Elizabeth Sandifer, in her review of 'The Eaters of Light', points out how Rona Munro feels like a call-back to a 'pre-"tone meeting"' era of Who, when 'scripts [didn't] bother with the idea that your climactic scene has to pay off some thematic thread' eruditorumpress.com/blog/the-eaters-of-light-review.
Actually, though they haven't necessarily saved it for the climactic scene, the novelisations have been ahead of the TV series in bringing thematic threads to the fore. Being books and not being episodic is enough to completely explain this, and I don't mean it as any criticism of the TV Doctor Who of the time, but it makes the way Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons absolutely doesn't do this very noticeable.
It does do some nice work explaining the Master's about-turn at the end but not nearly as nicely as the Controller's change of heart was handled in Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks, for example. Further, any attack on commercialism or modern-day factory owners is scattergun at best, much as it was in Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion.
What it is, though, is probably the best proto-DVD collection novelisation yet, which might well explain its seeming enduring popularity and suggests Dicks really knew his market well.
Click here for a more detailed look at his genius.
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