Oct 25, 19792 min read

Hulke fragments

One thing Doctor Who and the War Games makes very clear is from what stage of script the Target writers were working. The novelisation includes several details Shannon Sullivan explains were originally written but changed before recording the TV episodes such as 'a prominent role for an unseen Time Lord judge' at the Doctor's trial and the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe's attempted escape in Part Ten involving squeezing out under a force field, as well as the War Lords' simply 'speaking in a cold "alien voice" when exercising [...] mind control' over human troops, which director David Maloney amended to involve eyewear (Shannon Sullivan, A Brief History of Time (Travel), shannonsullivan.com/doctorwho/serials/zz.html).

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According to The Target Book, Malcolm Hulke 'died on 6 July 1979 after completing [Doctor Who and the War Games] and before it was published' (David J Howe, The Target Book; p.54), with Tim Roll-Pickering, in a review on Doctor Who Ratings Guide, suggesting this meant 'the final version was edited without his input' (Tim Roll-Pickering, ‘A skeleton of greatness’, pagefillers.com/dwrg/frames.htm). I don't know exactly what impact this would have on a Doctor Who novelisation - I'd imagine not that much. It might mean, if it still had to be trimmed down a bit, different decisions would have been made and the shape of the book therefore slightly different. I think the book is pretty shapely considering it squeezes in ten (I'd argue not too badly padded) episodes into so few pages, but Hulke did such a good job with the seven-part 'Doctor Who and the Silurians' in what seems to have been his first solo prose work, it's possible it could have been better...