The Master's domination of Phillips is much more sadistic in the book, where he disguises him as a clown and gets a big kick out of doing so. The grenade bit is much better on the page too - I was really disappointed not to see a clump of trees getting reduced to fine white ash. The grenade, btw, is described as a Sontaran weapon - another anticipation of Time Warrior from Terrance Dicks, who also puts a Gallifrey reference in Claws of Axos.
Jo's bomb lands in a canal behind the UNIT building - not in the sea, accompanied by the sound of seagulls ffs. There's no Mr Brownrose (perhaps the arse innuendo wasn't suitable for children?).
The Brigadier deals with the Auton in the safe by throwing a grenade in there with it, and slamming the door. And Luigi Rossini's real name is Lew Ross, which I reckon is much better than the one used on screen.
Friday, April 01, 2011
Target: The Claws of Axos
Winser is much more clearly painted as an ambitious genius, and some of Chinn's manoeuvrings are moved forward into the initial visit to Axos (he gets the Axons to show him out the back door!), and this part of the plot seems better paced as a result. The Brigadier's point of view is used to explain why the Doctor is asking various awkward questions of the Axons.
The Doctor tells Axos that his home planet is Gallifrey - anticipating the mention in Time Warrior by three series.
The Doctor tells Axos that his home planet is Gallifrey - anticipating the mention in Time Warrior by three series.
Target: The Mind of Evil
Terrance Dicks takes half a page - which is a lot in a Target - to show Alcott as someone who distrusts and fears Chinese communist power, thus explaining the hallucination of the Chinese dragon as an embodiment of his fears (rather than simply arising from the simple fact of Chin Lee being Chinese, as detractors have claimed).
Also, Dr Summers accepts Jo's explanation of Barnham's deadening effect on the Keller Machine - on screen he crassly ignores her and tries to drag Barnham out of the room, nearly killing everyone in the process.
Also, Dr Summers accepts Jo's explanation of Barnham's deadening effect on the Keller Machine - on screen he crassly ignores her and tries to drag Barnham out of the room, nearly killing everyone in the process.
Target: The Daemons
One of my favourite Targets - it's a real shame Barry Letts didn't write more of them, his style is quite different from Terrance Dicks' and Malcolm Hulke's. It's almost lyrical at times, he makes the story feel like an arcadian pastoral idyll (with occasional walk-ons by Satan - like a mystery play perhaps?). When a drugged-up Jo staggers into the churchyard and collapses in the long grass, she's 'dreaming of childhood holidays in the springtime.'
BL's particularly good at what my English teacher used to call 'delineating some particular entity', so for example one of the earthquakes is described not by saying 'The room was shaking' but 'The line of little pot animals on the mantlepiece fell one by one into the grate'.
And there are some great descriptions of the Master in hypno-mode, with his eyes appearing purple 'and could they be flecked with gold?'
Principal plot additions: Bessie is left at the dig over the first night. Mike Yates and Miss Hawthorne go (on bikes) to see the Squire the next morning, and she uses 'magic' to cure the latter's hangover. We see the coven action through the eyes of young Stan Wilkins (nephew of the dead helicopter thief).
There's some extra bits in the UNIT/Bok confrontation: Bok gets blown apart with a bazooka, but reassembles. Then he goes airborne when Mike tries to create a diversion. And Miss Hawthorne attempts to destroy Bok by reflecting his magic back on him with a pentangle (with her and Benton inside) - we never find out whether it works, because Azal dies just in time. (Always found that intriguing and frustrating as a kid).
Something missing from the book is the distant explosion from the barrow at the end, the explanation being that the spaceship has blown up. Not being used to this, I find it a bit intrusive, a sort of obvious way of tying up a loose end.
There's an extra punchline too: after the 'I see. The Doctor was frozen solid at the barrow, then revived by a freak heatwave. Benton was beaten up by invisible forces, and the local white witch claims she's seen the Devil.' the Brigadier adds ' Apart from that it's been a quiet night. Over.' As a kid I used to get stuck reading that to myself because I found it so funny.
So in short, one of my very favourite Targets.
BL's particularly good at what my English teacher used to call 'delineating some particular entity', so for example one of the earthquakes is described not by saying 'The room was shaking' but 'The line of little pot animals on the mantlepiece fell one by one into the grate'.
And there are some great descriptions of the Master in hypno-mode, with his eyes appearing purple 'and could they be flecked with gold?'
Principal plot additions: Bessie is left at the dig over the first night. Mike Yates and Miss Hawthorne go (on bikes) to see the Squire the next morning, and she uses 'magic' to cure the latter's hangover. We see the coven action through the eyes of young Stan Wilkins (nephew of the dead helicopter thief).
There's some extra bits in the UNIT/Bok confrontation: Bok gets blown apart with a bazooka, but reassembles. Then he goes airborne when Mike tries to create a diversion. And Miss Hawthorne attempts to destroy Bok by reflecting his magic back on him with a pentangle (with her and Benton inside) - we never find out whether it works, because Azal dies just in time. (Always found that intriguing and frustrating as a kid).
Something missing from the book is the distant explosion from the barrow at the end, the explanation being that the spaceship has blown up. Not being used to this, I find it a bit intrusive, a sort of obvious way of tying up a loose end.
There's an extra punchline too: after the 'I see. The Doctor was frozen solid at the barrow, then revived by a freak heatwave. Benton was beaten up by invisible forces, and the local white witch claims she's seen the Devil.' the Brigadier adds ' Apart from that it's been a quiet night. Over.' As a kid I used to get stuck reading that to myself because I found it so funny.
So in short, one of my very favourite Targets.
Target: The Doomsday Weapon
Always a massive favourite with me, despite the fact that this is one of two Targets in which Jo meets the Doctor for the first time.
Possibly Malcolm Hulke's biggest servings of back-story here - there's over a page of Jane Leeson's biography just before she gets killed, presumably because it's a good opportunity to tell us the back-story of the colony in general.
People have put down the implicit comparison of Ashe with Jesus, but he gets a fair amount of stick from MH too, coming across as weak and long-winded. His strongest pre-death moment is the Leesons' funeral - which has also faced criticism for being too obvious, though it made a big impression on me as a kid. No-one else had explained the social and psychological purpose of a funeral to me before then.
Dent isn't quite the ruthless, icy person of the screen version. Famously 'an IMC man', he's still ruthless, but he comes across more as the company man than the robot. All his reactions come from IMC handbooks and training courses. On first reading he reminded me instantly of my friend's dad, who worked for the Ford Motor Company and was so impressed by his employer's mighty economic power that he never talked about anything else.
There are quite few minor differences from the screen version, details shifted around from scene to scene and an extra speaking colonist or two. The ones that stood out are the absence from the novel of the Doctor repairing the fusebox (and commenting that Norton hadn't made a very good repair), and the addition in the novel of the Doctor noticing that giant lizards would be stuck for food on such a barren planet (the planet, incidentally, is not named in the book).
The Primitives and their little god are quite different in the book - the former are human-looking, with 6 fingers on each hand, instead of alien humanoids, and the latter is an impressive glowing figure, instead of a bizarre puppet.
Jo is a lot more intelligent and assertive on the page, I did wonder if she was being written as Liz for some reason. But her costume is faithfully reproduced in the illustrations, whereas Mrs Leeson and Caldwell have completely different faces.
'How did you know those IMC people were coming to the planet?' the Doctor asks the Master. The Master is interrupted before he can reply! Is MH suggesting the plot is a little unlikely?
The ending differs in two key respects: the colonists are still outlaws in the book, which suggests worrying possibilities when the Earth government finds out what's been going on. But on the other hand, we're shown the planetary conditions beginning to improve, with rainclouds sweeping in and shoots springing up in the desert.
There's always going to be something special about a DW story involving fake monsters, simulated with filming tiny lizards close up, and by using prop monster claws...
Possibly Malcolm Hulke's biggest servings of back-story here - there's over a page of Jane Leeson's biography just before she gets killed, presumably because it's a good opportunity to tell us the back-story of the colony in general.
People have put down the implicit comparison of Ashe with Jesus, but he gets a fair amount of stick from MH too, coming across as weak and long-winded. His strongest pre-death moment is the Leesons' funeral - which has also faced criticism for being too obvious, though it made a big impression on me as a kid. No-one else had explained the social and psychological purpose of a funeral to me before then.
Dent isn't quite the ruthless, icy person of the screen version. Famously 'an IMC man', he's still ruthless, but he comes across more as the company man than the robot. All his reactions come from IMC handbooks and training courses. On first reading he reminded me instantly of my friend's dad, who worked for the Ford Motor Company and was so impressed by his employer's mighty economic power that he never talked about anything else.
There are quite few minor differences from the screen version, details shifted around from scene to scene and an extra speaking colonist or two. The ones that stood out are the absence from the novel of the Doctor repairing the fusebox (and commenting that Norton hadn't made a very good repair), and the addition in the novel of the Doctor noticing that giant lizards would be stuck for food on such a barren planet (the planet, incidentally, is not named in the book).
The Primitives and their little god are quite different in the book - the former are human-looking, with 6 fingers on each hand, instead of alien humanoids, and the latter is an impressive glowing figure, instead of a bizarre puppet.
Jo is a lot more intelligent and assertive on the page, I did wonder if she was being written as Liz for some reason. But her costume is faithfully reproduced in the illustrations, whereas Mrs Leeson and Caldwell have completely different faces.
'How did you know those IMC people were coming to the planet?' the Doctor asks the Master. The Master is interrupted before he can reply! Is MH suggesting the plot is a little unlikely?
The ending differs in two key respects: the colonists are still outlaws in the book, which suggests worrying possibilities when the Earth government finds out what's been going on. But on the other hand, we're shown the planetary conditions beginning to improve, with rainclouds sweeping in and shoots springing up in the desert.
There's always going to be something special about a DW story involving fake monsters, simulated with filming tiny lizards close up, and by using prop monster claws...
Target: Inferno
I got this very late so it's still a fresh pleasure. I think Terrance Dicks enjoyed doing this one as he puts a lot of effort into it - there's an unusual opening verbal 'pan' over the Inferno project, before we focus on the Doctor himself. In the alt-world the project is fascistically clean and tidy, and TD devotes a a couple of extra paras to the Doctor's speculations about how the fascist regime came to power in the first place. And there's a casual mention of how the real-world Stahlman grew up in the ruins of post-war Germany. And when Stahlman rebuts one of Sir Keith's suggestions, Sir K 'decided to defer that matter for now' (he even thinks like a civil servant).
But he's also not afraid to leave stuff out where it isn't so important, so for example we're told rather than shown the 'a chance to use your initiative' bit. Pip'n'Jane Baker would have written down every last word and camera angle.
The sacrifice made by the alts is rewarded in the ep 6 cliffhanger: just before the lava engulfs the hut, they get to see the Doctor successfully departing. I really like this - it's one of the grimmest moments in Doctor Who, no-one is coming to save the characters, but they die knowing that their sacrifice has not been in vain.
Something new I spotted this time: after the denouement the Doctor sees the real Brig, Liz, Greg etc happily celebrating, and thinks about their counterparts who weren't so lucky. 'For a moment it was like looking at ghosts.'
Something odd just before at the end - when the Doctor takes the short hop to the dump, Liz notices that Bessie doesn't disappear with him this time. What is the function of having her think that? Is Terry subtly criticising the flimsy justification for Bessie being taken to the alt-world earlier?
But he's also not afraid to leave stuff out where it isn't so important, so for example we're told rather than shown the 'a chance to use your initiative' bit. Pip'n'Jane Baker would have written down every last word and camera angle.
The sacrifice made by the alts is rewarded in the ep 6 cliffhanger: just before the lava engulfs the hut, they get to see the Doctor successfully departing. I really like this - it's one of the grimmest moments in Doctor Who, no-one is coming to save the characters, but they die knowing that their sacrifice has not been in vain.
Something new I spotted this time: after the denouement the Doctor sees the real Brig, Liz, Greg etc happily celebrating, and thinks about their counterparts who weren't so lucky. 'For a moment it was like looking at ghosts.'
Something odd just before at the end - when the Doctor takes the short hop to the dump, Liz notices that Bessie doesn't disappear with him this time. What is the function of having her think that? Is Terry subtly criticising the flimsy justification for Bessie being taken to the alt-world earlier?
Target: Curse of Peladon
Not much to say about this Brian Hayles effort. The changes are mostly additional scenes - there are two pre-fight scenes where Ssorg helps the Doctor get ready, and Jo dominates Grun, commanding him to kneel and turning him against Hepesh. In the book this motivation is (if anything) more important than the fact that the Doctor spares Grun's life in the combat.
Took me unusually long to finish this, the style is too excitable and it's not a story that really grips me anyway.
Took me unusually long to finish this, the style is too excitable and it's not a story that really grips me anyway.