Target: The Androids of Tara

The view of Tara on the scanner sounds like a wide panorama - rolling hills, neatly-fenced fields - rather than the tighter shot seen on screen.

Among the junk in the console room cupboard is a partially-dismantled Martian sonic cannon.

There's an odd passage when Romana is being stalked through the woods:

She ran faster, and faster forcing her way through obstructing branches and bushes, her fear growing at each second then.

Is it poetry, or is the full stop a mistake?

The Count says that the woods are part of what's left of the Estate of Gracht after his father's debts were paid.

Having seen the Count's electro-sword, Romana wonders if the horse is a real animal or actually a robot. Either way, the situation reminds her of the romantic videonovels she used to watch when she was very young. As they gallop off, she has the decency to regret telling the Doctor off for getting involved in local complications.

Madame Lamia is beautiful in an 'intense almost angry way.' Nicely put sir. Romana can tell that she and the Count are 'more to each other than master and servant.'

The initial encounter between the Doctor and the swordsmen is enlivened by a bit where the Doctor expects to be fined for poaching, and demonstrates that he hasn't caught anything. When he examines his smouldering hat he makes a comment about 'incendiary moths'.

There's no reverse bargaining about the android repair fee, which is 500gp from the start, but we do get the Doctor thinking that he refused the money, they'd just offer more, and if that didn't work, they'd just go back to threatening him - simpler to take the money.

It's Farrah who bars the way when the Doctor thinks he's free to go, not a mugging extra. Prince Reynart's comment about wishing he'd been allowed to learn peasant skills leads to more Docthink, this time about the nature of Taran society and parallels therewith in Earth history (Engineers in the Victorian navy...).

When he hears the need for the Prince to be punctual at the ceremony, the Doctor says 'I thought Kings were allowed to be late?' Not on Tara, he's told.

How did 'George' come to be damaged in the first place? The android took the Prince's place in a hunting party, which was attacked in the forest by an assassin.

When Zadek says that he and Farrah will take on Grendel's men, he adds that the Prince has an additional 'handful' of followers (his House is impoverished and he can't afford to hire mercenaries like Grendel).

Romana can't help feeling sorry for Madame Lamia after the 'certain courtesy' speech.

We actually see the reverse shot of the Palace of Tara that the Doctor and Farrah are looking at while they wait for Zadek to find the tunnel entrance.

the enormous white building below them, its innumerable towers and turrets crowded inside an encircling wall. Flags were flying, guards patrolled the ramparts and an endless line of people on horseback and on foot, wound its way through the main gates.

(and the BBC couldn't even afford a model).

The 'peasant's weapon' crossbow is brought to the Doctor's attention by its owner firing it as he dies, and blowing up a tree.

K9 takes care to stay out of sight on the way to Castle Gracht - fortunately, everyone's gone to the Palace of Tara for the coronation, so the countryside's deserted.

The Doctor thinks that the great plague accounts for the the 'curiously deserted feeling of Tara.' Farrah tells him that androids work in the fields, mines and factories (I suppose Tara must have factories if it has technology) though there's still a lot of prejudice against them. The noble families won't even have them as servants - Prince Reynart is presumably happy to put any such feelings aside in the interests of being crowned.

When Count Grendel's men arrive at the tunnel mouth, they note the guard by his absence, and find his body in a bush. Meanwhile, in the tunnel 'George' does not bang his head on the ceiling.

The complex chronometer seen in the Throne Room is the Great Clock of Tara, hundreds of years old, but still accurate to a micro-second. The Archimandrite of Tara is head of the Church of Tara, and is the leading religious figure on the planet, as well as a 'tough and wily old politician, with a strongly developed sense of survival'.

At the ceremony, the person about to step forward in response to the call for the first lady of Tara is a 'plump and matronly Grand Duchess', but she's pre-empted by the android Strella (presumably the Duchess had been promoted to no.1 after Strella's disappearance).

Grendel recognises the Doctor from the hunting lodge - he'd assumed he was 'some mountebank friend of Prince Reynart' - and is annoyed that he didn't kill him when he had the chance.

Kurster (the Count's sidekick) is a 'giant' (actually appears shorter than him on screen).

Lamia's feeling that the Segment is part of a very important whole is made more of. It's nice to see this interesting character being given the distinction of being the only person in season 16, other than Cessair of Diplos, to get an inkling of what's going on.

When K9 arrives at the Palace (having located Romana) Zadek brings the news of his arrival to the Doctor, saying that K9 caused quite a stir at the palace gates.

The punt in which the Doctor and K9 cross the moat of Castle Gracht was brought overland from the river by some of Reynart's men.

The chair in which Grendel is sitting when he throws the wine at Till is a throne, which he's had made a while back: 'it would come in handy when Castle Gracht was a Royal Residence.'

The gown Romana wears at the abortive wedding is one of Princess Strella's, taken taken from the baggage captured with her.

When Kurster comes to kill Strella, she isn't working on the tapestry frame, but is embroidering a handkerchief, because she thinks she won't live long enough to finish the tapestry.

Grendel does not do the 'lenient' line, instead saying 'Nothing like a midnight swim. I'll finish giving you that fencing lesson, Doctor - one day.' It's suitably suave and villainous, but I much prefer the original. The Doctor doesn't throw him the hat, either, instead raising his blade in a salute of reluctant admiration for Grendel's consistency. 'All in all, he'd seldom met a more thoroughgoing villain in all his lives.'

While Reynart and Strella are kissing in the cell, Romana goes next door to change her clothes, while the Doctor waits in the corridor.

There's an extra final scene where the Doctor fetches a rope and grappling hook from the castle gatehouse, and, after several tries, pulls K9 in to the bank of the moat. Romana then jokes that he managed to catch a fish on Tara after all. I mean, really.

Target: The Stones of Blood

There's no special Key to Time room in the TARDIS - the opening scene takes place in the control room, and the segments are kept in a special wall locker.

No mention is made of a view of the sea, either on the scanner or outside.

Romana correctly (if a bit archaically) refers to the specific gravity of the ground, not the meaningless 'specific density'.

The Doctor knows whereof he speaks when he mentions Caesar's account of the Druids - he knew 'Julius' personally, even going to the lengths of dressing up as a soothsayer and croaking 'Beware the Ides of March' at him. Caesar didn't take any notice though. (He was probably annoyed at the Doctor calling him 'Julius' not 'Gaius', which is like calling James T. Kirk 'T' instead of 'James'.)

De Vries' house has crows perched on the chimneys. The man himself has a 'Continental' appearance. He isn't pleased by the Doctor's linking of the Druids to John Aubrey, because he considers the latter to be merely a deplorable old scandal monger.

Martha is a teacher by day - she joined De Vries' group to bring 'some colour into a very dull life'. She's 'no criminal' though.

When the Doctor is rescued from the stone of sacrifice by Amelia, she's riding the bike rather than wheeling it. The Doctor's explanation that K9 was made in Trenton, New Jersey convinces her because 'she could accept anything, however unusual, if it came from America.'

Romana swaps her sandals for 'sensible shoes', not the stylish burgundy boots we know and love.

At the cottage, Amelia doesn't refer to the Welsh triad form of poetry. Her tea and sausage sandwiches aren't the sort of food Romana had been used to on Gallifrey. (Got to say this is making me want some tea and sausage sandwiches).

An aside: Romana is remarkably familiar with Earth - and specifically English - historical, economic and domestic assumptions, for someone from a distant planet who didn't know what tennis was forty pages ago.

Wondering how Martha's and De Vries' bodies got to the stone circle so that their blood could be poured onto the Ogri? They were 'spirited there by the power of the Cailleach'.

Romana's remark that K9 is on his last legs is followed by a narratorial comment that 'K9 didn't actually have any legs'. I wonder if TD often had in mind a reader who had never seen the story even once?

The Ogri that the Doctor decoys over the cliff doesn't fall into the sea - I think it isn't supposed to be the same cliff that Romana dangles off.

On at least two occasions, the mention of hyperspace prompts extra explanations that it's different from the space/time that the TARDIS moves through.

Amelia privately entertains the possibility that she'll be killed by the Ogri while waiting to operate the hyperspace projector.

The two doomed campers are 'not very experienced campers', and they're newlyweds to boot. They don't suspect people from the pub of putting the stones next to their tent as a joke. When the woman gets killed, the bloke tries to run off, but the other Ogri intercepts him.

Megara One (the defence counsel) is very slightly larger than Megara Two. The Doctor does not put a wig on during the trial. Once Cessair has outmanoevred him by agreeing to the Truth Assessor, his next few lines are just summarised as 'He went on arguing valiantly, but it was no use.' See how TD isn't afraid, occasionally, to cut stuff out in the interests of getting to the point? Certain authoring couples would have included every word, oblivious of the fact that without Tom Baker's sparkle the lines aren't such fun.

K9 tells Amelia that she is 'a reasonably intelligent humanoid' suitable to work under his direction on repairing the projector.

Cessair gets an extra sentence from the Megara - 1,000 years for illegal detention of their vessel in hyperspace.

And then the Doctor, K9 and Romana are on their way to find the fourth, fifth and sixth segments...

Target: The Ribos Operation

This is an Ian Marter novelisation so there are many changes, too many for me to list without losing the will to live. As a sampler, in the first few pages the Doctor summons K9 into the console room with a dog whistle, the console room is full of shadows, the exterior windows of the TARDIS are visible from inside (cf Ark in Space), K9's nose blaster is referred to as a 'radiaprobe', the Tracer is the 'Locatormutor core'. I really don't like the names IM comes up with for equipment, they seem inappropriately Hartnellesque.

Interestingly, the Guardian doesn't make the 'Nothing will happen - ever' threat, rather he just tells the Doctor menacingly that he will undertake the task.

The accent assumed by Garron is Bermondsey, not Somerset. And later he does a 'Knightsbridge' one, whatever that might be. The Doctor has the strange diction from the Season 12 Marter novels, where he rarely uses contractions and sounds very little like the Fourth Doctor in general.

There are four or five scenes where Garron, Unstoffe or the Doctor are manhandled by bulky, brawny soldiers. Similarly the Graff Vynda Ka (not K here) is a young, sleek, fit man rather than the slightly fussy type we see on screen.

After the Graf has discovered the bug, and is waiting for Sholakh to come back with the money, he amuses himself by trying to make two scorpions fight inside a circle of hot ash on the hearth. They won't, so he shovels the hot ash over them and crushes them. Unusually for a Marter change I found this very effective as characterisation (did the Graf bring the creatures with him, or are they native to Ribos, I wonder?)

There are various other touches: the sunlight of Ribos is green, the use of the catacombs as a mausoleum is very much played up and there are the usual violent Marter sound effects - scrabbling Shrivenzale claws striking showers of sparks and the charging whine of the laser spears (the latter constantly referred to). I don't entirely hate this - it's the same energetic description that keeps his Dominators novel going - but ultimately I would have preferred a Terrance Dicks adaptation with less noise and a Doctor that I recognised.

Target: The Invasion of Time

I remembered this as a dull read but I think I was confabulating that memory from my experience of watching it.

At the beginning, while we wait with Leela and K9 in the TARDIS, we're told that the Doctor has been behaving oddly recently.

Leela repeats 'Order K9 to tell me to shut up,' incredulously, and K9 takes it as an instruction. On screen it comes across as her saying it sincerely, and saying it to K9 - ie she doesn't realise what she's said until she says it.

Kelner's high position is due to having the right family and political contacts. He succeeded Spandrell, and moved out of the modest chambers used by the former Castellan into flashy new offices.

Andred takes an interest in Leela because she's unlike the 'cool, remote Time Ladies' he usually meets.

Nesbin (the chief outlaw) was expelled from the Capitol for attacking another Time Lord - a crime which is virtually unheard of. When he argues with Leela, he realises that not only is she ready to kill him, she's 'positively looking forward to it.'

The 'exiled Time Lords ineffectually practice with weapons' scene is done in slightly more detail, and with more types of weapon.

The Vardans compliment the Doctor by saying he'd make a good dictator - their philosophy is entirely based around the seizure and application of power.

Sontarans, we're told, have no sense of humour, though they 'occasionally smile at the death-throes of an enemy.' Nor do they appreciate beauty: 'beauty is of no interest to Sontarans, since it has no function in war. Indeed, to a Sontaran war is beauty.' Very Sun Tzu.

Stor's pronunciation of 'Doctor' is always rendered 'Dok-tor'. I don't mind 'Doc-tor' in this context (we see it with the Daleks sometimes) but I think the 'k' is unnecessary, it's a cheap shot at Stor.

We're filled in on what Borusa is doing between being shot and setting the chimes off: it's not very interesting (just recovering and eavesdropping) but at least we don't suspect so strongly that the scriptwriter has forgotten about him.

Rodan asks the Doctor to pass her 'something that sounded like "inkle grooner"' - not the 'finklegruber' that we hear in the broadcast story.

The anti-weapons effect in the TARDIS only applies to the control room (the Doctor reflects) and even there it wouldn't prevent Stor attacking him hand-to-hand.

It's implied that the 'K9 Mark II' box contains the parts for a new K9, which the Doctor is about to assemble. He's been collecting them for some time, keeping them out of sight so as not to offend the original.

Most gay pr0n-like paragraph when selectively edited:

Reverently, Andred took the sacred Rod.... Astonished and overawed, Andred stood holding Gallifrey's equivalent of the Crown Jewels, while the Doctor grabbed K9 round the middle and with a grunt of effort...thrust the Rod between them. Andred tried to protest, but the Doctor said soothingly. 'Just trust me.'

I do like the blurb on this book by the way - not only is the plot summary unusually accurate, there's a good review quote: 'Terrance Dicks is a skilful professional storyteller... He has deftly recaptured the programme's popular blend of hectic menace and humourous self-mockery.'

Sentiments which I wholly agree with. 'Hectic menace'. Nice.

Target: The Underworld

(note title Doctor Who and the Underworld). There's an explanatory prologue giving the Time Lord/Minyan back-story, and giving the Time Lords credit at least for not retaliating when they were driven out.

Herrick and Orfe argue so fiercely about whether or not to ask the 'gods' for help because their positions are those of two former political factions on Minyos - Herrick's party blamed the Time Lords for everything, Orfe's held the Minyans equally responsible because they lacked self-control.

The softer side of Leela's nature was repressed at a very early age in her warrior training, but the Pacifier brings it back again. The Pacifier, Jackson tells the Doctor, takes so much power that it can only be used in the ship.

When Jackson tells the Doctor that he and his crew have regenerated thousands of times, the Doctor has a reverie in the 'every moment is weariness' style of Gandalf's warning about what happens to Ring-bearers. Tala's weariness at finding herself young again is conveyed thus: 'Once again, she had been sentenced to life.'

TD doesn't waste any effort trying to embellish episodes 2-4, though he does give us the enjoyable 'Chapter Six: The Trogs'. And he does convey effectively Herrick's joy at finding some action, and the Minyans' feelings at the moment when they finally get their hands on the cylinders.

The narrator seems concerned that we might think that all the Trogs couldn't fit on the patrol ship flight deck, so he tells us that most of them were out of sight in the holds.

A quick epilogue, and then he, like us, is free to walk away from this story.

Target: The Sunmakers

(Note the spacing in the title). I remember the first time I read this - I had a hangover, and hadn't seen the screen version for 20 years, and I hadn't liked it then. But my low expectations were confounded - it may not be a classic Target, but it kept me turning the pages that Sunday morning.

Terrance Dicks is particularly good at neat opening sentences: 'In a drab and featureless corridor, a drab and featureless man stood waiting before a shuttered hatch.'

When Leela and the Doctor leave the TARDIS, they find themselves on a flat roof - 'rather disappointingly'. What's he getting at I wonder?

When Leela first hears Cordo's story, she pictures the 'Gatherer' as a Xoanon-like monster.

Marn doesn't have the knowing manner she does on screen. She's no Krau Timmins - she's terribly impressed by the Gatherer and how hard he works, and when she hears about Kandor, she's 'shocked to her conformist core.'

In the lift, the Doctor thinks that a lift is a lift, anywhere in the galaxy.

He gets the Gatherer's measure:

A senior bureaucrat, he guessed, cunning and experienced, status-conscious, but without the strength to wield real power. There would be someone behind Gatherer Hade, someone far tougher, and far more intelligent.

Offering the Doctor a raspberry leaf is Marn's idea, though she looks at Hade for permission first. This whole scene has various rearrangements of the lines and actions seen on screen, most of which don't matter, though there's a glaring exception: the Doctor just says 'Humbug' when he leaves (as if an insult), without actually offering Hade one of the sweets so named. It's almost as if TD hadn't watched this scene!

On the way to the Correction Centre, Leela and Cordo encounter three citizens queuing up to be erased. Cordo takes it matter-of-factly, but Leela is appalled:

Life was cheap enough as far as she was concerned, and death in battle an everyday hazard, but this casual acceptance of planned extermination made her skin crawl.

Veet's efforts at cooking for the Others 'seldom met with much appreciation'.

For the corridor ambush, K9 hides behind an overhanging pipe, not round the corner of an intersection.

The Doctor wonders at first whether the revolution is worthwhile, if Leela's dead. But then he decides that 'A society that had driven someone like Cordo to climb on to that parapet deserved to be overthrown.'

The Collector's computer makes the same clever guess about the Sevateem, but refers to a 'degenerated, unsupported Earth colony' not a 'degenerate, unsupported Tellurian colony'. 'Degenerate' was better, I thought. Incidentally, 'zero zero five' corresponds to the Dewey Decimal code 005 for computer software and programming languages.

The background information on the Doctor is fuller: 'He appears to have a long history of anarchic violence and the causing of economic disruption. He is not commercially orientated'.

Leela in the steamer is like 'an orchid under glass'. An unusual simile for the unflowerlike Leelster.

Hade promises sexaphonic sound from the steaming, not duodecaphonic.

Marn accompanies the two guards who are sent to the PCM plant - she beats a retreat when she sees them get captured.

The Doctor explains to Leela that the Collector's safe is an old-fashioned bank manager's safe brought from Earth. I'd be surprised if Leela knew what a bank was, or a bank manager; I suspect the Doctor is explaining an apparent anachronism to us. I prefer it to be done a bit more subtly. When Leela gets knocked out, he says 'Why don't these girls ever listen to me?'

When Bisham and Mandrell leave the plant after accomplishing their mission, the technician Synge makes a remark to his mate Hakit about their surprising day. Hakit just nods, but then after all, he's always been 'a work-unit of few words'.

After the crowd throw the Gatherer off the roof, they're suddenly filled with remorse. Most of them are disgusted by Veet's encouragement to give the Collector the same treatment, and they shuffle off shamefacedly - all this in entire contrast to their happy yelling on screen. 'There was a general feeling things had got out of hand, gone a bit too far.' This really spoils the moment in my opinion. It's followed by a peculiar remark: 'there wasn't very much that they could do about it now. From the top of a thousand-metre building, it's a very long way down.'

In the final confrontation with the Collector, the Doctor declares that commercial imperialism is just as bad as military conquest, rather than posing a question. (Although the scene is much the same on the page and screen, I can't help mentioning here how much I like it: the Collector trying to recruit the Doctor, and the subversive line about having tried warfare but finding the exercise of economic power more effective. The recruitment bit suggests one of those 'Eps 1-2: Wtf is the Doctor up to' stories.)

4 Terrances for this adaptation - it successfully rescued the story from my unfairly low opinion of it.

Target: Image of the Fendahl

This is a slim volume (even for a Target) and that isn't usually a good sign. Fortunately, Chris Boucher's script gives Terrance Dicks just enough extra encouragement to create an acceptable adaptation.

The hiker's initial perception of the nameless threat brings the 'frightful fiend doth tread' lines from Ancient Mariner to his mind. He thinks longingly of beer and cheese rolls in the next pub (causing me to be slightly wary of cheese rolls from an early age). In his next scene, he whistles 'some ragtime tune', not The Entertainer specifically.

TD veers into stereotype by comparing Stael's manner to that of a 'Prussian Officer', and he then brilliantly continues 'His stiff Germanic good looks reflected his stiff Germanic character,' a line which made me laugh out loud (and suggested a three-card trick based on a further possible attribute).

Colby's dog is named Leakey after the anthropologist - and because it isn't properly Priory-trained.

The narrator tells us early on that Fetchborough has a local witch, who's also the evening cook at the Priory. When we actually meet Mrs Tyler, we're told that she's succeeded in scaring Mitchell (the security chief), even though he's 'shrugged off threats from the toughest villains in London'.

Thea's look of absorption as she gazes at the skull is compared to that of a high priestess conducting a ritual.

Ted Moss has a 'look of peasant cunning'. He's riding a bike when Leela captures him ('He came silently on this machine.') We follow him into the cottage when Leela is trailing him later on, and see him load and fire the shotgun.

The Doctor manages to break his Fendahleen-induced paralysis by forcing his body to relax and be freed of fear.

Jack Tyler's hat is described as looking like an upside-down flowerpot. He and Leela have the following pleasing exchange -

'She were brought up in the Old Ways, see?'
For once Leela did see. Magic was still a familiar part of her mental world — despite all the Doctor’s efforts. 'You mean the ancient magic of your tribe?'

I know the dialogue is much the same but I like the characterisation of the Leelster there, and a rare chance for her to actually understand an explanation.

The door of the cupboard where the Doctor's imprisoned opens because he kicks it angrily, and snaps 'some vital part of the lock'. I always assumed that one of the Priory people, disagreeing with Fendleman, came and opened it, though it would have to be Colby I suppose, and he doesn't seem the type to unlock a door and then sneak off.

Leela realises all by herself that she mustn't touch the skull-trapped Doctor - he doesn't make any warning gesture.

There's a good half-page of back-story for Max, all about his isolated childhood and his desire to rule, which he failed to achieve through politics, business or science, and so he turned to the occult. I like the idea of him contacting Mrs Tyler when he first came to Fetchborough - how I wish I could read about that first meeting. Also, in the novel he doesn't have to hear the line 'Relax, Max' (TD spreads the rhyming words a bit further apart).

Colby and Fendleman are tied up on the cellar floor, not tied to pillars, and Max doesn't suggestively menace Colby with the pistol.

The Doctor still somehow knows about the dead hiker (how?), but he doesn't know Mitchell's name, referring to him as 'the security guard'.

The part 3 cliffhanger includes a literal, parenthetical treatment of the cut to the shot of the Fendahleen's tail sliding along the floor. I personally consider that a weakness, there are better ways to create suspense in literature and usually TD uses them.

The narrator confirms that the Priestess can create Fendahleen ad lib, but they need to take human life in order to grow.

After the implosion, Colby reflects that he's the only one of the Priory staff left alive. And the TARDIS speeds on its way to new adventures.