Shannon Sullivan details that ‘Leisure Hive’ opening in Brighton ‘was added at the request of Nathan-Turner, who lived nearby’ (3). To be fair, that doesn’t seem to have been the actual motivation, rather a desire to ‘diminish’ K9’s role in the story by means of an early accident which could also act as ‘an intriguing shock to hook viewers’ who, watching ‘the season premiere’, might mistake the ‘near-destruction’ for the companion’s departure (4). Putting aside that chucking in a block of location footage seems quite an extreme way of doing this, it’s a very good example of something El Sandifer views as starting with ‘The Leisure Hive’, the way in which ‘paratext [becomes] genuinely part of the storytelling’ (5). K9 missing large parts of or whole stories, whether by misadventure or not, was quite a staple of the last two and a half series, so I’d argue that any shock or intrigue could only be prompted by the knowledge that this was to be K9’s last season.

    At this point, I’ll concede this is quite a perverse way to start a look at the novelisation, but it came as quite a surprise to me having read Doctor Who and the Leisure Hive, not only because the book engages with the opening in Brighton so actively but also because I became convinced while reading it that I finally understood thematically why Brighton had been included in the story – an understanding which, considering the above, was clearly baloney. That’s how good Fisher is.

    The sequence is partly told from the perspective of a local deckchair attendant, allowing Fisher to comment upon the Great British holiday – cold, damp (6) and windy (7), best experienced in ‘an overcoat, a large hat […], and a long scarf’ (8), not the sort of weather anyone would sensibly laze about in (9). It’s all good-natured enough to not feel like an actual savaging – ‘That’s what makes this country great, […] a steadfast refusal to be deterred by facts’ (10) – but the fact the attendant makes this observation ‘nostalgically’ makes clear it’s a national characteristic more of the past than the present. Places like Argolis are where people holiday now.

    My immediate fear, then, was that it’d turn out the whole thing’s heart lay in a bit of old-fashioned racism. The post-apocalyptic surface of Argolis (11) seemed reminiscent of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while the oddly-phrased Argolin battle tactics, wherein many ‘Argolin struck the planet of Foamas’ (12) sounded like a reference to kamikaze. Even the closing of the Brighton sequence seemed to be pointing that way, with its, on its own, pleasant comedy riff on how ‘it was a well-known fact in Brighton that the Japanese found candy-floss irresistible’ (13). Considering post-Second World War British attitudes to the Japanese, this made talk of how the ‘small’ (14) but exceedingly ‘warlike’ (15) tribe were ‘savages at heart’ (16), ready to throw off decades of pretence and return to their ‘military ethic’ (17) given half a sniff of potential success, decidedly worrying.

    Luckily, the nature of the leisure hive derives from so many different sources that my initial concern probably says more about me than about Fisher. Despite the little snark at foreign languages inherent in the story’s criticism of the hive’s original name ‘Xxbrmm’ (18), Miles and Wood identify Fisher’s main inspiration as the ‘British seaside resort’ (19), which would make sense of the odd mix of ‘cabins and tents’ (20) the leisure hive employs as accommodation. I then thought, thanks to everything being under a dome, it might be a riff on Center Parcs, but its first UK resort didn’t open until 1987 (21) and, although it did launch in the Netherlands in 1968 (22), perhaps Butlin's is the better shout.

    That said, the detail that ‘hyperspace’ travel has led to lifeforms ‘traipsing around the galaxy in search of recreation, good weather, and a really cheap holiday’ (23) makes it sound more like a package somewhere on the Med, whilst the seven-time divorcee/widow in the ‘fluorescent suit’ (24) and hat of living moss (24) sounds like a visitor to a more exclusive Riviera resort. Meanwhile, as Shannon Sullivan among others explains, the Foamasi started life as a pastiche of film mafiosa (26), which, tying in with the ‘crystal statues of Argolin heroes’ (27) littering the recreation hall, akin to ancient imperial statues, could suggest an Italian holiday. At the same time, mafia on film might more likely lead to an American inspiration, tying in with the trotting out of another FBI gag (28) and the US habit of naming wars after the countries in which they fought (29), much to the chagrin of the people they were fighting (30). Would that make it more Disneyland than Butlin's?

    Anyway, I think it’s safe to discuss the Argolin, who get a similar treatment to the Tythonians in Doctor Who and the Creature from the Pit. Many of their rules of life, Precepts as they call them, are revealed verbatim, including that they never refuse an order (31), obey without question (32), view death in battle not simply as an honour but ‘the greatest joy’ (33) and seek to eliminate ‘sorrow, pain and fear’ from themselves (34). One, ‘War is the right and duty of every Argolin’ (35) even gets repeated as a justification for blowing up the Foamasi investigators’ ship when there’s no other possible reason to do so. Fisher also peppers the text with past Argolin heroes including Theron the Terrible, Lismar the Champion, Herell the Hapless and Mako the Mighty.

    It’s tempting to just call this another nice bit of comic world-building on Fisher’s part and move on, but this world- or even universe-building is so reminiscent of Douglas Adams, it deserves a bit of unpicking. First thing to make clear, this was apparently not an Adams commission. According to Shannon Sullivan, he and Williams had in fact ‘rejected’ the pitch (36) and, though Sullivan also says Fisher initially approached this story – in contrast to the Bidmeadean final product - in a comedic vein similar to his previous scripts (37), I would say that those earlier stories weren’t specifically channelling The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and nor, to this extent, was Doctor Who and the Creature from the Pit. Doctor Who and the Leisure Hive, on the other hand, has the Doctor reflecting on minor middle-class contemporary inconveniences such as ‘deckchairs and motor mowers and telephones’ as seemingly ‘designed with malice aforethought’ (38); Adams-like feints of phrase, as when the Argolin inscrutably give ‘Not by the slightest change of expression, not by the flicker of an emotion’ any hint ‘that they hadn't the faintest idea what the accountant was talking about’ (39); and a future for the Earth that echoes the Golgafrinchan B-ark, exclusively populated by ‘accountants or service engineers for the tea-dispensing machines’ (40).

    Talking of the B-ark, there’s also the technique of having a whole society emerge from a mere fragment of a former civilization, the Argolin of this story (minus Pangol) being crew from the last surviving warship (41) and the Foamasi either the prisoners and criminals (42) from Foamas’s ‘largest underground prison’ (43) or their descendants. To an extent, this even applies to the history of the Argolin; once merely a small, warlike tribe, they ‘subdued all the other tribes’ (44) to seemingly become the only civilisation on their planet. That civilisation, to be honest, gives in to the more Who-like trait of being defined by one sole trait, in this case their predilection for ‘Warfare’ (45), but even then Fisher includes droll Adams-like touches: the observation that, having exhausted the possibilities of wars on their own planet, the Argolin suffer a few centuries ‘uneasily on the brink of peace’ (46); and the manner in which, unable to entertain the indolence of peace (47), the heavily formalised duels (48) that follow tend to the absurd. Indeed, the ‘most glorious’ a tale of chivalry involves two combatants who keep hacking off their own limbs in an attempt to even up a fight and eventually die ‘of shock and loss of blood without striking a blow at each other’ (49), reminiscent, to me at least, of the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail and so an Adams-like touch to the extent that Adams worked with the Pythons, though not on Holy Grail.

    Yes, it is getting a bit tenuous.

    I suspect that’s because this isn’t a homage to Douglas Adams, just like it’s not a remnant of Fisher having worked with Adams. Closer to the mark is the observation made by Tat Wood and Lawrence Miles when discussing ‘The Leisure Hive’ on TV that The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ‘opened out the whole language of science fiction’ (50). That was broadcast the same year as ‘The Leisure Hive’ but the publication Doctor Who and the Leisure Hive, Hitch-Hiker’s has not only proved a huge success, getting a Christmas special and, in 1980, a second series (51), it’s also, in 1981, transferred to TV (52) and spun off two best-selling books (53) with a third due later in 1982 (54). Fisher’s writing this adaptation at a time when it would be a fair assumption that this is just what British science fiction should look like.

    On top of that, there’s another echo in all of this, one I’m not very knowledgeable about and so possibly even more tenuous. A good chunk of chapter three spends time with a couple of journalists in the Old Delphi galacto-port. Hanging about in the hopes of catching a story and in the midst of a world-weary conversation about their profession, they catch sight of Mena making her way back to Argolis, discuss what she might be doing and then don’t follow any of this up in any way, disappearing from the story along with their entire environment. The nature and the tone of this brief section reminded me strongly of the DWM sixth Doctor comic strips, specifically the ones revolving around Dogbolter, starting with ‘The Moderator’ (55). Whilst this comes a fair bit later than Doctor Who and the Leisure Hive, El Sandifer, who knows a lot more than the nothing I do about comics, states in Tardis Eruditorum that the DWM strips of this era ‘share cultural DNA with Swamp Thing and Doom Patrol’ (56) and even describes ‘Voyager’, one of the stories from this era, as more suited to 2000AD than Doctor Who (57). That Sandifer also labels the Colin Baker years as when ‘British writers and artists were really starting to flood across to America’ (58) suggests this was all already happening in British comics, specifically 2000AD, itself launched way back in 1977 (59).

    Assuming all this supposition contains some truth, what Fisher seems to be doing here, while adapting the first story of John Nathan-Turner’s long producership and writing the last Target book before Eric Saward’s debut, is presenting an alternative 1980s for Doctor Who, one in the register of two hugely influential fixtures of that decade’s British science fiction, Hitch-Hiker’s, whose author’s style Nathan-Turner was actively turning away from, and 2000AD, the style of which, at least judging by his issues with a script submitted by Pat Mills and John Wagner (60), was anathema to Saward. Again relying on El Sandifer’s knowledge of comics, Doctor Who wouldn’t come to embrace at least the latter of these potential influences until Andrew Cartmel replaced Saward (61), close to a decade after it had reared its head. This is what could have been.