Doctor Who's Putrid Ham
A quest through the Dr Who novelisations
"The excellent ham of Doctor Who is more than a little off"
1974 Times Literary Supplement review of Doctor Who and the Crusaders (quoted from David J Howe's The Target Book)
"Perhaps their attackers had only got short-range fingers"
DOCTOR WHO AND THE ANDROID INVASION
by Terrance Dicks
First published 16 November 1978 (1), between The Stones of Blood Parts Three and Four (2)
Off the back of declaring I’ve always quite liked ‘Death to the Daleks’, I’ve never quite understood the general disdain for ‘The Android Invasion’ either. I do now. If there’s one thing the novelisations are suddenly proving very good at, it’s laying bare the pointless faff that dominates weaker Who stories.
El Sandifer pretty much hits the nail on the head when she discusses how Terry Nation, despite being very adept at filling his stories with incident, isn’t so hot on making those incidents feed any sense of progression (3). Dicks, just as in Death to the Daleks, reproduces this vision of drama to a tee.
Rather than giving more tiresome examples, perhaps the best way of illustrating how he does this is to look back to how Malcolm Hulke plotted his novelisations, specifically the graph, reproduced in The Target Book (4), that he drew up for Doctor Who and the Sea-Devils, and reverse engineer a similar plan for Dicks’s Doctor Who and the Android Invasion.
Unlike Hulke’s line, Dicks’s barely deviates from a straight and true directly proportional page-number-to-screen-minute line. There’s no relishing the intriguing, atmospheric and disquieting first episode here, no wallowing in the freedom from 25 minute-shaped shackles, just, at long last, the complete satisfaction of Keith Miller’s 41-year-old criticism of The Revenge of the Cybermen of a ‘script-to-book-and-never-mind-the-detail style’ (5). Worse, Dicks doesn’t even include the clue which El Sandifer specifically fingers as functioning quite badly on TV but playing right into the hands of any novelisation (6).
How little effort is Dicks making? Well, there’s the return of his ‘slowly, very slowly’ trick from the last book (7), there’s more lampshading clunky bits of exposition rather than transferring them away from dialogue (8) with idiot-behaviour acknowledged but hardly excused (9). There’s also the clear belief that anyone persevering with this book must be a simpleton who needs constant clarification regarding what’s going on (10).
That, however, is not an entirely fair picture. It’s difficult to differentiate scripted material that never made it to screen and flourishes on Dicks’s part (11) but, assuming the additions generally are Dicks’s work, there is some show of effort going on. For example, the scene where Styggron and Chedaki discuss the end of the village simulation and the beginning of the ‘invasion countdown’ (12) sees the two Kraals swap dialogue (13). It might seem a minor change but it plays much better to their individual roles, Chedaki, the military figure who’s endlessly frustrated at Styggron’s insistence on experiments, abruptly declaring it’s time to get invading while the scientist, so used to getting his own way, is caught on the hop.
This ties in with a wider interest in fleshing the Kraals out a bit. The novelisation makes clear that Kraal society gives scientists ‘dominance’ over all other fields, including, seemingly by a considerable margin, the military (14). There’s even a hint, with the information that ‘many savage atomic wars [have] devastated their planet and reduced the Kraal race to a mere handful’ (15), that soldiers such as Chedaki hold the scientists responsible for their desperate situation, hence the Marshal’s pointed reminder that androids ‘are a double-edged weapon’, capable of harming the Kraals just as easily as harming their enemies, being attributed to the military’s ‘old grievance’ against scientists like Styggron. Certainly, it is a warning that could equally apply to the weapons that ‘ruined their planet’ (16) just as easily as to the androids on which they’re now ‘dependent’.
Dicks also seeks to remedy several of the more easily mocked incidents from the broadcast episodes. Most significantly, Crayford’s absolute belief that he’s missing an eye simply because he woke up wearing an eyepatch two years ago is at least addressed: where Tat Wood can find no motive for the Kraals’ deception (17), the novelisation suggests it was a ploy to reinforce the lie that Crayford had been reconstructed following an accident and ‘owed the Kraals his life’ (18); and, where Toby Hadoke is baffled that Crayford’s never looked under the eyepatch (19), the novelisation hints that the astronaut has been ‘brainwashed’ to never investigate (20). Other little niggles Dicks takes on: Tat Wood struggles to take seriously the ease with which android-Sarah’s face falls off at the end of part two (21), now she now has to trip and whack her head against a tree to loosen the face (22); Wood is also baffled how the Doctor’s robot double is able to function at the end when a jamming signal has shut down all the androids (23), but Dicks explains he fits it with ‘a shielding device’ specifically so that it can (24); and, as Toby Hadoke observes, the TV story ends with Chedaki’s poised invasion fleet ominously unmentioned (25), but the novelisation explicitly states that the Marshal will make no move without Styggron’s signal (26).
Beyond that, it’s slim pickings. There’s the odd good line (I particularly like Sarah’s reflection that their attackers early on might not so much be poor shots as simply cursed with ‘short-range fingers’ (27) and Chedaki’s apparent Kraal maxim that ‘a dead foe is a safe foe’ (28)), a whisper of characterisation for Benton (who demonstrates a fondness and ‘protective interest’ in Sarah (29)), a courtesy sadly never extended to Harry, and a ‘graphic and gruesome death’ for Styggron which, according to a review by Andrew Feryok, suggests Dicks has had a look at Ian Marter’s approach to the novelisations (30), though how much that counts as an improvement will very much vary according to taste (31).
Odder is Dicks’s insertion of the various insults the Doctor throws the Kraals’ way. He labels them the ‘ugliest’ species in the galaxy (32), calls Styggron ‘pig face’ (33), describes them as ‘warty’ (34) and comments disparagingly on their oversized ears (35). This could just come off as a typical fourth-Doctor campaign to undermine the overinflated ego of the bad guys were it not that their egos at no time ever seem to be propped up by their looks. As it is, it just seems unnecessarily unpleasant, not just on the Doctor’s part, which wouldn’t be much of an innovation by this stage in a Dicks adaptation, but also on the part of the novelisation, because there’s no apparent commentary on the Doctor’s attitude. Which is odd in a story all about doppelgangers and so potentially about appearance – I suppose that’s the danger when you so resolutely ensure you’re story’s actually about nothing at all.
My edition has the text printed on pages 7-126, so those have become pages 0-118 here. I’ve only taken account of episode endings
1 Based on the Popular Television Series, ed. Paul Smith
2 epguides.com/DoctorWho
3 On Terry Nation: ‘He can do action well enough, but in the sense of keeping things constantly moving. What he can't do - what, in fact, every single Terry Nation story has massively lacked in - is getting the story to move to anywhere’
Elizabeth Sandifer, Tardis Eruditorum, eruditorumpress.com/blog/a-bit-dodgy-this-process-the-android-invasion
4 David J Howe, The Target Book; p.31
5 ‘Mr Dicks’ traditional script-to-book-and-never-mind-the-detail style’
Keith Miller in Doctor Who Digest in 1976 on The Revenge of the Cybermen; quoted from David J Howe, The Target Book; p.39
6 ‘Nation, in a real sense, writes for the novelization. And did so long before novelizations were a thing. Look, for instance, at the ginger pop sequence in The Android Invasion. A detail - that Sarah hates ginger pop - is introduced in the first episode. In the second, it is used as the explanation for why the Doctor knows that Sarah is a duplicate. It's a nice deduction. Except that with a week between episodes, basically nobody is going to pay attention to Sarah's preferences in fizzy beverages to see the setup’
Elizabeth Sandifer, Tardis Eruditorum, eruditorumpress.com/blog/a-bit-dodgy-this-process-the-android-invasion
7 ‘Slowly, very slowly, the sentry turned his head to look after him’
8 ‘he did his best to explain the Kraal plan to Sarah, who was finding it difficult to take in’
9 ‘Crayford stared wildly at them. He felt a strange need to talk to the two prisoners, to explain things, to justify himself’, PLUS ‘How strange, thought the Doctor, that an android should take such pride in the ruthlessness of its creator. Yet perhaps it was natural. Created by Kraal technology, such values and emotions as it had were those of Kraals’ AND ‘They stood in the doorway watching the final struggle. They made no attempt to interfere, knowing their fellow-android's victory was only a matter of time’
10 ‘In the scanner room of the Space Research Centre (the real Space Research Centre, not the now-exploded Kraal reconstruction) there was an air of scarcely-suppressed excitement’ AND ‘Harry Sullivan and Benton (the real Harry Sullivan and Benton) walked along the corridor of the Space Research Centre’
11 For example, I’m pretty sure this
‘“And who might you be?” “I am Styggron, Chief Scientist of the Kraals!” The Kraal began dragging the Doctor towards the village green. “Come. There is no time for pleasantries”’
was in the script but became this
‘DOCTOR: Look here, we haven't been introduced, have we?
STYGGRON: This is no time for niceties’
chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/13-4.htm
during rehearsals thanks to being ridiculous, not that Dicks minds…
12 ‘STYGGRON: The androids are now fully trained. Both the village and the Doctor will be destroyed in precisely nine minutes.
CHEDAKI: Nine minutes?
STYGGRON: The invasion countdown has begun. There will be no variation in the schedule.
CHEDAKI: I understand’
chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/13-4.htm
13 ‘Chedaki seized his advantage. “Your experiment is at an end, Styggron. The androids are now fully trained, and the village simulation has served its purpose. It must be destroyed in precisely nine minutes and the Doctor with it.” Styggron seemed stunned by the Doctor's escape. “Nine minutes?” “The invasion countdown has begun,” Chedaki reminded him sternly. “There can be no variation in the schedule”’
14 ‘“The androids are a double-edged weapon, Styggron. They are unstoppable, indestructible.” Styggron stared impatiently at his frantic colleague. To some extent the Marshal was only expressing an old grievance. All Kraal soldiers resented the dominance of the scientists who ranked far above mere soldiers in Kraal society’
15 ‘The Kraals are a short-tempered race, and spend almost as much time fighting each other as in planning the conquest of other races. This ferocious temperament was the cause of the many savage atomic wars which had devastated their planet and reduced the Kraal race to a mere handful, totally dependent on the androids’
16 ‘Oseidon, the planet of the Kraals, is the only inhabited planet in the galaxy with a level that high. The Kraals fought one atomic war too many. Not many of them survived it—and they ruined their planet into the bargain’
17 ‘The Kraals tell Crayford his eye’s missing for no purpose’
Tat Wood, About Time 4; p.80
18 ‘He had felt all along that the story of the missing eye had been no more than a detail invented to convince Crayford that he owed the Kraals his life’
19 ‘the idea that Crayford hasn’t washed his face or even sensed the presence of his eye in two years’
Toby Hadoke and Robert Shearman, Running through Corridors 2; p.227
20 Just to be clear, it’s not that the brainwashing has been entirely dedicated to conditioning him never to lift the patch but he does rub it at moments of stress – ‘Gently Crayford rubbed his eye-patch’ – with the rubbing seemingly getting less gentle the more his conditioning wears off – ‘Crayford rubbed nervously at the black eye-patch’ followed quickly by ‘You've been brainwashed, Crayford. Although I think it's starting to wear off a little...’ – culminating in the strongest hint that this is exactly what’s going on just before the reveal of his perfectly intact eye – ‘As always at moments of stress, Crayford rubbed his hand nervously over the black eye-patch’
21 ‘if you can use the word “perfect” to describe models whose faces come off when they fall over’
Tat Wood, About Time 4; p.78
22 ‘The android broke free, tripped, and cannoned into the trunk of the nearest tree, hitting its head on the trunk. Horrifying, its 'Sarah' face was jolted loose, rolling away across the ground’
23 ‘The end of the story sees the Doctor using his own robot double to thwart Styggron’s plans, even though all the androids are supposed to have been shut down’
Tat Wood, About Time 4; p.80
24 ‘I fitted it with a shielding device and then reprogrammed it’
25 ‘a rushed conclusion that makes no mention of Marshall Chedaki’s fleet’
Toby Hadoke and Robert Shearman, Running through Corridors 2; p.227
26 ‘Marshal Chedaki would wait in vain for Styggron's signal to bring the invasion fleet of the Kraals to an unsuspecting Earth’
27 ‘Perhaps their attackers had only got short-range fingers, thought Sarah hysterically’
28 ‘a dead foe is a safe foe—every soldier knows that’
29 ‘“The TARDIS turns up in the woods by itself, but no Doctor! And where's Miss Smith?” Benton was fond of Sarah, and took a protective interest in her’
30 ‘Terrance Dicks also pulls an Ian Marter by giving Styggron a particularly graphic and gruesome death at the hands of the virus at the end’
Andrew Feryok, ‘Duplication!’, pagefillers.com/dwrg/andrinov.htm#2
31 ‘Styggron's head began to dissolve, like a ball of wax in a roaring flame. Soon it was a shapeless, horrible blob. Such was the strength in the stocky figure that the dying Kraal's body thrashed about for a moment longer’
32 ‘“We Kraals are the strongest species in the Galaxy.” “As well as the ugliest?”’
33 ‘“How about unpleasantries, pig face?” said the Doctor rudely’
34 ‘That's the warty chap with the big nose, isn't it?’
35 ‘the Kraal's great paw flashed out and clamped round his arm. “I heard you coming, Doctor.” “With those ears, I'm not surprised”’
Height Attack
The Doctor’s ‘a very tall man’, plus there’s ‘The tall uniformed figure of Company Sergeant-Major Benton’
Dicksisms
At the open – ‘a strange sound disturbed the peace of the forest, a kind of wheezing, groaning noise’ – and an unusual mid-book example – ‘Suddenly she heard a familiar groaning, wheezing noise behind her. She spun round and the TARDIS dematerialized before her eyes’
‘Anyone who thought the fox actually enjoyed the hunt, should try being chased across country by dogs themselves, he thought grimly’ – what’s Dicks’s love of fox-hunting analogies?
Miscellania
Kraals: ‘The face hovering over her was broad and flat with
leathery greenish skin. It was heavily jowled with a squashed
pig-like snout, underhung jaw, and enormous ears set flat
against a massive skull. Huge eyes glowed in cavernous
sockets beneath the jutting brows’
‘By now she was looking forward to returning home—and
she didn't even want to consider the possibility that
something had gone wrong with the TARDIS's ever-erratic
steering mechanism’ – why does Dicks think Sarah’s always
hankering after a return home?
‘Luckily his Time Lord constitution was strongly resistant to
colds’ – of all the underwhelming superpowers…
‘you've buttoned it on the wrong side. You're a mirror-image
Sarah—just like that mirror-image Harry, with his medals on the wrong side’ – apparently this is a vestige of a script idea where the duplicates were all mirror images of the originals. Not that either Nation or Dicks would have done anything with that idea…
