If Doctor Who and the Monster of Peladon is interested in anything, and the argument that it isn’t would be very strong indeed, it’s the burden of responsibility. Thalira, once she starts trying to fulfil the role of queen, seems ‘crushed by the responsibilities of royalty’ (3), echoing her introduction as ‘almost crushed by the weight of her crown and ceremonial jewels’ (4), so much so that she immediately seeks to conceal her tentative steps towards taking some command (5). The theme is made clearer with Alpha Centauri, manipulated by Eckersley because his suggestion to call in the Federation would ease the ‘crushing weight of responsibility’ (6) on Centauri’s shoulders. In making the wrong decision, Centauri even momentarily hesitates, contemplating first consulting the Doctor before recognising this would simply be handing the responsibility off in a different direction (7).

    What’s not clear, however, is quite what Dicks is saying about handling responsibility. Is the problem that Centauri should have consulted more widely before taking action or simply that they were too easily manipulated by Eckersley? Does Thalira struggle to take charge because she’s suffered a lifetime being told she’s inadequate to the task or because her instinct is to avoid confrontation? On the Doctor Who Target Book Club, Tony Whitt suggests, on the latter question, that the book does a better job than the TV episodes suggesting the issue isn’t simply that Thalira ‘needs to grow a spine’ but that ‘society itself needs to be changed’ (8), but he has to concede that ‘that’s something we don’t see happening’ and I’m more inclined to Alyson Fitch-Safreed’s verdict that Thalira is given insufficient ‘substance’ to even cultivate ‘the idea that she could become a good leader’ (9). Maybe Dicks is just proposing that the solution would be the queen ‘asserting herself’ (10)? Does that also mean he thinks Alpha Centauri just needs to grow some balls?

    Ettis’s treatment suggests not. Though clearly on the wrong path, he’s certainly assertive. For his pains, the book does even more of a hitjob on him than the TV episodes. Confronted by the results of his actions (11), he is understandably broken, hiding away in the dark ‘sobbing’ (12), the deaths of his followers playing out over and over in his mind (13). This could be read as sympathetic but, knowing that the result is he’ll try to blow everyone up in a fit of pique, words like ‘fled’ and ‘hid’ feel like Dicks is hinting more towards cowardice than trauma. Even Ettis’s lowest moment, stabbing a fellow miner just to keep his plan secret (14), is made worse, smashing Rima’s head in with a rock (15).

    With Ettis so tarnished, Gebek must be the model of leadership. That might well be where the book is pointing, but it’s not a message that comes off very well. By all accounts, the miners have got a strong case (16), made all the stronger in the novelisation (17), and yet the story insists firstly that it’s only the false Aggedor that really spurs them to rebellion, making them, as Tat Wood observes, ‘superstitious’ (18) rather than justified, and secondly that the only acceptable recourse for them should be, as El Sandifer scornfully points out, ‘pleasant and polite conversations with their noble benefactors’ (19) rather than an insistence they be listened to. Gebek is the character through which the story makes these criticisms of the miners, the option in which they’re too foolish to keep faith.

    To make matters worse, Gebek’s chief qualification to leadership seems to be his ‘sincerity’ (20), so powerful it convinces even Ortron, never mind the other courtly figures on Peladon. Trouble is, it’s not much cop with his own men (21). The impression ends up being that Gebek is more at home in court than with his own should-be followers – an impression cemented by his eventually ascension to Ortron’s role and by the idea, voiced by the Doctor in relation to the Ice Warriors, that rulers are ‘almost a different species from the ordinary’ people (22). Essentially, the miners should have been wise enough to recognise the aristocrat-by-nature in their midst and defer to him. And that’s not the end to it. The miners only turn back to Gebek thanks to a combination of largely getting massacred, Ettis going nuts and the Doctor gaining control of the Aggedor projection. In fact, as Rob Shearman sort of points out, Gebek’s chief qualification actually seems to simply be that he automatically allies himself with the Doctor (23), the one person who actually does anything to rescue the situation on Peladon. Maybe Dicks really is saying that Alpha Centauri’s problem was simply not consulting the Doctor, not recognising that he’s the one person with all the answers and to whom all actions must be deferred? No wonder the Doctor’s feeling the weight of the universe on his shoulders (24).

    So, if Doctor Who and the Monster of Peladon is interested in anything, and it just might be, it’s even more rotten to the core than ‘The Monster of Peladon’.