DOCTOR WHO AND THE KEEPER OF TRAKEN
by Terrance Dicks

First published 20 May 1982 (1), between Time-Flight and Arc of Infinity (2)

Maybe my eyes have been opened by the wonders of Doctor Who and the Creature from the Pit and Doctor Who and Warriors’ Gate (and I don’t mind telling you now, the upcoming Doctor Who and the Leisure Hive is also a doozy); maybe there’s a cumulative effect building after Doctor Who and the State of Decay and Doctor Who and an Unearthly Child; but I’m starting to get Keith Miller’s beef with Dicks’s ‘script-to-book-and-never-mind-the-detail style’ (3). I just think it hits in 1981 rather than 1976.

    The most obvious, I think, bit of what feels like script-dumping comes with the glimpses of the Master inside Melkur that the TV episodes give. The first of these is kept exactly the same and, by the end of its second paragraph, does work – the screens showing Kassia looking ‘upwards’ (4) and the detail of a speaker relaying ‘her anxious voice’ (5) do make clear that the view is now one within Melkur, though weirdly not the Master’s point of view (6) – but the first sentence of this transition is incredibly clumsy (7). I think it’s partly the use of the definite article for both ‘console’ and ‘control room’ which give the idea that the reader is already supposed to be familiar with this space but mostly it’s opening with ‘There were’, giving no sense of the relationship between this paragraph and the last. In fact, it’s only with that third sentence, placing Kassia on the screens, that it starts to fit together. It’s not, just to be clear, that this can’t work as a transition between locations but the effect here is disorientating, almost inviting the reader to reread the paragraph once they understand the nature of the new location, in a way that is exactly not the effect of the cut in the broadcast episode.

    This isn’t the only sort of clumsiness to plague the book. There’s sloppy selection when it comes to adjectives, my favourite being when Adric reacts to the Doctor trotting out a trite saying with ‘disgust’ (8). Now, it is true that Adric earlier, in a phrase I rather liked, ‘objected violently’ (9) to the Doctor’s idea of leaving him in the Tardis while he had a look around, so maybe Dicks is trying to establish that Adric’s reactions are disproportionate and unpredictable. However: firstly, that’s not very convincing; secondly, that ‘disgust’ still makes the reader double-take because, much as with the first glimpse inside Melkur, it feels like you may have missed something while reading, that ‘What can’t be cured must be endured’ must have some other meaning or innuendo other than the obvious or that the flippancy was somehow more misplaced than it initially seemed. It doesn’t feel like a moment or line which merits a re-read and, again, that certainly wasn’t how the moment was played on TV. There’s also my regular bugbear, not, to be fair, exclusive to Dicks, that Romana seems to still be Mary Tamm, someone apparently ‘never […] really happy as a footloose wanderer’ who ‘needed […] a cause to devote herself to’ (10). And there’s the strange decision, considering Dicks wrote scripts for one of the E-space trilogy stories and I doubt anyone else ever described it as this, to describe E-space as a ‘parallel universe’ (11), a term which I’m pretty sure specifically refers to a timeline where history has diverged from ours at one point and then continued its development in ways that reflect that one difference, something I can’t even begin to wrangle as the relationship between E- and N-space.

    Most indicative of why I’m finding Dicks’s writing a bit of a problem in Doctor Who and the Keeper of Traken, is the lines from the broadcast episodes which could easily and more sensibly be rendered as interior monologue in a novelisation but just get said out loud anyway. Quite early on, when Melkur has shot down two Fosters on his way from attacking the Keeper and left the bodies lying about, Kassia, on finding them, exclaims ‘No, Melkur, they must not be discovered. It is too soon’ (12). Why? Melkur’s not there to hear so she’s not advising or chiding him. Others, however, might be sufficiently around to overhear so why simultaneously potentially draw their attention to something she wants to conceal, reveal that she’s in league with Melkur and hint that the evil one everyone knows about is now up and about?

    The reason this especially is problematic is that the novelisation is plagued by the question of what exactly motivates Kassia and how engaged she is in her actions at any specific point in the story. This, I want to stress, in no more baffling than it is on TV, but the prose unfortunately draws attention to how nonsensical everything is where the broadcast episodes manage to get away with it.

    Let’s start at the beginning, when Melkur first speaks. On TV, after Kassia’s spilt her heart out about losing Tremas, Melkur utters just one word: ‘Soon’ (13). This could be nothing more than an echo of Kassia’s own last word, simply indicating that Melkur is becoming freer, or even a figment of her imagination. In the novelisation, Melkur goes further, promising to ‘help’ her (14). It makes her reluctance to tell others how ‘Melkur had spoken’ lest she be judged ‘mad’ (15), an explanation for her silence only given in the novelisation, slightly harder to understand. This could be explained, however, by the promise of ‘help’, also only in the novelisation (and I know she explicitly gives a different explanation but she is rather overwrought so might be struggling with conflicting motivations) – perhaps she’s keeping Melkur’s increased freedom secret because she’s already being tempted by the prospect of saving Tremas from the Keeper’s throne? If that’s the case though, it’s odd that in attacking Adric and the Doctor, she implicates Melkur exactly as she does on TV (16). So what’s going on? Is she simply in a ‘nervous state’ and ‘unbalanced’ (17) because Melkur has spoken? Trying to cut whatever evil might come in the bud? Actually certain the Doctor and Adric are tools of Melkur? Is the promise of help actually irrelevant?

    That would be possible were it not for the line we looked at earlier where she’s tidying up the Fosters slain by Melkur (12). It’s the first thing she does after leaving the throne room, there’s no possibility that she’s spoken to Melkur again, and, on finding the bodies, her complaint is that ‘It is too soon’ for anyone to know Melkur’s up and about. First of all, she’s not surprised that he’s moving around, which suggests she already knew he was sufficiently free to do more than just talk, but secondly and more importantly, there now appears to be a plan, one that’s following a schedule which Melkur’s actions could mess up and which she’s actively engaged in. This would surely be a better explanation for why she’s kept Melkur’s speech a secret from others than fear that they’ll think she’s mad? And even moreso, surely it would give her a good reason to keep Melkur completely out of it when calling for the Doctor and Adric’s deaths?

    Not long after all this, Melkur gives her the collar. Where the broadcast episodes, with Melkur’s talk of ‘gentle irradiation’ (18), hint that it maybe in some way weakens her resolve whilst she wears it, as well as allowing him to take control, the novelisation doesn’t (19). This difference does actually come across in the novelisation. When Tremas, the Doctor and Adric are cornered in the Grove, there does seem to be a battle for physical as well as vocal control, Kassia managing to jerk her head so that Tremas is merely grazed (20); this doesn’t happen on TV (see right). Reinforcing this impression is the momentary glimpse of the true Kassia before the collar takes over (21) and her ‘blank and […] calm’ expression, mirroring Melkur’s own face (22) that follows. As an aside, however, that does make the close of the chapter utterly ridiculous: it’s already pretty odd that she should unnecessarily declare her allegiance to Melkur in front of all the Fosters; it’s even weirder if the Master’s actually in complete control at that point, declaring allegiance to his avatar, doubly unnecessarily, in front of all the Fosters.

    More relevantly, it also calls into question how the Master is ever able to allow Kassia out of his control at any point after this. If Kassia’s moving her head is what leaves Tremas merely stunned, that suggests he would otherwise have been killed. As Kassia is only doing any of this because she loves him, why would she follow Melkur’s plan any further? And yet, it’s clear that she is still acting of her own free will at times after this, indeed Melkur is still working to persuade her to do his will, not just, as on TV, instructing she ‘must finish the job’ with the Doctor and Adric (23), but stating that it’s a necessary stage in having Tremas ‘pardoned and restored’ (24). When she realises Melkur’s plan is to install her as Keeper and that she’s been tricked all along (25), she clearly does so with her own mind.

    This only changes later, after the Doctor and company escape house arrest. On TV, the Master punishes Kassia through the collar (26); in the novelisation, he instead zaps her with Melkur’s eyes and she is left ‘zombie-like, all of her original personality burned away’ (27). Later on, the moment when she enters the throne room to assume the role of Keeper has her eyes momently glow red, which could suggest she’s still under his control, and her description as ‘statue-like’ (29) would be apt for a ‘creature of Melkur’. The only problem now is that, just as on TV, the Master still has to prompt Kassia to action, demanding ‘Do what must be done, Kassia’ (30) in a fashion that must mean even at this stage she’s not a mere puppet. At which point, I just have to give up. Some of it’s temptation, some of it’s the collar, some, especially considering this is the Master, may be hypnotism (31), some of it could be that the whole situation is a bit too much for her and led her to make some bad decisions, trying to eradicate evil by executing the Doctor and Adric whilst simultaneously concealing the new freedom enjoyed by renowned Melkur, frozen to the spot by his evil, but at which points it’s what is anyone’s guess.

    It’s not all bad though. Much of a mess as he makes of Kassia’s role, there are other bits that tidy up the broadcast episodes somewhat. The Ultimate Sanction gets set up and explained (32) where on TV it just suddenly appears as a solution (33) when no one’s so much as uttered the phrase before. It’s nice too to see Neman get made consul (34) and pressured into putting on a collar (35) rather than just gaining them between scenes (36). The relationship between the Master’s plans here and in Doctor Who and the Deadly Assassin also gets a bit of welcome attention (37).

    Where the book really scores though is in its presentation of the Traken Union, and Dicks’s clear scepticism for its benevolence. Where on TV, it’s described as an ‘empire’ twice, the book uses the term five times, including two references  to ‘the Traken Empire’ (38). Accordingly, there’s a sense of the indolence of a dying regime, where every need is so ‘taken care of’, pursuits like ‘the sciences’, the means by which the Source was created and continues to function, have become neglected (39). The Union also sounds more oppressive, the manner in which ‘unrest’ spreads in the time ‘approaching Dissolution’ (40) hinting either that the Keeper when at full power pacifies and manages the feeling of the population or that, as with the decline in practical studies, the people have become so dependent on the Keeper’s care that they can barely think for themselves. The latter is perhaps reinforced by a little tweak Dicks makes when the Master tells Kassia she need not understand her instructions: on TV, there’s a force to his demand she ‘Now listen carefully and obey without question’ (41); in the novelisation, his insistence ‘You need only listen carefully—and obey!’ (42) is more soothing, as if Trakenites are particularly susceptible to or comforted when following instructions blindly.

    In line with all this, the language describing the Keeper is a little more like that used to describe a tyrant. No longer does he simply use the Source to organise the Union (43), ‘he becomes the Source’ (44), rendering the empire, the mechanics of power and the leader all inseparable. Meanwhile, as made literal in some earlier Who novelisations, the Keeper has become so separate from his own people ‘that he was scarcely human’ (45). There’s a terrible godlike quality to the idea that he cannot ‘concern’ himself with the ‘individual’ but must think only on the level of ‘all the millions of souls’ in his charge, a lofty perspective rather undermined by the way his decision to announce Tremas his successor on the day of his wedding to Kassia (47) precipitates the near collapse of everything here and, in fact, leads to the rebirth of the very man who will eradicate the whole Union in Logopolis.

    Balancing the above, the treatment of the Keeper himself also comes across as worse than on TV. As in the broadcast episodes, there’s the concerning justification that ‘The life of one man is a small price to pay […] for thousands of years of peace and prosperity’ (48), but this is cast in an even darker light by the Keeper’s introduction as ‘wrinkled like a winter-stored apple’ (49). This is an odd description, though I’d argue that that in itself helps it linger: the fact he’s wrinkled suggests an especially poorly stored fruit but the choice of food none-the-less makes the idea of consumption unavoidable. This allows Dicks to both suggest that the Keeper is worn out, preserved beyond his natural life, soft and mealy and all used up but also that he is somehow now ready to eat, that his Dissolution is the point at which the Source gets to feast on him. No wonder it’s ‘an agonising death’ (50), and the fact that detail’s now a matter of ‘legend’ rather than ‘texts’ (51) makes the Source more of a mythic horror, a ravenous beast, than on TV too.

    Despite this saving grace, I feel like I’ve been very harsh on this and his other recent novelisations. They are, as ever, very readable, and the speed at which the can easily be read does wonders for gliding over the knotty problems I’ve allowed myself to get tied up in for most of the above. I do, however, think there’s a reason I’m getting so fixated now when it seems most other readers see the issues arising five or six years earlier. Now, I like the Williams era, so this isn’t meant as a criticism as such, but the Nathan-Turner years are immediately more televisual in key ways (52) and that means the novelisations are going to often need to restructure the stories a bit to get the best out of them rather than just insert nice bits of character reflection or narrative snark. I’m not sure when Dicks is going to adjust to that.

Height Attack

Melkur is 'Immensely tall and powerful' (it is indeed, as we're told six times a 'giant'), but then it is a Tardis and the Doctor's is of course 'a tall blue box' and the Master's other Tardis is 'tall and oblong'.

Tremas is 'a tall impressive-looking man', Kassia 'A tall red-haired woman', Seron 'a tall thin-faced man' (this is their introductions within four consecutive paragraphs).

Even the Keeper's throne sits under a flame that burns 'steady and tall' and, while we're on inanimate objects, the Doctor's Tardis has a 'big scanner screen', its 'huge control room' houses a 'big old-fashioned hatstand' and its console holds a 'big central column'. Oh, and each volume of the Doctor's diary is a 'massive tome'. Not to be outdone, the Master's Tardis is dominated by 'two huge screens'.

Traken, meanwhile, is littered with 'huge, leafy plants in big stone urns', its 'enormous circular council-chamber' features 'huge pillars', presumably to allow space for the 'massive doors'. The Grove is accessed by a similarly 'massive iron gate' and the Source Manipulator is 'an enormous globe'