It’s Dicks doing Fisher again, so what differences exist between TV and book are minor. There are still a few things to pick up on though. To start, a few things are more clearly explained than in the broadcast episodes. Reynart’s appearance on time for his coronation, for example, is so important because, should he miss it, it’s taken as a divine disfavour (3). Meanwhile, the presence of guards at the entrance to the secret tunnel on which Reynart’s allies are relying to reach the coronation merits the reflection that ‘the Count knew about the tunnel after all’ (4) where the lack of remark on TV gave the impression they maybe always expected a guard, leaving the point of using the secret passage a bit of a mystery. Similarly, the Doctor’s escape out the back of the Pavilion of the Summer Winds despite Grendel’s men surrounding the place makes more sense when it’s stated ‘Grendel’s call to attack’ has drawn them all round to the front door (5). Perhaps most banal of all, it’s specified that the Doctor forgets to secure K9’s boat on entering Grendel’s castle (6), which is why K9 ends up stranded mid-moat.

    Next, Dicks twice takes advantage of the lack of budgetary constraints. On the first occasion, the Taran Wood Beast becoming ‘A mixture of bear,

ape and boar’ (7), Dicks might not have had any idea what actually appeared onscreen. However, when, on the second occasion, portraying the build-up to the coronation at the Taran palace like a scene from a medieval painting, with ‘innumerable towers and turrets’, ‘an encircling wall’, ‘Flags […] flying’ and especially ‘an endless line of people on horseback and on foot’ (8), he must have had a shrewd idea the production team never pulled that off.

    The novelisation’s also considerably bloodier than the broadcast episodes. Rob Shearman comments that Lamia’s ‘the only death in the entire story’ (9) and, though it’s always possible that fatalities onscreen were simply not dwelt on and so ambiguous, the first death – on TV, the guard will explicitly recover in a few hours (10); in the book, the fatal blow is ‘the last thing he saw’ (11) – is clearly not an example of this. Shortly after this, as more guards follow the Doctor’s troupe up the secret passage, ‘Four of the guards [die] before they realised what was happening’ (12), Zadek then ‘dispose[s]’ of another (13), Farrah another (14), back to Zadek ‘and another of Grendel’s guards scream[s] and die[s]’ (15), back to Farah and another ‘disposed of’ (16).

    That Target has of late been adapting stories in more-or-less broadcast order pays a few dividends too. Dicks’s recent experience writing Doctor Who and the Invasion of Time leads to some added insight into Romana’s odd relationship with horses (17), with her upbringing in ‘the vast Time Lord city-complex’ perhaps explaining her greater reticence than on TV when the Doctor suggests she retrieve the segment herself (18) and how a summer’s walk through some woods becomes so ‘uneasy’ and menacing (19). He even seems to have picked up on Ian Marter’s characterisation of her in Doctor Who and the Ribos Operation, both here and in the opening to Doctor Who and the Stones of Blood, as both hyper-focused on the Key to Time mission (20) and weary of the Doctor’s habit of embracing distractions (21).

    In a similar vein to all the above but more significant, the relationship between Grendel and Lamia isn’t quite the same as on TV. Where Lamia’s resentment of Grendel onscreen derive from a one-time ‘certain courtesy’ (22), the novelisation opens up the possibility that her feelings resulted not so much from the relationship itself but her frustrated ‘hopes of becoming [Grendel’s] Countess’ (23). This diminishes Lamia’s behaviour as, what on TV comes across as a hatred of the man’s power to press that courtesy and of the man for withdrawing that courtesy coupled with a sad affection for him borne of that one incident, becomes merely a naïve attempt to gain power that come to nothing. Perhaps this is simply how the Count views the situation, unable to conceive of any motive except social advancement. Certainly, when Romana observes the couple, ‘the tension between them’, which suggests ‘they [are] more to each other than master and servant’ (24), seems more mutual than the story of Lamia’s thwarted ambition would explain. What’s more, though her fear of Grendel generally prevents her anger getting the better of her (25), the moments when it doesn’t, such as her barely respectful tone at one point (26) or her ‘little hiss of anger’ (27) at another, suggest a deeply personal animosity, one that can’t help but express itself even when it risks what social standing she does have.

    Other lines in the novelisation suggest that this might just be Grendel’s take on the incident. Certainly, he’s more transparently a sexual predator on the page, envisaging ‘a use for both’ Romana’s ‘pretty head’ and ‘body’ (28) rather than just her head – ‘keep your head […] I may have a better use for it’ (29) – and talking of how he ‘can be very persuasive’ when confronting his ‘choice of two such beautiful women for [his] bride’ (30). On top of that, Grendel is clearly so obsessed with his own plans to elevate his standing, having long owned a throne ready for his becoming king (31), that he might well view everyone else’s actions through the same prism.

    This ease with which Grendel exploits his power might explain the Doctor’s verdict that ‘he’d seldom met a more thoroughgoing villain in all his lives’ (32). Here is a man who thinks nothing of destroying the android king and kidnapping Romana under a flag of truce, rues not killing the Doctor when he was an unconscious stranger (33) and plans to end the final confrontation by jumping aside in a one-one-one swordfight, once it becomes clear he is the weaker fencer, in order to ‘have the Doctor shot down’ (34). Grendel’s may be a ‘silky brutality’ (35), but that silk is only honourable in appearance: he only insists the Doctor draw his sword when confident he can easily best him, and he only views his opponent’s failure ‘to switch his electro-sword to killing-strength’ (36) as a ‘sign of contempt’ (37), and so perhaps as an insult to the nobility of the duel, because his focus is so utterly on destroying his enemies. His villainy is sufficiently transparent that even the Archimandrite, so pliable to Grendel’s demands for so much of the story, ‘seize[s] his moment’ to crown Reynart when it so surprisingly presents itself; his honour is only just sufficient that he allows the coronation rather than utterly flouting tradition (38).

    The tension between status-sanctioned exploitation and superficial nobility lies behind a possible moment of bite Dicks sneaks into Doctor Who and the Androids of Tara. Reflecting on how the peasants possess technical skills on which the nobility rely but in which they will not involve themselves, the Doctor considers how ‘A medieval knight had to know how to use a sword, but no one expected him to be able to make one’ (39). What’s interesting here is that the medieval relationship doesn’t quite fit the situation on Tara –the knight would himself have been in service to a noble and was expected to be as specialised at fighting as the blacksmith was at forging swords. The pay-off comes with the second analogy, in which Victorian naval engineers were viewed by their superiors ‘as a lower form of life’, where the relationship between roles is completely ignored in favour of the clearly awful attitude of those of higher rank. The medieval example is how the nobility of Tara like to see themselves; the Victorian example is what they are – and it’s tempting to think the latter era was chosen because The Prisoner of Zenda was written and set in 1894.

    If this seems a tenuous reading of Dicks’s insertion, or if it feels less applicable to Reynart’s contingent than Grendel’s, take a look at why the Doctor resigns himself to accepting Reynart’s payment, reasoning that a person who isn’t coerced by either money or force won’t be trusted (40). If Grendel can’t imagine any action being motivated other than by ambition, this offers an insight into what motivates the likes of Zadek and Farrah. Tellingly, it appears Fisher himself went in a completely different direction for his 2012 audio adaptation (41).

    Alongside this, and more in line with the broadcast episodes, attention is drawn to the androids as an exploited underclass. On TV, the Doctor repeatedly asserts an android perspective on relations between man and machine (42); in the novelisation, this is slightly expanded upon, androids revealed to ‘work in the factories and the mines, till the fields’ in the face of ‘a good deal of prejudice’ (43). For all it’s a rip-roaring romp, Doctor Who and the Androids of Tara is very happy to highlight that the society portrayed, one analogous to the golden age of chivalry and compared with the heyday of the British empire, it rotten to the core. No wonder the Doctor spends the entire story happy to simply walk away from it all if he can only get his hands on Romana and the segment and even concedes that maybe it’s not always worth ‘getting mixed up in other people’s problems’ (44).