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)
"A picture of lunatic grandeur"
DOCTOR WHO AND THE INVASION OF TIME
by Terrance Dicks
First published 21 February 1980 (1), between The Horns of Nimon and The Leisure Hive (or, in an imaginary world, between Shada Parts Five and Six) (2)
‘The Invasion of Time’ feels a bit special. For the first time, since I’d argue ‘Planet of the Spiders’, this is an attempt at a definite season finale, what with Leela and K9’s departures, the Doctor turning bad guy, a never-before-seen adventure within the Tardis and, at least in theory, the biggest invasion story ever – twice!
This last one (or these last ones, because it really applies to both invasions) doesn’t really come across on TV, but Dicks nearly salvages it. For a start, the Vardans themselves are really disquieting on the page, described as not ‘quite there’ and otherworldly (3), ‘eerily unreal’ (4), somehow burying into people’s very perception to turn their attention elsewhere (5). In what could almost be a high-concept pitch, Borisa reflects ‘Gallifrey was being invaded by shining ghosts!’ (6). When it transpires that the Vardans are actually quite shit, and the prose makes it clear this is deliberate in a way the broadcast episodes never could – what with their ‘drab’ uniforms, fiercely uninspiringly ‘cluttered’ belts and ‘helmets’ that don’t even merit an adjective (7), plus Kelner’s all too prosaic ‘astonished disappointment’ (8) – it’s just in time for the big reveal that they’re just the warm-up act.
The connection between the Vardan and Sontaran invasions is also made stronger in the novelisation. On TV, Rob Shearman’s not even sure there’s meant to be any connection beyond ‘coincidence’ (9), perhaps because it’s addressed in all of one line (10). In Dicks’s adaptation, that one line gets quite a thorough following-up, making clear that the Sontarans were using the Vardans as ‘shock troops’ to be sacrificed once their job was done (11). Even the line itself is tweaked, ‘They served their purpose’ sounding more like the Sontarans were involved in drawing up the Vardan plan than the broadcast episodes’ ‘They served their purpose’, an impression backed up by the Doctor’s reflection that only the Sontarans would have had ‘the savagely militaristic will for an operation such as this’ (12) in the first place. On top of all that, the Vardans are specifically described as the Sontarans’ ‘puppets’ (13).
Come the second invasion, or the real invasion, as Dicks has more firmly cast it, the novelisation manages yet more repair work. Firstly, the Sontarans are made more of a threat, not only by drawing attention to Stor’s holding Gallifrey ‘with only a handful of men’ (which might be more a reflection on the Time Lords than the Sontarans), but also by presenting the Doctor’s resort to the Demat gun as more extreme – Borusa’s insistence to the Doctor that ‘You should never have constructed it’ (15) changed to the more generally horrified ‘It should never have been created’ (16), possibly referring to the very invention of the weapon; and Rodan stating that the knowledge of the gun was ‘forbidden, by Rassilon's decree’ (17), a decree which the Doctor soon understands as, in an echo of last year’s climactic ‘The Armageddon Factor’, he feels ‘the exhilaration of total power’ (18). Secondly, Dicks gives the Tardis runaround of the final act a purpose, the Doctor unable to confront the Sontarans until Rodan’s finished building the Demat gun (19) because he’d ‘be done for’ the moment they ‘got their hands on him’ (20) and so resigned to a ‘deadly game of hide and seek’ (21) in the meantime. In this telling, the sprawling nature of the runaround is precisely the purpose, the Doctor leading the Sontarans on a meandering chase because he’s run out of all options beyond staying alive.
All the above, however, is mere second fiddle to the main ingredient that makes ‘The Invasion of Time’ such a special event – the return to Gallifrey. As Rob Shearman articulates: ‘in the freewheeling days of the seventies […] it gives a new depth that The Invasion of Time is an unapologetic sequel to an adventure broadcast in 1976’ (22).
The novelisation, no doubt helped by the fact Dicks also adapted ‘The Deadly Assassin’, amps up the links between the two stories. There’s a look back at the ‘tough, no nonsense’ Spandrel, ‘now retired’, a stark contrast to his ‘very different’ replacement, all ‘appearances’ and, it’s quickly made clear, no substance (23); a reminder of events last time the Doctor visited (24), which leads into a more precise explanation for the Great Key, considering it was last seen in the Master’s possession (25); and a direct tie-in with the set-up from ‘The Deadly Assassin’, where the Matrix sent the Doctor a vision of the President’s upcoming murder – this time it’s ‘a telepathic message from the Matrix’ (26) prompting the Doctor to seek out the Vardans (27). Furthermore, the strength of the Doctor’s claim to the Presidency, through a quite hefty recap, is more thoroughly outlined than on TV (28), and an even heftier recap (29) serves to increase the sense of risk before the Doctor is to undergo ‘union with the Matrix’ (30), an explicitly mightier challenge than his previous venture into its realm.
As the mention of Spadrell drew attention to, this is an even sorrier bunch than last time: Kelner, in charge of security, is an ‘insecure’ (31) and image-obsessed (32) Castellan whose rise is attributed to ‘good birth and political intrigue’(and not, pointedly, competence) and who’ll ally himself with any regime if it will preserve his position (33); Andred, commander of the guards, seems to concern himself chiefly with staying out of Kelner’s way (34) and bends instantly to any show of authority, whether assumed (35) or genuine but unearned (36). He does, to be fair, eventually turn on the Doctor’s tyranny and seek to assassinate him (37), but that just serves to reveal his incompetence (38). Not only is Borusa now ‘the most powerful Time Lord on Gallifrey’ (39), he’s also the one conferred the greatest respect by the story and the Doctor – remember, last time out, he was the bureaucratic plodder whose insistence on rewriting events for posterity was a running joke.
The aura of decline that sticks to the upper echelons of Time Lord society, a pointedly stronger sense of decline than in the previous story which already strove to portray them as atrophied, points to the fact that this isn’t just a return to Gallifrey but a sequel which has taken an element from the original and wants to push it to a new use. While ‘The Deadly Assassin’ presented Gallifrey as a stuffy old Oxbridge to riff on how far the Doctor had come, this time the parallel is serving as a warning. To précis Tat Wood and Lawrence Miles in About Time 4, this is a story about dictatorships. They explain how it takes in the USSR (40) – the compilation of lists of potentially troublesome Time Lords (41) and their expulsion to the ‘wild and primitive’ outside (42) – and the Africa of the 1970s ‘popular imagination’ (43) – the Doctor’s trip ‘over the border between eccentricity and madness’ (44) transforming him into a ‘ruthless arbitrary dictator’ (45) with an air of ‘lunatic grandeur’ (46) – all the while asking ‘what if the things that happen over there happened here?’ (47). El Sandifer, similarly summing up Wood and Miles, goes further, stating the idea of the story is ‘not only could it "happen here," [people would] be hard-pressed to keep up with it and notice it was happening in time to stop it’ (48).
Thing is, Dicks slightly messes this up. Unlike on TV, the death sentence gets slung around willy-nilly on Gallifrey before there’s any hint of tyranny. Andred’s first in, telling his guards to “kill’ whoever’s in the Tardis if they resist arrest (49), then Kelner goes a step further, ordering that whoever’s in it should be ‘executed’ even if they do submit to arrest (50), making clear that this isn’t just his personal whim but that act of using a Tardis without authorisation ‘carries the death penalty’ (51) – on TV, the official penalty is never spoken, but it’s implied to be simply arrest (52). Now, capital punishment had, to all intents and purposes, ended in Great Britain in 1965 and Northern Ireland in 1973, before ‘The Invasion of Time’ and well before Doctor Who and the Invasion of Time. While Kelner’s later expectation, following the vanquish of the Vardans and his clearly having allied with the losing side, of ‘immediate execution’ (53), can be read as a reflection on him and his still lingering understanding of the Doctor’s regime, those earlier examples can only be taken as indications that the constitution of Gallifrey was already pretty wretched. Dicks even reinforces the call-back to threatened execution in ‘The Deadly Assassin’ (54), Borusa’s ‘uncomfortable’ reaction (55) showing the Time Lords appreciate there’s something iffy about slapping a death sentence on every incursion.
Dicks’s slathering of capital punishment over Time Lord society isn’t the biggest problem with Doctor Who and the Invasion of Time. That’s already baked in from the broadcast episodes. You see, once the Sontarans turn up, the whole theme of violent coups and tyranny just sort of dissipates away. At best, it withers up and dies in the face of a monster invasion romp; at worse, the Doctor, instead of giving up the role of tyrant once his plan regarding the Vardans is complete, embraces it all the more in his pursuit of the Demat gun, a weapon specified to allow the holder to ‘rule the Universe’ (56), and, through doing so, saves the day. Little Dicks touches, for better or worse, are all by the by because ‘The Invasion of Time’ was rotten to the core all along.
Height Attack
Leela’s ‘tall and strong’, Nesbin’s ‘tall and strong’,Presta’s ‘A tall bony woman’, the Doctor’s ‘a tall, strangely-dressed figure’, Borusa’s ‘a tall hawk-faced old man’, the Vardans initially appear as ‘three tall, shimmering shapes’ and reveal themselves as ‘Three tall, stern faced men’ and, for a bit of variety, Varn is a ‘hulking guard’ (who, in case anyone were unclear, is described as ‘very big’ two short sentences later) and the carnivorous plant in the Tardis is ‘a huge, dense bush’
Dicksisms
‘that mysterious traveller in space and time known as the Doctor’
‘there was a wheezing, groaning sound and the blue police box dematerialised’
Are You Sitting Comfortably..?
‘The Doctor and Romana were on their way to new adventures’
1 Based on the Popular Television Series, ed. Paul Smith
2 epguides.com/DoctorWho
3. ‘The strange thing about the Vardans was that they weren't quite there. It was as if they existed in some other dimension, some other reality. The astonished High Council saw three tall, shimmering shapes, cloaked and hooded figures with the vaguest hint of features under the hoods’
4. ‘The voice was harsh and thin, and had something of the eerily unreal quality of the Vardans themselves’
5. ‘But somehow it was impossible to get a really good look at the Vardans. Something about them turned away the eyes’
6. ‘They were like ghosts, thought Borusa dazedly. Gallifrey was being invaded by shining ghosts!’
7. ‘Three tall, stern faced men in drab green battle-dress, belts cluttered with pouches and equipment, helmets on their heads’
8. ‘He stared at the Vardans in a kind of astonished disappointment’
There’s also a particularly wonderfully underwhelming moment – ‘A picked squad of Kelner's bodyguard […] were busily trying to smash down the door of the Presidential office […]. Despite the fact that a watching Vardan was urging them on, it was taking them quite a time’ – where, even materialised, it’s clear the Vardans are loathe to action
9. ‘a bunch of other monsters have decided to take advantage of the confusion, and to coincide their invasion at the very same time’
Toby Hadoke and Robert Shearman, Running through Corridors 2; p.315
10. ‘Vardans? They were expendable. They had served their purpose to open up the forcefield and let us in’
chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/15-6.htm
11. ‘“The Vardans were expendable. They served their purpose– to open the force-field and let us in.” Typical Sontaran ruthlessness, thought the Doctor almost admiringly. How like the Sontarans to use an entire species for their shock troops-and sacrifice them without a second thought in the cause of Sontaran victory’
12. ‘They had the technological skills, but not the savagely militaristic will for an operation such as this. Only the Sontarans would dare to attempt the greatest military coup in the galaxy. The conquest of Gallifrey– the invasion of Time itself!’
13. ‘The Vardans were only the forerunners, the puppets’
14. ‘So many delays, so many frustrations, victory always so close, yet always snatched away at the last moment. His ship, and the whole Sontaran battle fleet trapped outside the barrier. He had conquered a planet, and now he had to hold it with only a handful of men’
15. ‘BORUSA: I forbid you to use it. You should never have constructed it’
chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/15-6.htm
16. ‘I forbid you to use that weapon, Doctor. It should never have been created’
17. ‘But that's impossible. All knowledge of that weapon is forbidden, by Rassilon's decree’ – on TV, she stops simply at: ‘RODAN: That's impossible!’ (chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/15-6.htm)
18. ‘The gun seemed to throb with energy in his hands. For a moment he felt the exhilaration of total power-and realised why Rassilon had ordered that the weapon should be forbidden’
19. ‘All he had to do was stay alive until Rodan finished the task he had given her’
20. ‘Sontarans were appallingly strong, and the Doctor knew that if they once got their hands on him he would be done for’
21. ‘The only thing to do he decided, was to carry on with this deadly game of hide and seek. […] He should be able to keep them busy long enough for Rodan to finish her task’
22. Toby Hadoke and Robert Shearman, Running through Corridors 2; p.311
23. ‘Spandrel the previous Castellan, now retired, had been content with shabby chambers in an old, run down quarter of the Capitol. But then, Spandrel had been a tough, no nonsense character, who felt no need to keep up appearances. Kelner was very different’
24. ‘He gestured towards an empty cushion, held by another guard. (The Key of Rassilon had been stolen by the Master, and he had escaped with it after the failure of his attempt to destroy Gallifrey.)’
25. ‘“The Great Key of Rassilon, lying unguarded in a museum?” The Doctor shook his head. “That was a facsimile, a lesser key. Good enough for the Master's purposes-but not the Great Key itself”’
26. ‘I received a telepathic message from the Matrix, warning me of their power, I decided to join them’
27. ‘We have suspected him ever since he first made contact with us. It was too convenient...’ – on TV, it is they who first make contact with him, and there’s no suspicious convenience: ‘We have suspected the Doctor since we first made contact. We shall deal with him soon’ (chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/15-6.htm)
28. ‘To escape execution, the Doctor had announced his candidacy for the Presidency, putting himself beyond the reach of the law. At the time this had simply been a legalistic device, to give the Doctor time to discover and unmask the real criminal. Nevertheless the Doctor had been accepted as a candidate for the Presidency, the only opposition candidate was now dead, and no other candidate had ever been brought forward. According to the ancient Constitution of Gallifrey, the Presidency had therefore passed to the Doctor by default’
29. ‘The Doctor had only been able to defeat the Master's murderous schemes by linking his mind with the APC net. In doing so, he had entered a nightmare world, created by the rebel Time Lord who had been the Master's pawn. It was an experience that had almost cost the Doctor his sanity and his life’
30. ‘“The APC net is only a small part of the Matrix,” said Borusa warningly. The psychic shock of union with the Matrix was considerable, and most Presidents-Elect prepared themselves for the ordeal with a long period of mental training. It was typical of the Doctor, thought Borusa, that he was prepared to take the risk with no preparation at all’
31. ‘Kelner was a thin-faced, nervous, rather insecure Time Lord who owed his position to a combination of good birth and political intrigue’
32. ‘It was over-technological even by Time Lord standards, but Kelner, the new Castellan felt it helped to maintain his image’
33. ‘Kelner was first and foremost a politician. The new President, for all his eccentricities, seemed to be a man of purpose and decision, and, perhaps Borusa's day was already over. Kelner had no intention of allying himself with the losing side’
34. ‘Andred, Commander of the Chancellery Guard. Andred was seldom to be found at his desk. He didn't much care for Kelner’
35. ‘“No one can go in there unannounced.” “Then announce me!” Such was the authority in the Doctor's voice that Andred heard himself saying, “Very well.”’ – it’s not even a conscious decision on his part; he hears a note of authority, he automatically does what he’s told
36. ‘Commander Andred was a soldier, with a soldier's loyalties. His duty was to serve the ruler of his planet, and as far as he understood it, that ruler was now the Doctor’
37. ‘“We must act soon,” he concluded, “and the first thing we must do is kill the President!”’
38. Exactly as on TV, from his getting shot by K9 quicker than he can get a shot off himself, through his attempting to kill the Doctor with a weapon that doesn’t work where he’s pursued the Doctor, to the Doctor’s cutting response to his query ‘“What treachery are you attempting now?” “Something rather more efficient than your recent efforts I hope!”’
There’s also Savar and Gomer, seen briefly at the Presidential ordination. Savar is easy enough to dismiss, pegged as ‘not known for any unnecessary mental activity’. Gomer is more interesting. As part of his 'hobby’, he’s ‘making a study of what I call wavelength broadcast power transduction’, something which sounds so close to the one thing that makes the Vardans such a threat – ‘they can travel along any form of broadcast wavelength’ – that it can’t just be a coincidence. Is the suggestion that, with a bit more gumption of Gomer’s part, and a bit more support within Time Lord society for such pursuits, the complete opposite, in other words, of what he encounters from Savar, that the Time Lords would have been so on top of the Vardans’ technological advantages so as to have never been in danger? I mention this in passing because I’ve not ever noticed anyone else address it, but I’ve buried it away here because it’s exactly the same on TV as it is in the novelisation
39. ‘This was Cardinal Borusa, now the most powerful Time Lord on Gallifrey’
40. ‘it’s like the Brezhnev era in comic-opera costumes’
Lawrence Miles & Tat Wood, About Time 4; p.209
41. ‘The Doctor touched a control, and a list of names began flowing across the tiny screen […] “these are the Time Lords you regard as potential rebels against our regime?”’
42. ‘Expulsion! […] I suggest you put them out one at a time–the effect will be more terrifying if they don't have company’ AND ‘“In the outer world?” said Andred, shocked. The Capitol was so large that it covered most of Gallifrey. Indeed to a Time Lord, the Capitol was Gallifrey. The country outside was still surprisingly wild and primitive’
43. ‘This is a story about an erratic revolution, about a military coup led by a single unpredictable monomaniac, and in the popular imagination of the 1970s that sort of thing was the speciality of Africa’
Lawrence Miles & Tat Wood, About Time 4; p.209
44. ‘The old man looked sadly at his former pupil. The Doctor had always been a secret favourite of his, despite a tendency to rashness and indiscipline. Now he seemed to have slipped over the border between eccentricity and madness’
45. ‘This was quite a compliment. The entire Vardan philosophy was based on the seizure and application of power. A ruthless arbitrary dictator was the most admired figure in their society’
46. ‘Borusa was too furious to speak. He inclined his head in the merest suggestion of a bow, turned and walked away. A picture of lunatic grandeur, the Doctor leaned back in his chair and smiled’
47. ‘“The Invasion of Time” often looks as if it’s asking the question: “what if the things that happen over there happened here?”’
Lawrence Miles & Tat Wood, About Time 4; p.209
48. ‘This is all particularly powerful in the context of what Miles and Wood compellingly argue that this story is about. They point out that the sorts of events that take place in this story would have been mostly associated with the rise of African dictators like Idi Amin or, a year or so after this story, Robert Mugabe. By setting it on Gallifrey, a planet obviously inspired by Oxford and Cambridge, the story positions the sort of event that happens in areas far removed from the UK in the heart of British culture to considerable effect. By making the storytelling challenging and complex the viewer is forced to confront the chaos and ambiguity that surrounds a revolutionary coup and a change in power and is compellingly reminded that not only could it "happen here," they'd be hard-pressed to keep up with it and notice it was happening in time to stop it.’
Elizabeth Sandifer, Tardis Eruditorum, eruditorumpress.com/blog/meanwhiles-and-neverweres-the-invasion-of-time
49. ‘“If a sentient life-form emerges, arrest and hold for interrogation.” Andred paused. “If the alien resists arrest–kill him!”’
50. ‘He is to be captured, interrogated, and then executed’
51. ‘Unauthorised use of a Time Capsule carries the death penalty’
52.‘KELNER: Unauthorised use of a time capsule has only one penalty, Commander. See to it.
ANDRED: […] Any sentient form on board is to be arrested on arrival’
chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/15-6.htm
53. ‘Kelner was too frightened to reply. Clearly, he expected immediate execution at the very least’
54. ‘DOCTOR: The Constitution.
BORUSA: You had that at your fingertips last time we met.
DOCTOR: Yes, and if I hadn't, you would have killed me.’
chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/15-6.htm
55. ‘“On the Constitution.” “You had that at your fingertips, the last time we met.” “And if I hadn't, you would have killed me.” Borusa winced at the Doctor's accusation. There was an uncomfortable amount of truth in it’
56. ‘With this weapon, I could rule the Universe, eh, Chancellor?’
Miscellania
Now, I know there’s a Sontaran on the cover anyway, but I am surprised how clear they’ve made the twist to anyone who might glace at the CONTENTS page: ‘9 The Vardans | 10 False Victory | 11 The Sontarans’
‘the typical Vardan V-formation’ – is this a joke? Or is it just me who immediately thinks they only do this because it’s the first letter of their name?‘The Doctor smiled, and seemed to relax. Suddenly Borusa saw not a power-mad traitor, but the Doctor he had always known, the pupil whose impudent charm had so often brought an unwilling smile to his face’ – I can’t quite see a young Hartnell is this
Just to show that the Sontarans have always been a source of humour: ‘Sontarans have no sense of humour, though they occasionally smile at the death-throes of an enemy’
‘Sontaran hearing is surprisingly sensitive, and Stor seemed to be affected worse than anyone else. Gauntleted hands clutching his head he reeled in agony’ – this just makes me think of Ice Warriors
‘“Bring better weapons. Make sure they are effective, or I will negate you all!” The terrified Sontaran troopers hurried away’ – for some reason, I always assumed they commanded through conformity rather than terror
‘Nesbin himself had been expelled for physically attacking a rival Time Lord, an offence almost unknown in Time Lord society’ – is this supposed to cast a positive light on Nesbin? Are we supposed to think Nesbit’s actions were perfectly normal and his punishment reflects badly on the Time Lords? Is it supposed to give the Outsiders a hint of threat? It’s such a specific choice and gets no pay-off
I always love a description of K9 betraying his true nature: ‘K9's eye-screens lit up and all his antennae quivered ecstatically, as data began flooding in from the TARDIS console’ AND ‘The Doctor realised that K9 was completely immersed in his greatest pleasure, the absorption of fresh data. He was in a kind of blissful electronic trance’