Dicks adds a lovely top and tail to the story that builds on something El Sandifer identifies as a major trait of the Hinchcliffe era – ‘showing the potency within the dying embers of old myths’ (3). The prologue not only establishes the mythic nature of what it rechristens the Osirians, and never so far has the Jackanory style we’ve been charting been used to such effect as in the very first line (4), it also places the story to come firmly in ‘the dying embers’, explaining how these gods ‘vanished from our cosmos and were seen no more’ (5). There’s even a hint of Da Vinci Code secret history thanks to ‘Egyptian culture [being] founded on the Osirian pattern’ (6) and the ‘cult of Egyptian priests’ who still guard this ancient and forgotten truth (7).

    The epilogue reinforces the conspiracy theory vibe, with Sarah investigating how the events of the story were recorded by history. Things start to look suspect when the news clipping relates how ‘Marcus Scarman […] had just returned from a successful archaeological expedition to Egypt’ (8) – how would anyone know it was successful considering he died on entering the tomb and everyone else involved was slaughtered running away from it?

    Especially odd is the statement that ‘investigations in Cairo revealed that Professor Scarman had left some time ago’ (9) when, in fact, investigations in Cairo would presumably have revealed no one had seen him since he headed off into the desert on a wild goose chase (10) and everyone who accompanied him had either been found dead or had similarly mysteriously disappeared (11). Findings from the pyramid get shipped to the Priory from Egypt (12), from which it could be construed Scarman had a successful visit, and we never find out the exact details of the letter Namin showed Collins (13), but the certainty with which the article asserts that a man, whose corpse we know returned to the UK by swirly Space/Time tunnel (14), has left Egypt suggests it’s been written by someone who knows more than they’re letting on. And, just like in so many a cover-up, an innocent sop is held to be responsible, blame for the fire placed on ‘one of the many advanced scientific devices […] installed in the Lodge’ by the lovely Laurence Scarman (15).

    Returning to the prologue, it also reinvents Sutekh. Suddenly, he’s not just ‘Sutekh the Destroyer’ for whom ‘evil is my good’ but also a bitter younger brother who’s dedicated all his efforts to usurping Horus (17). Clearly, ‘jealousy and hatred’ (18) is his first motive, and, when they have ‘turned to madness’, it’s still not some cold pursuit of ‘evil’ that spurs him on but simple paranoia, believing that ‘not only the other Osirians, but all sentient life’ (19) will seek to overthrow him just as he overthrew his brother. It’s his desire to feel secure ‘as unchallenged ruler’ that leads to his attempt to ‘destroy all life’ (20), and the insane fear that all ‘animals, reptiles, insects, plants…’ are out to get him is clearly still visible in his later creed that ‘‘All the humans... birds, fish, reptiles, plants […] shall perish’ (21).

    Sutekh’s not the only one whose characterisation Dicks tweaks. Ernie Clements, for example, who in the scripts seems to exist just so someone’s still getting chased by mummies while the Doctor, Sarah and Laurence are snared up in exposition and Tardis travel, gets a bit of personality. He’s not just a poacher who sneaks around the Scarmans’ land, he sees ‘himself as the Scarmans’ unpaid gamekeeper’ (22), providing a service as well as making a bob or two. That this is something of a vocation for him makes it all the sadder that his death sees his livelihood turned on him: ‘He felt like the fox at the end of a very long chase. For the first time in his life he felt some sympathy for the animals he hunted and trapped’ (23).

    Ernie’s behaviour is all a bit less erratic in the novelisation thanks to the insight into his motives. He might mutter about these ‘Murdering swine’ before stalking after Marcus with his shotgun on TV (24) but, in the novelisation, he goes through clear stages that build up to his firing on a person. At first he’s simply ‘determined to track down the [Doctor Warlock’s] murderer’ (25) but, when he encounters ‘Another body!’ (26), he decides he’s ‘dealing with a dangerous murderer’ and the desire to seek revenge for ‘his friend’ is overtaken by his fear of a psychopath on a killing spree. Even then, it’s only ‘a sudden surge of furious rage’ (27) that prompts him to shoot, and the fact he’s acted unthinkingly is reinforced by his immediately being ‘appalled by what he had done’ (28).

    Ibrahim Namin gains even more from Dicks’s adaptation. Where the latter was given little background on TV (29), the novelisation makes clear he’s ‘the High Priest of the Cult of the Black Pyramid’ (30). What’s more, his presence in the UK is down to Sutekh’s distortion of his sacred duty, persuading him ‘the writings were mistaken’ (31) and ‘the opening of the Pyramid was a part of [the Great Ones’] plan’ (32). The sympathy this might engender is rather undermined by the fact he slaughtered a load of labourers in the Egyptian desert and by the ease with which his mind turns to dreams of becoming ‘ruler of the world’ (33), and you do have to wonder at how easily he’s taken in when Sarah, whose knowledge of Egyptian mythology is based purely on some research she did long ago for a single article, instantly identifies Sutekh as enemy of ‘the god of light’ (34), but Namin none-the-less is a man who’s devoted ‘all his life’ and whose ancestors have dedicated ‘thousands upon thousands of years’ (35) to preventing the return of the god he know serves. Not only is there pathos in the reflection that ‘Death was Ibrahim Namin’s reward for a lifetime of faithful service’ (36) but also in the fact that Sutekh has perverted that ‘faithful service’ to his own ends.

    This points towards the area where Dicks has most significantly improved on the broadcast episodes. Discussing ‘Pyramids of Mars’, El Sandifer talks about Robert Holmes making one of his periodic ‘strays into being a bit of a bigot’ (37). By this, she’s very clear that she doesn’t mean Holmes is a purveyor of ethnic intolerance but simply that he sees no need to erase or challenge it should it already exist in the traditions of the stories he’s telling, something she makes even clearer in her essay on ‘The Talons of Weng-Chiang’ (38). Among the several defences Sandifer considers for ‘Talons’ is the idea that the Victorian Brits are being satirised as sharply as the Chinese, a defence he dismisses on the grounds that ‘a loving poke’ at historic foibles and ‘anti-Chinese sentiment’ based on ‘yellow peril stereotypes’ are really playing in different leagues (39).

    Now, I’d have expected Dicks to be rather more vulnerable to this flaw than Holmes – he’s a man I’d suspect of having the moistest of all soft spots for the starchy Edwardian types that populate ‘Pyramids on Mars’. However, not only is Namin given actual motivation for his actions, he gets to reveal the ‘hostility and suspicion’ with which Britons treat outsiders (40) and expose the ‘unthinking arrogance’ of the ‘typical English country gentleman’ (41).

    This could just come off as a villain’s skewed verdict, but Dicks has already stacked the deck in his favour. Marcus Scarman, whose character Dicks also gets a free hand in, is introduced in chapter one, resplendent in his ‘white tropical suit, with stiff collar and public school tie’, as typical of ‘Englishmen abroad’ and the inappropriate and irrelevant ‘standards’ they held themselves to (42). He’s also shown to be a complete tosser, watching ‘impatiently’ while his ‘labourers’ do all the work and then pushing them aside the moment there’s a large enough space for him, eager to be first into the tomb (43). He’s so lazy, it turns out he doesn’t even carry his own lantern, having to call on Ahmed (44), and he’s so focused on his pursuit of personal glory, he barely notices the increasing disquiet around him (45). When Ahmed, whose information seems to have been crucial to his finally tracking down the rumoured Black Pyramid (46), flees, he dismisses the man as nothing but a ‘Superstitious savage’ (47). Crashing in on Sutekh is frankly just desserts.

    All of which means that, as far as Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars is concerned, Edwardian Brits are hostile, arrogant, ridiculous, lazy and rude, and that goes a bit beyond ‘a loving poke’ (48). The one exception is Laurence, even as Dicks leaves his material largely unchanged. His desperation to help his brother is even more kind and caring when that brother is such a hateful git, and it’s perhaps telling that his interests are said to be ‘all turned towards the future’ (49), his decency functioning as a reproach to the era in which he lives.

    All in all then, this feels like Dicks is back giving it his all, breaking up the serial nature of the TV episodes, adding in through-lines to bind the books together, neatening up bits of characterisation and even turning Robert Holmes’s blind adoption of outdated attitudes into a commentary on the sins of the Edwardian era. Which is just as well really because we’re not going to get more than a one-book break from him now until Doctor Who and the Creature from the Pit and Doctor Who and the Enemy of the World in roughly 38 books time (a state of affairs that actually started five books back with The Revenge of the Cybermen). Let’s hope he can keep it up.