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)
"some kind of dreamlike slow-motion"
DOCTOR WHO AND THE NIGHTMARE OF EDEN
by Terrance Dicks
First published 21 August 1980 (1), between The Horns of Nimon and The Leisure Hive (2)
For Rob Shearman, the novelisation, free of the broadcast episodes’ ‘production problems and acting excesses’ reveals the ‘angry urgency’ of the story (3). He’s right, but Dicks adds his own garnish also. For a start, there’s a wonder to the age of space travel in which the story is set that’s missing, at least in the eyes of one of the About Time writers (4), on TV – lyrical prose reflecting how ‘the distances between […] stars’ are ‘So enormous’ that it would take ‘hundreds, even thousands, of years’ to travel between them ‘even at light-speed’ (5). In a cunning sleight of hand, Dicks takes the opportunity to slip in the ideas of ‘Warp drive’ and ‘hyperspace’ on which the opening accident depend (6), set up quite how dangerous that collision is and even coin for it the very exciting-sounding term ‘warp smash’ (7).
More traditional tweaks also abound: Romana and K9’s reunion after Secker’s mauling is stated to happen because they’re both wandering around looking for the Doctor (8) and the resurrection of the Mandrel in the power room is similarly clarified (9); it’s made more obvious that the Doctor chases after Stott when he’s dressed as a passenger because he recognises him (10) and that Rigg’s dose of Vraxoin
was intended for Romana (11),
plus the reason Tryst was
targeting her. Most noticeably,
it’s explained that Romana
passes out in front of the
projection of Eden because
‘a somno-moth’ (12) ‘fluttered
out of the projection and
touched her neck’ (13),
something that’s absolutely not evident on TV (14) and which indeed, as Miles and Wood say, looks more like ‘a power-surge’ (15) or even a fancy 70s laser gun effect.
On a more narrative level, Dicks either sharpens up or introduces the detail that there are mysteries to be worked out here. The Doctor’s interior monologue makes it explicit he’s trying to use Secker’s supply to trace back the Vraxoin supply route (16) and he even seems to be watching Rigg’s response to the drug’s presence to deduce whether he might have been involved (17). There’s also the mystery of where Vraxoin comes from, its origin hinted at in its description as ‘a mixture of animal and vegetable elements’ (18) and in Romana’s observation that Tryst seems to have captured so many Mandrels in his CET sample of Eden ‘that there couldn't be that many […] left on Eden’ (19), hinting the Mandrels were his true target.
The mystery of Vraxoin is helped by the fact its backstory is less convoluted than on TV. The broadcast episodes state the original source was ‘incinerated’ and that this supply must come from ‘another source’ (20); in the novelisation, that original supply was simply ‘stamped out’ (21) but ‘No one ever discovered where it originated from’ (22) – the phrase ‘The secret […] died with the last of the smugglers’ even suggests a spate of executions and a secret so valuable that no one who ever knew it gave it up even in the face of death. Maybe they picked each other off in search of a monopoly? Regardless, however ridiculous the source of Vraxoin, it at least feels built to here, and it’s hard not to admire the way Dicks doubles down on the revelation, trying to make the process of electrocuting a live animal to produce a narcotic sound like some inevitable outcome of the foodchain or the carbon cycle or something (23). It’s also nice that finally discovering the source of Vraxoin leads to some sort of active protection for Eden and the Mandrels (24) rather than, as on TV, just the ‘hope that no one else discovers the secret’ (25).
Unlike all the work Dicks puts into the drug plot, almost no effort is needed to make Tryst come across better than onscreen. None-the-less, he gets an absolute spanker of an introduction, his blend of ‘fussy […] academic’, ‘lean body’ and ‘tanned skin’ establishing at a glance his history as ‘a scholar who spent most of his life outdoors, on strange and dangerous planets’ (26). It’s a reminder that he must have been at this game long before he stumbled on the source of Vraxoin, strengthening the sense that Toby Hadoke got from just the broadcast episodes of ‘a likeable scientist’ who only later became ‘corrupted’ (27). Indeed, Tryst’s rationalisation for his actions is much the same in the novelisation as on TV (28), but it’s more convincing here and backed up by the Doctor’s reflection he ‘sincerely believes’ his is a ‘valid excuse’ (29).
More thoroughly, the warp smash and the Mandrels are also more effective. The unstable zones are ‘strange unearthly’ (30) and ‘nightmarish’ (31) regions, ‘nowhere, and yet […] several places at once’, where it feels ‘as though the air had solidified’, people can only move in a ‘dreamlike slow-motion’ and ‘reality’ itself is ‘blurred [and] twisted’ (32) – budgetary constraints or no, it’s difficult to see how this could have been communicated on 70s television. Dicks does, however, also use K9 , often so impassive, to help sell them as a threat, protesting that they are too dangerous to enter (33), approaching them with extreme caution (34) and finding it just as much effort to cross them as the Doctor does (35). The Mandrels, meanwhile, are ‘burning-eyed’ (36), ‘slavering’ jawed (37) monsters possessed of ‘rows of [...] fangs and […] massive paws ending in razor-sharp claws’ (38) who leave ‘deep gashes’ (39) in their victims – a vision that might have been hampered by timeslot more than budget.
The Doctor’s study of his first Mandrel does, however, highlight the way Dicks doesn’t always trim the dialogue in accordance with his prose. In this instance, the Doctor’s brooding reflection that ‘It was all too clear what had caused those terrible wounds on Seeker's body’ effectively repeated by Rigg a mere page later (40), and it happens again later when the source of Vraxoin is discovered, the Doctor’s epiphany of thought (41) spoken out loud within the same paragraph (42).
Similarly awkward is Dicks’s handling of Romana. She screams (43) and becomes ‘petrified’ at the sniff of a Mandrel (44). It’s as if Dicks is pressing his view of the companions’ role (45) on the story regardless of Romana’s character, though I actually suspect it largely comes from the script and was moderated, at least in feel, by Lalla Ward onscreen. That said, there’s a moment when the Doctor suggests Romana remain in the control room where, ‘quietly furious’, she uncharacteristically hypothesises that ‘the Doctor was just trying to keep her out of danger’ or might be seeking to keep ‘all the credit’ for solving the situation to himself (46), neither of which sounds much like the Doctor or like Romana’s opinion of the Doctor. More starkly, there’s also a moment where Dicks takes Romana’s recognition, admittedly at the Doctor’s prompting, that Tryst has created a ‘relative dimensional field’ (47) and instead simply has her ask the Doctor for the full explanation (48).
But back to the good stuff. The best service Dicks does for the story ends up having nothing to do with production problems, budget or acting excesses – he sharpens up the setting. His description of ‘The space coveralls and protective goggles’ (49) worn by the passengers on the Empress captures the look from the broadcast episodes pretty accurately, but the look is so extreme that I never took it for more than snazzy 70s space clothes. To be fair, Toby Hadoke, not referencing the novelisation, picks up ‘a cheap package holiday’ (50) vibe, plus About Time recognises ranks of ‘proletarian holidaymakers, herded like sheep around European resorts’ (51), so it might just be me, but I think Dicks’s aside that the passengers all ‘look terrifyingly similar, like rows of dolls on a production line’, makes the sense of a tour group or package holiday much clearer. He also throws in a description of Azure as a ‘sun-kissed’ land of ‘warm seas, perpetually blue skies, and long beaches’, magnet to ‘hundreds of tourist passengers’ (52), which does sound very Costa del Sol, and mentions the habit of ‘travellers to leap eagerly from their seats and go hurtling across the cabin’ (53), which echoes airlines’ requests for passengers to remain seated and with fastened seatbelts until the plane is stationary.
Unfortunately, as well as firming up the setting, Dicks also makes it rather more condescending. Where the onscreen joke, as Rigg watches the passengers slaughtered by Mandrels, that they’re ‘only economy class’ (54) feels like a swipe at airlines for valuing lower-paying passengers less, the novelisation’s joke that ‘They're only tourist passengers’ (55) feels more like a dig at people for going on holiday. It might be that the 1979/80ness of the sentiment is simply lost on me, but then Dicks also reports the death of the ‘large and determined woman’ (56) the Doctor encountered while chasing Stott with an air of almost satisfaction (57), which feels rather less ambiguously mean-spirited.
Fortunately, it’s not all punching down. The poke at the fresh breed of ‘power-mad’ late-70s ‘customs officials’ (58), as Wood and Miles identify Fisk and Costa, is also sharpened up. Unlike on TV (59), they officially take ‘command’ of the situation (60) before making a complete bollocks of it. They’re more over the top (61), petty (62) and dangerous (63) than onscreen, plus almost immediately out of their depths (64). Unlike on TV, they seem actively negligent, Fisk’s insistence that, though he doesn’t know what the Doctor’s doing, he intends to stop him ‘anyway’ (65) sounding more dogmatic than bureaucratic. His ‘fine lack of logic’ is an almost forceful refusal to engage with the situation, something he only does when flattered into adopting a theory (66), though this just reveals him to be easily manipulated. On top of this, Fisk and Costa are actively corrupt, their ‘plotting’ (67) a sign that they’re being surreptitious because their plan absolutely isn’t by the book, hardly a huge surprise as their scheme in the novelisation involves either ‘a nice quick confession’, which sounds either coerced or manufactured, or a pair of conveniently ‘dead suspects’ (68).
Even the central drugs plot, the least touched of all aspects of the story, is tweaked for the better. Vraxoin’s appeal seems still to lie in prompting a state of warm apathy (69) and something seemingly indistinguishable from drunkenness (70), hardly the greatest enticement for what I assume is priced rather highly considering everyone involved seems to envisage getting minted, but at least its symptoms no longer seem to include certain death (71), death instead coming through a protracted cycle of abuse (72), a result of addiction rather than withdrawal. The biggest change, actually, is that Dicks gives Rigg a measure of self-awareness regarding his addiction (73), which might lend a little credibility to things but also draws attention to the fact this story is much more concerned with the dangers of having your drink spiked than with the evils of the drugs trade. Actually, with Rigg duped into addiction, Tryst having planned to in fact dupe Romana into addiction and it never entirely clear how Secker got hooked on the stuff in the first place, maybe no one ever willingly starts taking Vraxoin. Which means the moral of this story, aimed at children, is essentially “never leave your drink unattended in a bar”…
Height Attack
The Doctor’s a ‘tall curly-haired man’; Stott is also ‘a tall curly-haired man’. The Mandrels are ‘huge shaggy’ and ‘massive shaggy’ things
1. Based on the Popular Television Series, ed. Paul Smith
2. epguides.com/DoctorWho
3. ‘when you read his take on Nightmare of Eden, divorcing it from all the production problems and acting excesses, its angry urgency is revealed’
Toby Hadoke and Robert Shearman, Running through Corridors 2; p.383
4. ‘it takes a hell of a lot of care and attention to make “space” a believable proposition. “Nightmare of Eden” doesn’t even try, and the result is something that’s shoddy on virtually every level, even if you can ignore the appalling sense of design’
Lawrence Miles & Tat Wood, About Time 4; p.305
5. ‘So enormous are the distances between the stars that even at light-speed, journeys of hundreds, even thousands, of years are necessary to cross them’
6. ‘Warp drive enables space ships to leave normal space and enter hyperspace, travelling colossal distances in a flash’
7. ‘there were still dangers. One of them was warp smash. A ship tries to leave hyperspace at exactly the same point occupied by another; two sets of atoms and molecules try to fill the same position in space and time; the result, instant mutual annihilation’
8. ‘Tired of waiting for the Doctor, Romana went to look for him and ran into K9, who was on precisely the same errand, using his sensors to detect the Doctor's whereabouts’
9. ‘In his preoccupation, the Doctor had forgotten that Mandrels are incredibly tough. K9 had fired only once, while Stott had always fired several times - it took more than one blast to kill a Mandrel - and the massive creature just behind the Doctor was beginning to stir’
10. ‘Suddenly the Doctor realised - this was the man who had ambushed him’
11. ‘The dose was intended for the girl Romana. She had seen the insect come out of the projection, she could prove it was unstable. I thought if she became confused, unwell, no one would believe her’
12. ‘“Something came out of the picture and touched my neck. A kind of jewelled insect.” Delia's eyes widened. “A somno-moth! […] There's something we called a somno-moth on Eden. It renders its victims unconscious with a mild narcotic, then takes a drop or two of blood. Harmless really, more of a nuisance than anything else”’
13. ‘Suddenly, astonishingly, a bright-winged insect like a jewelled moth, fluttered out of the projection and touched her neck’
14. This is all the reference to the event the broadcast episodes give:
ROMANA: Yes. I was watching the projection, and then I. Oh. It isn't on anymore. I just felt hot. I must have fainted.
chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/17-4.htm
15. ‘we need back-up sources to tell us […] that the glowing thing which hurtles out of the projection is an insect and not a power-surge’
Lawrence Miles & Tat Wood, About Time 4; p.305
16. ‘He knew now what had happened to Secker - but what about Secker's supply of Vraxoin’ AND ‘He had arrived too late - but at least he knew that Secker had a confederate in his drug smuggling. Someone else on the ship was involved as well - and that someone had lost no time in getting hold of Seeker's supply of Vraxoin’
17. ‘“Secker was taking Vraxoin.” The Doctor looked hard at Rigg, studying his reaction. Rigg gave a gasp of what looked like quite genuine horror’
18. ‘Vraxoin seems to be a mixture of animal and vegetable elements combined in some unique way. So if someone's found out where it comes from, or how to make it...’
19. ‘it occurred to Romana that there couldn't be that many Mandrels left on Eden’
20. ROMANA: The only known source was destroyed, wasn't it?
DOCTOR: That's right. They incinerated an entire planet. Someone's found another source.
chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/17-4.htm
21. ‘“I thought that had been stamped out long ago. Only - they never found the source, did they??” “No, they didn't. The secret was supposed to have died with the last of the smugglers. Now it looks as if someone's rediscovered it”’
22. ‘It cropped up on various planets, but it always turned out to have been smuggled in from some-where else. No one ever discovered where it originated from - or how to make it, come to that’
23. ‘Something in the organic composition of the planet's soil, absorbed into the Mandrel's body, transmuted, rendered up into its final form when the Mandrel was destroyed by intense heat’
24. ‘You must quarantine Eden, Major Stott, make sure no one else discovers the secret’
25. DOCTOR: Let's just hope that no one else discovers the secret
http://www.chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/17-4.htm
26. ‘The old-fashioned square-lensed glasses, the fussy manner, and the clipped, slightly Germanic speech all suggested the academic, while the lean body and the deeply tanned skin were those of a man used to outdoor life. In fact you could deduce what Tryst was, just by looking at him, decided Romana. He could only be some kind or archaeologist or zoologist - a scholar who spent most of his life outdoors, on strange and dangerous planets’
27. ‘Tryst, in particular, comes across as a likeable scientist who has been corrupted by his belief that the end justifies the means – it’s his very compromised banality that makes him work’
Toby Hadoke and Robert Shearman, Running through Corridors 2; p.383
28. TRYST: Tell them that I only did it for the sake of funding my research. You understand all this. You're a scientist.
chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/17-4.htm
29. ‘Tryst was the worst kind of criminal of all, reflected the Doctor, the kind who sincerely believes that however appalling his crimes, there is always a perfectly valid excuse’
30. ‘a strange unearthly region, where not only vision but time and motion were blurred as well. It was if they were struggling in some kind of dreamlike slow-motion’
31. ‘He found himself in a strange, blurred, nightmarish region, where reality was wrenched and distorted. He seemed to be nowhere, and yet in several places at once. He struggled forward with immense effort, as though the air had solidified’
32. ‘All over the ship, reality blurred, twisted and shimmered’
33. ‘“Take a look in there K9, see if you can find anything.” “The mist is a matter interface, and therefore dangerous,” protested K9. The Doctor sighed. You couldn't expect an automaton to take illogical risks. “All right, K9, just go to the edge”’
34. ‘K9 nosed his way cautiously up to the edge of the fog and even ventured a few inches inside. Immediately he felt that same disorientation that had affected the Doctor and Rigg’
35. ‘Suddenly fog began forming around him as the freak conditions reasserted themselves. K9 was trapped in an unstable zone. It was too far to go back, but ahead there was a section of clear corridor, normal space. With a final effort K9 glided forward, and found himself on the far side of the barrier’ COMPARED WITH ‘As the Doctor ran along the corridor a blurred zone appeared around him. He tried desperately to break through, but he seemed trapped - the room seemed to be stretching, becoming wider and wider. With sudden horror the Doctor realised that he'd been caught in a matter interface between the separating ships. Unless he could reach the other side, the very molecules of his body would be torn apart’
36. ‘a burning-eyed monster lurched out of the fog, growling ferociously and slashing at him with savage claws’
37. ‘green eyes blazing, fangs slavering, great clawed paws slashing the air’
38. ‘Luckily for him, the monster was a good deal bigger than the gap, so much so that only its head and shoulders could get through. Safe, at least for the moment, the Doctor had time to study the creature. The boar-like head had a curiously flattened nose-structure; the huge bulging eyes were a luminous green; and the creature was covered with thick, shaggy fur. Most terrifying of all were the rows of drooling fangs and the massive paws ending in razor-sharp claws’
39. ‘His clothes were ripped and torn as if by savage claws, and blood oozed from deep gashes in his chest and neck’
40. ‘“Did you see those claws?” asked Rigg with a shudder. “That must be what killed Seeker”’
41. ‘So that was the mysterious source of the drug, thought the Doctor’
42. ‘“So that's it,” muttered the Doctor’
43. ‘There was a sudden scream from Romana’
44. ‘Romana stood petrified with horror’ – why??
45. ‘I feel the right place for the heroine is strapped to the circular saw, screaming her head off ‘til the Doctor comes to rescue her. Or the railway tracks, as the case may be, you see’
Beginning the End (The Time Warrior DVD)
46. ‘Although she didn't show it, Romana was quietly furious at being left behind. Presumably the Doctor was just trying to keep her out of danger - or perhaps he wanted all the credit of being a miracle-worker for himself’ – this doesn’t sound like the Doctor or Romana…
47. DOCTOR: The same way I knew we could get into the Tardis. Tryst doesn't realise what he's stumbled on. At least, I don't think he has.
ROMANA: A relative dimensional field?
chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/17-4.htm
48. “Same way I know I can get into the TARDIS. Our friend Tryst doesn't realise what he's stumbled on with that ramshackle machine of his - at least, I don't think he does.” “What has he stumbled on?” “He's managed to create a limited relative dimensional field”’
49. ‘The space coveralls and protective goggles they all wore made them look terrifyingly similar, like rows of dolls on a production line’
50. ‘Captain Rigg refers to his trip as “the Milk Run”: a no-frills intergalactic version of a cheap package holiday’ (Toby Hadoke and Robert Shearman, Running through Corridors 2; p.379) - I thought ‘the milk run’ just meant a direct, non-stop flight??
51. ‘“Economy Class” proletarian holidaymakers, herded like sheep around European resorts which were as unlike the rest of the target nation as possible’
Lawrence Miles & Tat Wood, About Time 4; p.304
52. ‘the pleasure-planet Azure, sun-kissed jewel of the galaxy, where her hundreds of tourist passengers could indulge themselves in all the pleasures of warm seas, perpetually blue skies, and long beaches of fine blue sand’
53. ‘“Passengers may leave their seats when the blue light comes on, but are requested not to remove their protective coveralls until instructed” […] The warning was a very necessary one. It was not unknown for inexperienced space travellers to leap eagerly from their seats and go hurtling across the cabin’
54. RIGG: They're only economy class
chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/17-4.htm
55. ‘They're only tourist passengers after all’
56. ‘The large and determined woman to whom the Doctor had given a jelly baby’
57. ‘One slashing blow silenced the complaining woman forever’
58. ‘Airport customs officers […] became power-mad’
Lawrence Miles & Tat Wood, About Time 4; p.304
59. FISK: Captain, this ship is a disaster area. I'm placing you under arrest for gross neglect of duty
chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/17-4.htm
60. ‘I am declaring this ship a disaster area, Captain Rigg. I'm assuming command and placing you under arrest for gross dereliction of duty’
61. Of Fisk: ‘If possible he was even more angry and outraged than his colleague’
62. ‘Frustrated by Romana's escape, Fisk was glad to have someone he could safely bully’
63. ‘Fisk staggered back, his shot going wild’ – I don’t think Fisk actually shoots on TV
64. ‘Professor Tryst looked worriedly at Fisk. It looked very much as if the Empress's new commander was already cracking up under the strain’
65. ‘“I don't know what you're up to, but I intend to I prevent you anyway,” said Fisk with a fine lack of logic’ AS OPPOSED TO ‘FISK: I don't know what you're up to, but I intend to stop you’ (chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/17-4.htm)
66. ‘Tryst leaned forward persuasively. “That is your own brilliant theory, is it not?” “Yes ... yes, as a matter of fact it is,” said Fisk, who now firmly believed he'd thought up the whole idea’
67. ‘“Whereas bureaucratic murder is rewarded by promotion? I heard you two plotting in the lounge.” Fisk shrugged’
68. ‘Once I get my hands on them, we'll have a nice quick confession, I'll see to that. Or better still, they'll be shot trying to escape. One thing about dead suspects, they never argue’
69. ‘The strangest feeling of well-being was flooding over him. Despite the crisis, he felt that everything was really all right, couldn't be better in fact’
70. ‘Tryst went over to the dispenser and dialled the traditional remedy for Rigg's condition - a cup of strong black coffee’
71. ‘It induces a kind of warm complacency and a total apathy. Until it wears off, that is, and soon you're dead’
chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/17-4.htm
72. ‘It induces a state of warm complacency, a kind of total, idiotic happiness. When it wears off there are the most agonising withdrawal symptoms. So you take another dose, the cycle repeats itself and soon you're dead!’
73. ‘Someone fed me Vrax, you see, and I'm hooked just like Secker was’
Dicksisms
A corker of a first line: ‘It should have been impossible - but it happened’
‘The tall man was that mysterious traveller known as the Doctor’
The Tardis arrives with ‘a wheezing, groaning sound’ and leaves with ‘a strange wheezing, groaning sound’
‘RIGG: Russian dolls, that's what it's like. You remember those? […] ROMANA: Yes, I do. I wonder if the people who made them realised they were making a model of the universe?’ (chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/17-4.htm) becomes ‘I don't suppose the people who made them realised they were making a kind of primitive model of the universe’ – what is Dick’s obsession with ‘primitive’?
Are You Sitting Comfortably..?
‘The TARDIS was on its way to new adventures’
Revenge of the Educational Remit
‘Ever heard the expression "hoist with his own petard?" Refers to a kind of early bomb. It was so unreliable it often blew up the man who was using it' - I presume the idiom was confusing people then as now
Miscellania
This month’s obligatory K9 moment: ‘Obediently K9 glided out -but as he left he was muttering obstinately. “Probability of success only sixty per cent”’
‘Like most spacemen, like pilots before them, and like sailors before them, Rigg was deeply superstitious’ – somehow concisely confers a dignity and wisdom on Rigg, remarkably so considering it, on the surface, actually undermines him
‘bored and weary tourists were dozing, viewing video cassettes, listening to stereo tapes’ - so wonderfully, unnecessarily specific
Quite the mission statement: ‘The Doctor had been interfering in another people's problems all his lives. It was too late to expect him to stop now’
‘The Doctor was planning to hurl himself aside, but he left it too late. The blaster fired, catching him full in its energy-beam’
Something surprisingly affecting in this: ‘a team of medics working on Seeker's unconscious body, cleaning and sealing the terrible wounds, giving an emergency blood transfusion, using everything that medical skills and up-to-date equipment could provide to preserve the weakly flickering life. Something about the desperate urgency of their movements told Rigg that it wasn't going to be enough’
'DOCTOR: No! I'm the Doctor. I keep telling you that. RIGG: Yes, but who do you work for? DOCTOR: Work for? I don't work for anybody. I'm just having fun' (chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/17-4.htm) - Did Dicks think this was a little too irresponsible?: ‘No, I'm
not, I'm just the Doctor. I don't work for anybody’
'(The running man gets back to the lift and heads back up. The Doctor does not run up the stairs. […]
The man is waiting at the top of the stairs when the Doctor arrives in the lift. He produces a gun then
runs round the corner to an interface area.)' (chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/17-4.htm) - was this all a bit of
business they worked out in rehearsals. Either that or Dicks really didn't like all the titting about: ‘A
second lift stood beside the first, doors open. The Doctor leaped inside and stabbed at the controls.
The doors closed, the lift rose smoothly, the doors opened again, and the Doctor sprang out into the
corridor -in time to see the man he was after hurrying down the corridor’
“Did you hear that, Doctor?” said Romana. “They're called Mandrels.” “Fascinating,” said the Doctor
drily’ – what’s up with him?
‘The rest had been dealt with by a combination of Fisk's security guards, armed crew-men, and a number
of passengers who had insisted on being given arms’ - I think it's the 'insisted' that makes this sound so
wrong
Obligatory shade at Della getting shot: ‘Clutching her shoulder, Delia twisted in the energy-beam of the
blaster and fell to the ground’
