctor, who she's pleased to see has been following her carrot juice regime - he's slimmer. There's a suggestion that this Doctor has just met her, because he's looking forward to having her on board.

Target: The Ambassadors of Death

I love Ambassadors but I didn't get to see it until last year, so I'm not as familiar with the screen version as I have been in some previous comparisons. This meant I had to go through novel and transcript line by line, and so this is a rather nit-picking comparison I'm afraid.

We know we're in Terrance Dicks' capable hands when Liz is introduced to us as 'good-looking in a rather severe way.'

The space programme is emphatically the European Space Programme throughout. Cornish's calmness is constantly mentioned - and he's also 'well aware of his good looks.'

When Liz returns to the laboratory with a cuppa for the Doctor, she finds him hunched over the telly, 'as if he wanted to climb inside to the Control Room'. The TV presenter is called Michael Wakefield, not John Wakefield.

The Doctor tells the soldiers that he doesn't approve of passes, not that he doesn't believe in them. (I wouldn't normally mention such triviala but this is a very close adaptation so far).

Cornish is persuaded to accept the Doctor's help because he feels 'the full impact of the Doctor's personality, a blend of formidable intelligence and tremendous charm.'

We get the Brigadier's military appreciation of the warehouse battle; he soon realises that the enemy are excellent shots, but seem to be trying not to hit his men.

In the scene where he abruptly orders Taltallian to help the Doctor, Cornish gets one back against the latter in personality terms: 'Cornish showed irritation so seldom that it was all the more effective,' we're told, and it leaves the Doctor somewhat nonplussed.

More soldierly thinking from the Brig when he immediately grasps the Doctor's warning about the gun-toting Taltallian being frightened: 'Nothing was more dangerous than a gun in the hand of a frightened man who was unused to firearms.'

Transmigration of object is a Time Lord technique 'somewhere between telekinesis and conjuring'.

When the Doctor tricks the captive Collinson into revealing his military training, he uses the parade-ground manner he learned at Waterloo.

Once the Doctor and Liz have worked out that the computer's been sabotaged by Taltallian, programmer Dobson sets to work to get it fixed.

TD is keen to make it clear that that Space Control were properly prepared to recover the capsule - the Recovery Team were in place on the heathland, and have already removed the parachutes and put it onto the lorry when the principals arrive.

The Brigadier doesn't like Bessie being involved in the convoy, as she 'lowered the military tone'.

After the Brigadier and Doctor have left the ministry, and Taltallian has emerged from hiding, his conversation with Sir James (Minister for Science and Technology) has an extra element where he demands that Sir James finds him a place to hide. He's told that he can stay at the Ministry.

Carrington's secret laboratory is in a Nissen hut at a top secret government research institute. His scientist Heldorf is a former refugee, hence the accent.

The Doctor counters Quinlan's point about the public becoming panic-stricken by suggesting that in a democracy they have a right to know. Carrington makes an interesting reply: 'Democracy can have disadvantages, Doctor. What we are doing is for the best.' That's an echo of the rhetoric used by Col David Stirling types who were becoming active at the time the story was written.

Reegan is introduced by a bit of back-story: he is indeed supposed to be Irish, but he had to leave the country after a difference of opinion with the IRA. (He was robbing banks on their behalf and hanging on to too much of the proceeds). Since then he's been a successful criminal in the US and elsewhere.

Heldorf and his colleague resist the thugs (fatally) because they've sussed out what Reegan means by 'when you've finished here.'

Reegan's van has decals for 'HEYHOE LTD, LAUNDERERS' and 'SILCOX BAKERIES' - not quite as seen on screen. He deliberately put his henchmen in the back with the ambassadors, to see how deadly they were. And of course now he doesn't have to pay them.

The Brigadier doesn't ask Carrington about who knew the location of Heldorf's laboratory. When the General apologises to the Doctor, he does so with 'that sudden diffidence of his'.

Lennox's laboratory is situated in an abandoned army bunker. He was stripped of his degrees for falsifying his experimental results - and sacked for falsifying the accounts of his college. That's academics for you.

Quinlan and Carrington have a longer discussion about how to deal with the situation. The General offers to arrest Cornish, but Quinlan says it would cause a scandal which could bring down the Government. They also speculate about who kidnapped the ambassadors: it could be any of Britain's enemies, or any of its allies. (Bit of politics there).

Reegan doesn't just put gloves on to venture into the isolation chamber, he goes out to his van and gets the radiation suit (would have looked boring on screen I suppose).

Liz runs across the bridge at the weir because she can see there are people about on the other side. 'Her high white boots weren't really meant for running,' remarks the narrator. That could have been said a good few times in the UNIT years. She's doing pretty well on screen though.

Taltallian and Cornish's conversation about the M3 fuel variant is mostly given in summary, as are several of the other duller bits of dialogue in the story. It's always a sign that TD is on form when he applies a bit of judicious compression.

Lennox makes a 'pathetic attempt at dignity' when Liz asks him if he's a prisoner, saying that he can come and go as he pleases, but 'I haven't anywhere to go.' (Rather undoes the impact of 'Where would I go?' a few lines later.)

When the escaping Liz decides to thumb a lift the narrator suggests her motivation: 'Not usually a difficult task for an attractive long-haired girl in a mini-skirt.' On her recapture, she manages to convince Reegan that the door was left unlocked - but only because he thinks his henchman is too stupid to be relied on. He doesn't reproach her for locking Lennox in with the ambassadors.

Reegan got Liz to work on the communication device because, in an echo of his words to Lennox earlier, he's 'no kind of scientist.'

The Brigadier is delayed in following the Doctor to the Ministry after Sir James' phone call, because he gets another call informing him about the ambassador attack on the Space Centre.

In the conversation after the ambassador returns to Reegan's bunker, the exchange about unfortunately not having been able to kill the Brigadier is omitted. Liz doesn't do the cheeky 'I won't hurt you' line.

There's what looks like a transcription error in Cornish's reports from control to capsule: 'Thirty, three oh' and 'Fifty, five oh' are rendered as 33 and 55.

The Doctor wishes the decontamination room had so much as a few dog-eared issues of Punch in it.

Carrington doesn't ask the Brigadier any awkward questions about the Doctor's origins. Back at the bunker, his statement that Reegan disobeyed his order to kill the Doctor is delivered 'as if Reegan had forgotten to polish his boots.' Similarly, his remark about not being paid to think is 'in the best army tradition.'

The Doctor has a moment of reflection before he says goodbye to the ambassadors - on the theme that this is the first formal contact between humans and intelligent aliens. I like the way TD has given some thought to this, so I'm not going to quibble about the Cyber-invasion and the Nestenes. He means 'formal' as in 'not consisting of "Surrender, humans, or die"'.

TD also wants to answer the question 'Why don't we see the Ambassadors and their species again now that contact has been made?' The Doctor thinks:

After the fright they'd given each other the two species would probably keep well apart. The galaxy was big enough for both of them, after all.

When I acquired this Target I wondered if it would be an 'Inferno' or a 'Time Monster' in the late adaptation stakes - a classic or a workmanlike job. It's definitely closer to an 'Inferno', I would have really enjoyed this had it been available in my original Targeteering days.