A quest through the Dr Who novelisations
"The excellent ham of Doctor Who is more than a little off"
1974 Times Literary Supplement review of Doctor Who and the Crusaders (quoted from David J Howe's The Target Book)
"kill the brutes who rule"
DOCTOR WHO AND WARRIORS' GATE
by John Lydecker
First published 15 April 1982 (1), between Time-Flight and Arc of Infinity (2)
Height Attack
Biroc is ‘taller and stronger than a man’
Stephen Gallagher (aka John Lydecker), according to Based on the Popular BBC Television Series, originally wrote a much freer novelisation (3) only for it to be kyboshed by John Nathan-Turner (4). With that original’s, in the words of Gallagher, ‘resurrection’ (5) as an audiobook and subsequent Target-style release, we can set aside the meat of that earlier version until we reach 2023, but the fact that this novelisation not only was very quickly sutured together (6) from the bits and pieces of what sounds a much more novelistic work (7) but also, according to Gallagher, retained ‘much of [his] original’ (8) explains an awful lot about this book. Though a screen-to-page structure has been imposed over the whole, this does feel like a reimagining in many ways.
Starting with the most banal example, the opening sequence - the Antonine Killer’s pursuit of Rorvik’s slave ship - is a sequence Shannon Sullivan identifies as present in Gallagher’s scripts but removed by Bidmead and director Paul Joyce (9). This was likely excised purely for reasons of budget, and reinstated now that’s no longer an issue, but it sets up a context for the rest of the story – the Antonine Killer’s attitude to the slaves he’s supposed to be saving is ambivalent at best, deliberately seeking to blow up the privateer, slavers and slaves alike, because that’s ‘true to his nature’ (10) and because, even more concerningly, he enjoys it (11). Though the anti-slavery alliance specifically orders ‘search and capture’ (12), contemplation of the speciality ‘belly shot’ (13), a lethal hit that delays destruction just long enough to keep Killer’s ‘record clean’, hints that this is a frequent enough occurrence for the alliance to surely be aware what’s happening. That the Killers don’t take their anti-slavery mandates ‘too seriously’ (14) not only reinforces that their activity’s dictated by their own enjoyment but also suggests the alliance is either toothless or similarly unconcerned at the fate of the slaves. Perhaps to rub this in, the descriptions of the Antonine Killer (15) and of other pilots in the anti-slavery alliance (16) refer to paws and young cubs so that these characters are at least physically akin to the Tharils they’re killing.
The brutality of the world in which the Tharils are enslaved is kept fresh with further little touches through the book. There’s a glimpse of the slave markets (17), a rather more evocative portrayal of the privateer’s hold than shown onscreen (18) and the description of the kidnap of ‘a raw young Tharil’ (19), plus the stark statement on how slavery reduces skill from something to be employed or respected to something to be traded (20). As commodities, Tharils are disposable – Rorvik may have specifically picked ‘the least valuable’ (21) when killing a young Tharil to gain Biroc’s compliance, but it feels like a method he reached for with little reticence – and the Tharils to some extent internalise this, one of Biroc’s predecessors trying to take not just themselves but of all their fellow slaves onboard off the market with a suicide run (22). Bleaker even than the idea that death, not just of yourself but of all your kin, is preferable to slavery is the resignation that comes with being unable to prove as callous as your captors: Rorvik’s killing of a young Tharil before Biroc sees him capitulate and now ‘there was no fighting, there were only the chains’ (23).
To reinforce this theme, Gallagher presents Romana’s experiences of slavery. Despite the use of the third person, her capture is described from her point of view, a mess of hands, their harsh treatment cutting her air off until her ‘struggles grew weaker’, and a desperate sense that everything is ‘going horribly wrong’ (24); despite all the adventures we’ve shared with her, her use here brings a pain ‘deeper and more intense than anything she’d ever known before’ (25); and despite her showing more resistance, ‘even’ than Biroc (26), to the slavers’ plans for her, her resignation to bondage seems as complete as the Tharils’ – she might in her head suggest she’s only taking a break for ‘a couple of minutes’ before attempting escape again, but the italics and the double revision of her escape timetable, from minutes to ‘only one minute more’ to ‘not right away’, hint at how the fight’s left her (27). As a series regular, her disposability to the slavers, ready to ‘squeeze her out or burn her up’ (28) and unbothered when they think they’ve done the latter (29), also makes more of an impression than their attitude to the Tharils.
Romana’s treatment, however, isn’t only a means to bring the treatment of slaves home to the reader. Gallagher talks about the ‘fluke’ of getting to write Romana out and so set up her ‘future as a Time Lord with a status equal to that of The Doctor’ (30), and the novelisation at least does an effective, and, in the light of apparent complaints that Gallagher’s TV scripts had underwritten Romana’s exit (31), a surprising, job of setting up her separation from the Doctor.
The first step in this is the way Romana is explicitly established as an apprentice. Officially, it seems, she’s a Time Lord apprentice (32), one who, judging by the recall issued before this story’s start (33), is ready to move to the next stage. This is clearly not a source of satisfaction for her as she’s far from keen to return to her people (34). Her capture by the slavers partly leans into this, Romana reflecting how inadequate all ‘her training and qualifications’ have proved (35) – if the Time Lords judge her ready for ‘final training’, it’s clearly not in anything resembling the field she’s actually striving for. In fact, it turns out it’s to the Doctor’s, not the Time Lords’, methods she’s been aspiring, and it’s this apprenticeship, to him not them, that, at the end of this story, is ‘finally over’ (36), precipitating her departure (37).
What the Doctor preaches is ‘intuition’ (38), of such great value because unlike logic, which can be handled by machines, it is ‘solely the product of evolution’ (39). Trouble is, it’s not quite clear what significance the story is giving intuition. The Doctor’s embrace of it comes down to his ‘respect for the architect of evolution’ (40), making it more a religious than a scientific position, and so resonating with the Doctor and Romana’s earlier discussion of belief systems (41). That seemed to suggest that people were as mechanical as all other matter (42), simply working through some greater plan which could be seen if you could only handle the maths and which might actually be glimpsed in E-space thanks to its small size (43). Does this mean that intuition is the whisper of the ‘architect’ ensuring people fit into the plan for the universe?
When it turns out the Tharils also preach intuition, things actually get more confusing. Lazlo’s defence of intuition over logic is that ‘Tharil greatness [was] brought down and ruined by your logical thinkers’ (44). Maybe he’s suggesting that the Tharils, at the height of their empire, developed an adherence to logical thinking that played a part in their downfall but that’s not something hinted at elsewhere, plus, with his calling them ‘Technical solutions’ earlier and then referring to ‘your logical thinkers’ (italics mine), it sounds more like he’s talking about the slaves’ construction of the Gundans – a technical solution that was in fact very successful for those who devised it. Furthermore, at least looking at the unfolding of Biroc’s plans, Lazlo’s statement bears no relation to what the Tharils are actually doing. In fact, Tharils can examine ‘possible futures’ (45) before committing to any (46) and Biroc has skilfully managed events to collapse those infinite possibilities (47) down to just two (48). If that’s the Tharil version of intuition, it sounds an awful lot like intuition is actually just an ‘architect’-granted instinct for how each infinite possible future might play out and which might be best to pursue. This idea of intuition is backed up by how it seems allied with luck (49) and guesses (50) – less like a process within a person’s own mind, more like an unconscious hotline to the patterns of the universe.
Anyway, regardless of what intuition actually is, her final choice to embrace it marks Romana as definitively following in the Doctor’s footsteps rather than those of the Time Lords (51) – she even declares that she’s leaving him in order to continue doing ‘What we’ve always done’ (52). This implies that her alliance with the Tharils and so her aim of ‘Making sure history doesn’t repeat itself’ (53) is categorically different to the Time Lords’ self-proclaimed position as supervisors of the universe (54) and so that the Time Lords resemble the Tharils at the height of their empire. Indeed, their ‘arrogance’ feels echoed in Biroc’s lament at how his people were unable ‘to forsee their own defeat’ (55), their abilities blunted by their indolence or their vision stunted by their sense of superiority.
Rather than use this parallel to comment on the Time Lords, however, Doctor Who and Warriors’ Gate uses it to reflect on the Doctor. Right at the moment events come to a head, the Doctor realises how ‘close to destroying’ Biroc’s plan he’d come (56) by trying to stop Rorvik’s back-blast even after Biroc’s entreaty to ‘Do nothing’ (57). This harks back to the Doctor’s refusal to accept ‘orders’ or even follow ‘advice’ and suggests ‘his intuition’ (58) might tread dangerously close to being an arrogance akin to that he identifies in his own people. Though the book strangely removes Romana’s moment of epiphany regarding Biroc’s words preceding the Doctor’s (59), she does develop the Tharils’ ability to ‘see […] the alternate possibilities that made up her future’ (60). If the Doctor’s intuition is supposed to be in some way equivalent to this Tharil ability, this is the moment Romana’s apprenticeship ends; indeed, given how his intuition came so close to prompting disaster and given that Biroc isn’t merely sensing the best path but ‘already knew what was ahead’ (61), this is the moment Romana transcends the Doctor’s modus operandi.
All of which leaves us with the cycle of history Romana’s going to strive to end. We talked about how brutally the Tharils and Romana are treated. The novelisation also makes more obvious how the Tharils treated their slaves, a serving girl nervous around them and covered in old bruises (62). Where the Tharils are abused for their skills, the Tharils don’t seem to have needed their slaves – unless they struggle to pour their own wine – so much as simply wanted them and, judging by the way her bruised arm is squeezing increasingly hard in pursuit of a reaction (63), are abused for ‘sport’ (64). Where the TV episodes have the Tharils talk like feudal lords, dismissing their slaves as ‘only people’ (65), the novelisation makes them more comparable with more recent empires, the Doctor questioning their ownership of ‘other races’ (66) and so, as so often in the books, it feels like a more direct reflection on Britain’s own history and the nature of its slave trade. They view their treatment of their slaves as unproblematic not just because those slaves are weak but because they’re different – indeed, to at least one Tharil, it appears the terms ‘humanoid’ and ‘slave’ are interchangeable (67). In this light, the criticisms inherent in mention of their ‘excessive’ wealth (68) and the manner in which they fashioned their own fall though their ‘unjust’ behaviour (69) have some nice teeth.
Not entirely unconnected with post-Imperial British attitudes, in the side-notes earlier I mentioned how Lazlo’s comments on ‘the greatness that once was [and] Tharil greatness’ (44) hint at a remarkable lack of remorse on the part of a race who later ask ‘have not suffered punishment enough’ (70)? However, there’s something intriguing in the way Gallagher suggests judgement results not from repentance but from behaviour. The Gundans have been programmed ‘to kill the brutes who rule’ (71) and, come the climax, one ignores Biroc (72) and presumably all the other Tharils, recognising them as the slaves (73).
References I Didn’t Get
‘sharp-edged wadis cut by storms in desert country’ – ‘A wadi is a river
in North Africa or Arabia which is dry except in the rainy season’ (collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/wadi)
Lydecker keeps referring to the Tardis as ‘a double cube’, something
that makes perfect sense but which I’d never encountered as a thing
before. I thought he’d made it up as a term but a search does show it
used to describe a very specifically dimensioned bit of furniture
(3 examples: oaklandsfurniture.co.uk/mango-cube-petite-double-
cube-5235-p.asp, casabellafurniture.co.uk/dakota-mango-double-
storage-cube.html and glal.uk/product/petite-double-cube/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI8fW21aqh8gIVTu3tCh265Q0NEAQYAyABEg
LKC_D_BwE) which does have Tardis-like dimensions, so maybe that’s
where it’s from.
Miscellania
‘the energy torpedo was running on its memory towards a spot where it had been told it could expect the privateer to be’ – are they clever torpedoes?
‘With the details that Nestor was now recording from the visualisation they’d be able to programme the mass detector’ – ah! so it needs a specific mass to function as a guide. That explains a lot…
… as this similarly does the crew’s behaviour: ‘he puzzled over the read-outs of the mass detector and wondered how come the distance back to the ship measured less than the distance out. Nobody seemed too interested – after all, look at the ridiculous figures the machine had given on that blue box’
A succinct summation that could be a bit of a comment on how things have gone in Season 19: ‘The Doctor carried no weapon; he found it a source of false confidence in others, a betrayer more often than a help’
And this perhaps even more so: ‘a back-blast, highly dangerous but, if brute force could be relied upon to achieve anything, incontestably effective’
Eccleston’s Doctor comes early: ‘Human being? Are we descending to cheap insults now?’
The clearest example that Gallagher’s unfortunately writing Romana as if this is ‘The Pirate Planet’ or thereabouts: ‘What are you? Is that the kind of contact etiquette they’re teaching on Gallifrey these days?’
I like self-confident Adric: ‘He was young, he was resilient, and it would be a great adventure’
And this is mildly touching: ‘Space breaking through its imaginary limitations was something that Adric could handle; the breakup of his new-found ‘family’ was something that he could not – at least, not with any sense of assurance’
K9 wraps up his stint in the Tardis: ‘No refunds are offered on the grounds of displeasure’
How emotional he is still peeks through the prose: ‘“All systems functioning,” K9 went on, although there was something subtly wrong in the earnest stridency of his delivery’
And how dog-like: ‘The small robot had made for the gateway in a more or less straight line after Adric had left the TARDIS in pursuit of Romana. K9’s capacity had been sufficiently reduced to allow him to lose grip on his memory of Adric; his weakened mind could hang onto only one concept with any firmness, and that was master. And as soon as he’d summoned up enough strength to follow his master, he’d been off’ – and how vulnerable does ‘small robot’ make him sound?
His last great heroic act: ‘The small robot’s energy levels were already critical and on the point of failure, and to drain them further in order to divert power into a Gundan speech centre might only serve to finish him off; but as the Doctor explained, knowledge about the gateway could be essential […] So K9 assented’
And one salute to what a great part of the Tardis crew he was: ‘there was no way of reproducing its personality with any exactness; too many small and unpredictable factors were at work, and a copy would never be any more than just that’
1. Based on the Popular Television Series, ed. Paul Smith
2. epguides.com/DoctorWho/
​
3. ‘Stephen Gallagher’s original draft of the novelisation was much longer and deviated substantially from the storyline seen on screen’
ed. Paul Smith, Based on the Popular BBC Television Series (3rd edition); p.150
4. ‘The publisher was happy to release it in this form but at the last minute the series production office (that is, John Nathan-Turner) insisted it be reworked to resemble the television serial more closely’
ed. Paul Smith, Based on the Popular BBC Television Series (3rd edition); p.150
5. ‘I theorised that a restoration might be possible […] it’s feeling more like a resurrection than a reconstruction’
6. ‘a frantic week of cutting, tippexing, retyping, gluing, renumbering, making paper labels to change character names… it was a scramble but I made the deadline and delivered a Frankenstein manuscript’
Stephen Gallagher, hauling like a BROOLIGAN, ‘The Restored Novelisation’, stephengallagher.com/doctor-who/the-restored-novelisation
7. ‘I had some form as a novelist already, and with so much structured and written and with the ideas still fresh in my mind it made sense to keep up the momentum’
Stephen Gallagher, hauling like a BROOLIGAN, ‘The Restored Novelisation’, stephengallagher.com/doctor-who/the-restored-novelisation
And bear in mind Gallagher had by this point novelised two films, his own radio series and, I’m guessing from publishing dates, just come off the back of writing his own novel Chimera (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Gallagher) , so I think when he hints he approached Doctor Who and Warriors’ Gate as a ‘novelist’, he means it
8. ‘The new work brought reluctant approval and it’s fair to say that much of my original still made it through’
Stephen Gallagher, hauling like a BROOLIGAN, ‘The Restored Novelisation’, stephengallagher.com/doctor-who/the-restored-novelisation
Perhaps inevitable in an era when, as Gallagher points out discussing the rewriting his novelisation of The Last Rose of Summer, ‘cut-and-paste meant exactly what it says’ [Stephen Gallagher, hauling like a BROOLIGAN, ‘The Early Stuff’, stephengallagher.com/books/the-early-stuff] and it would have been so much easier to leave intact as many words, sentences and even paragraphs in any given passage.
9. ‘Working closely with Bidmead, Joyce's version of Warriors' Gate omitted elements like an opening sequence depicting an attack on the privateer by an Antonine Killer which resulted in the ship becoming trapped in the Void’
Shannon Sullivan, A Brief History of Time (Travel), shannonsullivan.com/doctorwho/serials/5s.html
10. ‘a Killer has to be true to his nature’
11. ‘The acting could be fun, but the killing was best’
12. ‘it kept his record clean with command base – after all, the mandate was for search and capture, not search and destroy...’
13. ‘a light, carefully placed charge into the vulnerable underside of the privateer, enough to shake the hull with the sounds of a glancing blow or a near miss. The crew would thank their various gods for his bad aim and put the privateer into lightspeed before he could circle around for another try, and those grateful prayers would be their last. That was the beauty of the belly shot, the Killer’s specialty’
14. ‘Four privateers had tried to run the blockade, all four of them wiped out by the Antonine Killers, the Brotherhood, the clan. The anti-slavery alliance could be fun, as long as you didn’t take it too seriously’
15. ‘The Killer’s paw moved to the input panel’
16. ‘Even a raw cub with his paws on the controls for the first time wouldn’t make such a mistake’
17. ‘the slavers had picked only the best as they’d walked in their armour and respirators across the alien plain as the nerve gases drifted around them’
18. ‘The slave holds were below him, he could feel it. Hundreds, maybe even thousands, of his own people, stacked tight like cards in a deck and drugged into a placid sleep by the lifesupport systems, feed tubes and pumps that barely sustained life, in conditions that otherwise would kill more than half their number’ – I think it’s the mention of the possible death of half the slaves that makes this most strongly remind you of actual slave ships but it could just as easily be the very clear lack of space
19. ‘a raw young Tharil snatched from his village and smuggled out past the Antonine blockade’
20. ‘Biroc was a Tharil, a time-sensitive, one of the most valued navigators on the spaceways. That value was shown not in the wealth or the respect that he could command, but in the price that his abilities would bring on the open market’
21. ‘Biroc had resisted once, expecting to be hurt or even killed; either would be better than the chains, but Rorvik had a better idea. He called for the youngest of the Tharils to be brought up from the slave hold (being the youngest it would also be the least valuable, as time-sensitivity only became controllable with adulthood), and then killed the child in front of him. And then called for another’
22. ‘the navigator that they’d had before Biroc had tried to dive the ship and its load of slaves into a sun’
23. ‘The memory made Biroc want to roar and to fight, as always. But there was no fighting, there were only the chains’
24. ‘Six hands fastened on Romana, one of them clamping across her mouth to cut off any further objection. It also cut off most of her air, with the result that her struggles grew weaker and she was unable to resist being lifted across to the navigator’s chair and fastened down into place. It was all going horribly wrong. She was supposed to be getting them out of a mess, not working to lower herself deeper into one’
25. ‘she was hurled into a pit of pain. It was deeper and more intense than anything she’d ever known before; it was like being dipped in fire’ OR SLAVERY
26. ‘She was showing a lot of resistance, even more than Biroc had in those early days when they’d been breaking him in’
27. ‘she’d strained at her bonds a couple of times and it had got her nowhere, and the effort had cost her so much that she’d been left feeling slack and wrung out. She was promising herself: Just a couple of minutes, even only one minute more, and I’ll try again. But not right away’
28. ‘I think she’s a time-sensitive. And if she is... we’ll either squeeze her out or burn her up’
29. ‘Well, she was no time-sensitive. They’d found it out the only reliable way there was. But at least she’d been of some use’
30. ‘the fluke was that both of my stories fell at a point in the season where a character was set to leave […] In Romana’s case this meant giving her the confidence and will for an independent future as a Time Lord with a status equal to that of The Doctor’
Stephen Gallagher, hauling like a BROOLIGAN, ‘Warriors’ Gate’, stephengallagher.com/doctor-who/warriors-gate
31. ‘Although Bidmead and Joyce had rewritten the scenes featuring Romana and K9’s departure, an unhappy Ward complained to Nathan-Turner and Bidmead about their lack of drama’
Frank Collins, The Black Archive #31: Warriors’ Gate; p.91
32. ‘as far as the Time Lords were concerned, they were expecting the return of an apprentice for final training’
33. ‘She’d been avoiding the subject of Gallifrey and their summons to return for some time’
34. ‘“Anyone would think you didn’t want to go back to Gallifrey.” She looked at him suddenly, as if he’d whipped the cover off a secret that she’d been concealing even from herself’
35. ‘she’d been assuring Adric of the worth of her training and qualifications. Now it seemed she was qualified for one thing only – she could be relied upon to blow all her chances’
36. ‘So it seemed that her apprenticeship was, indeed, finally over’
37. Now, Romana’s apprenticeship to the Doctor, at least in principle, strays dangerously close to how she’s portrayed in Doctor Who and the State of Decay, even suggesting there was some attempt at some point to structure a vague gesticulation towards a character arc across Romana’s final stories. In practice, there clearly categorically wasn’t. I savaged Doctor Who and the State of Decay’s characterisation because it felt very generic-human-companion, arguing for the sanctity of Adric’s life against the Doctor’s Time Lordly arithmetic. Here, the relationship is pretty much reversed – Romana is all ‘training and qualifications’ against the Doctor’s ‘intuition’ (38). It’s still far from ideal, resetting Romana to a stage before much of Lalla Ward’s performances, but it at least connects with the concept of the character and, also unlike in Doctor Who and the State of Decay, serves some purpose, namely that Romana must learn to follow her intuition in order to reach equal status with the Doctor.
38. ‘“Admit it,” Romana said, “you don’t know what you’re doing.” “I don’t know what I’m doing.” “You’re being random.” “I’m following intuition. That’s something else”’
As an aside, this nicely mirrors an exchange, which takes place very shortly after, between Rorvik and Pakard:
‘“We’re stuck somewhere that isn’t even supposed to exist.” “If you don’t understand the read-outs, say so.” “I don’t understand the read-outs,” Packard admitted readily’
In both cases, an admission of ignorance is seen as preferable to an attempt to process something new and difficult. Worryingly, this parallels Romana with Rorvik
39. ‘Intuition, as he had often said, was to be valued far above logic; for logic could be designed into a machine by anybody with a basic knowledge of computer science, whilst intuition was solely the product of evolution’
40. ‘the Doctor had much greater respect for the architect of evolution than he had for the designers of what he called ‘tinker-toy electronic brains’
41. ‘“What do you think is the biggest common factor in the belief system of every developed culture?” “Basic ignorance.” “No, faith.” “Same thing.” “The belief that the universe is actually going somewhere”’
42. ‘“Every universe moves in an even mathematical progression.” “Planets might. People don’t.” […] “That’s because the number of factors affecting people is too vast to calculate”’
43. ‘“You’d have a formula as big as the universe, and as difficult to handle” […] “think of E-space,” the Doctor was saying. “Very little matter, and all spread thin. Simplified relationships, a simplified formula – the toss of a coin could decide it all”’
44. ‘“Technical solutions,” Lazlo said dismissively. “Easy to predict, easy to forestall.” “What’s your alternative?” “A trust in intuition.” Now it was Romana’s turn to be lofty. “Guessing games and blind man’s buff.” But Lazlo turned a hard stare onto her. “Look around you, and see the greatness that once was. Tharil greatness, brought down and ruined by your logical thinkers.”’ – this bit of Lazlo also reflects a remarkable lack of remorse on the Tharils’ part, but I will come back to that
45. ‘from an infinite range of possible futures they could select one and visualise it in detail as if it had already happened’
46. ‘letting himself stretch out to test a range of possible futures before he commited himself to any’
47. ‘which made Biroc’s achievement as he’d lain in the shackles on the privateer’s bridge even more remarkable... As the Doctor had only just realised, Biroc had managed to glimpse as a unity the events that would follow if the privateer and the TARDIS were to be brought together at the gateway’
48. ‘Each Tharil that came around was immediately presented with overlapping visions of only two possible futures: holocaust or survival. It was rare to be given such a clear-cut choice’
49. ‘It was as if he knew that any course of action was likely to be as effective or ineffective as any other – luck alone would have to bale them out, and no amount of close attention could influence luck’
50. ‘She’d chosen the spot well; no flip of the coin, but a good guess instead’
51. There’s even a strange hint that this is something the Doctor’s secretly engaged in making happen, a viral challenge to the Time Lords that he seeks to seed and spread: ‘he’d stolen the TARDIS and run, determined not to stay among their ranks. And now the message was starting to spread’
52. ‘“I’m not coming back, Doctor […]” “What will you do?” “What we’ve always done”’
53. ‘“I’ll learn to use it the way Biroc’s people used to.” “When they were the most vicious slavers in the known universe?” She’d obviously thought it all out. “There’s my first job. Making sure history doesn’t repeat itself”’
54. ‘They thought they knew how the whole universe ticked, and they considered themselves perfectly suited to supervise it. Such arrogance had always made him uncomfortable’
55. ‘By what tragedy had they failed to forsee their own defeat?’
56. ‘a back-blast would destroy everything with its reflected energy – everything, perhaps, with the exception of a TARDIS in transit, or a Tharil in a similarly de-stabilised state. Either would be able to ride out the holocaust with no problem... The Doctor wanted to laugh at the simple elegance of the plan, but what sobered him was the thought that he’d come so close to destroying it’
57. ‘Do nothing, Biroc seemed to say, it is done’
58. ‘Something she’d learned about the Doctor was that he never took orders, and that he very rarely even took advice. When the logic of a situation seemed to be making loud demands for caution, it was by no means unusual for the Doctor to take a leap into the dark if his intuition suggested that he should’
59. DOCTOR: Do nothing?
ROMANA: Of course, Doctor. Don't you see?
chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/18-5.htm
60. ‘Romana could see the void for what it was; not a true emptiness, but the neutral ground where all the alternate possibilities that made up her future were in a state of rest’
61. ‘When Biroc watched and did nothing, it was because he already knew what was ahead’
62. ‘it seemed to the Doctor that servant wasn’t the right word, it wouldn’t account for her downcast eyes and the way in which she quivered with nervousness as she came anywhere within arm’s reach of a Tharil. The soft flesh of her arms was smudged with old bruises. Slave would have described her better’
63. ‘The girl-slave stood with her arm gripped tight by the impatient Tharil; he was squeezing hard and watching for her reaction, and she was doing her best to show none. It wasn’t helping her; the more she tried to keep her suffering concealed, the more the Tharil laid on the pressure.’
64. ‘The girl tottered back, released and forgotten now that there was more interesting sport to be had’
65. DOCTOR: Including her?
BIROC: They're only people.
chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/18-5.htm
66. ‘And does that possessiveness include other races?’
67. ‘they were astonished to find that they had an idiot in their midst; a humanoid, a slave, allowed in on sufferance and who then proceeded to speak up and invite his own suicide’
68. ‘To assemble this one table-load must have taken fabulous – and, in view of the perishable nature of the goods, excessive – wealth’
69. ‘the weak did indeed enslave themselves; by setting themselves up as unjust masters they handed out invitations to rebellion and revenge’
70. ‘Judge whether we have not suffered punishment enough for the abuse of our gift’
71. ‘obedient to its prime command: to kill the brutes who rule’
72. ‘it walked on past Biroc, ignoring him’
73. ‘And who were the rulers now? Who wore the chains, and who held the whips? Who ran, and who chased?’
Lydeckerisms
An odd iffy moment: ‘“Could be a ship.” “For what? Midgets?”’ – Lydecker’s so happy with this he repeats it almost verbatim within 10 pages: ‘“It’s a ship” […] “What for,” he snorted, “midgets?”’
And lots of joyous turns of phrase:
‘Lights were flashing that had never been needed before, and alarms that had sounded only in tests were now sounding for real’
‘the time winds ran through K9 like desert sands’
‘The only substance dense enough to pin down a dream’
‘It took intense concentration to bring a Tharil back into phase with the moment. Or chains. The heaviest chains would do the job just as efficiently’
‘as with most problems, the main barrier had been ignorance’
Biroc: ‘he might have been on the run from a fairytale’