Well, it is inoffensive. It also hints at how it and the TV story should have been more satisfying whilst itself steadfastly delivering not a gram’s greater satisfaction than the TV story. But since this is Dicks, let’s start with some nice bits of tidying up.

    If you ever wondered why Meglos specifically wants a human, it turns out they’re ‘particularly malleable’ (3); if you wondered why Meglos keeps growing spines and not getting on with escaping Tigella, it’s because his ‘iron will’ slipping allows his human host to fight back (4), leaving Meglos ‘weakened’ (5) and ‘Exhausted’ (6); and if you wondered how the dodecahedron came to be on Tigella, it not only ‘descended from the skies in the distant past’ (7) but was the source of a conflict on Zolfa-Thura (8) survived by only Meglos and the leader of the peace party (9), who died taking the crystal to Tigella (10). Less helpful, as Jim Sangster points out, is how Dicks ‘describes the dodecahedron as ‘five-sided’’ (11). This, however, seems to be a muddle copied from an earlier script – Shannon Sullivan says the crystal was ‘originally a five-sided object’ (12) – and so Dicks’s only sin is not really thinking through the word dodecahedron.

    Dicks also gives a bit of extra attention to the religion/ science divide at the heart of Tigellan society. Zastor’s position as leader of ‘a divided people’ (13), possessing ‘no real power’ (14) and whose sole role is to ‘balance’ the two sides and head off ‘a bitter civil war’ (15), is clearer. A sense of selfless service is given by the feeling he only persists because the likelihood is that, were he ‘overthrown’, his replacement would be ‘far worse’ (16). This is rather undermined by the fact that, while the scientist are presented as quite reasonable – and indeed, thanks to the background detail given the dodecahedron, quite right – the Deons are a sinister bunch straight out of gothic horror, described as ‘scuffling’ and ‘slipping into the shadows, melting out of sight’ (17). That they’re the villains is reinforced by the fact they have their own ‘military arm’ – ‘Deon guards’ (18) – while the Savants appear to have, at best, no militia of their own or, at worst, are responsible for the seemingly non-sectarian ‘City guards’ (19). This one-sided impression isn’t helped by the fact Lexa’s desire to make the Doctor swear allegiance to Ti is, in the novelisation, explicitly a ploy to try and prevent his access to the dodecahedron – she expected him to refuse and is ‘disappointed’ by his acceptance (20). Actually, it’s worse than that: she’s ‘Baffled’ (21) by his willingness to take the oath, suggesting she thinks swearing allegiance to Ti is actually a ridiculous thing to agree to. Dicks’s clear disdain for religious groups aside, all that extra attention adds a bit more oomph to the moment when ‘Deons and City guards combined’ (22) in the face of the Gaztak attack even if, as Dicks can’t resist pointing out, it simply makes them ‘united in death’ (23).

    Nice though all these little touches are, they don’t really add anything. More promising is how Dicks makes the double-act of Grugger and Brotodac shine. For all the talk of ‘men in wild, barbaric, vaguely military-looking clothes’ (24) who roam ‘the galaxy […] looting and stealing from anyone weaker than themselves’ (25), their compulsion to ‘rob and murder and pillage’ (26) actually boils down to slipping stuff into their pockets when no one’s looking (27). The extent to which Grugger is basically just a space Arthur Daley in viking clothes (28) is from his continual yet futile attempts to double-cross Meglos (29), which, despite his determination ‘not to betray him until he was sure it would be absolutely safe’ (30), result, despite his self-professed ‘new-found scientific expertise’ (31), in his entombing himself, Brotodec and Meglos (32).

    As Stan to Grugger’s Oliie – and if you doubt that characterisation, just consider the struggles Grugger has explaining the chronic hysteresis to Brotodac since ‘Brotodac's understanding was severely limited, and Grugger himself didn't really know what he was talking about’ (33) – Brotodac’s even less effectual. Unfortunately for Grugger, Brotodac’s blind, indeed credulous, faith in him (34), easily translates into a wistful devotion to Meglos, hero-worshiping him (35) with a mix of ‘fascination and admiration’ (36), his incomprehension rendering every move Meglos makes magic (37) and attributing converging fortune to Meglos’s genius (38). Brotodac’s doting attention seems at least part inspired by Meglos’s coat, an item to which he is immediately drawn (39) and which he is quick to compliment (40), help with (41), hold (42) and tend (43), gazing upon it ‘admiringly’ (44) exactly as he does Meglos (45). In what I view as a lovely bit of work by Dicks, though it might somehow originate from the scripts, Brotodac’s infatuations with coat and Meglos are presented as mutually exclusive such that his taking possession of the coat severs ‘ his loyalty to Meglos’ (46).

    Soon after Brotodac is free of his fascination for Meglos, Dicks offers a timely reminder that, comically inept though he might often be, the Gaztak is also brutal – given the order to confine Meglos, and mistaking the Doctor for his doppelganger, Brotodac simply sees him, walks up to him and thumps him (47). It’s a reminder not only of the moment he met Romana and immediately thought of the ‘credits’ she could get him ‘in the slave markets’ (48) but also of the novelisation’s Earth-bound opening.

    Dicks launches the book with an esoteric, and I strongly suspect mistaken, insistence that ‘There's nothing illegal about walking out of your old life, changing your name, getting another job in another town or another country’ (49) whilst also being keen to highlight how ‘the concrete pilings that support some of our new motorways’ (50) are likely the final resting place of some of those disappeared. These are strikingly odd asides in a chapter largely concerned with introducing George – ‘an assistant bank manager in a small country town’ (25) who phones his wife just before his walk home at the end of each day, prompting her to pour him a ‘medium-dry sherry’ for when he comes through the door (26), at which time she also kisses ‘him on the cheek’ (27). He’s ‘average’ (28), ‘Ordinary and everyday’ (29) in a very specifically middle class, suburban way, and his wife wishes he’d ‘be a little less predictable’ (30). She also reflects on her ‘duty to share her husband's business worries’ (31), but whether that’s a sly joke on the triviality of those worries or just a combination of Dicks and the early 1980s isn’t clear.

    Actually, considering how directly George derives from The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin (1976-9), or perhaps whatever sitcoms Perrin was sending up, makes it difficult to credit Dicks isn’t in on the joke and that would make the opening-line comment on disappearances a direct doubling-down on the reference. Just to cement George as a character straight out of TV comedy, Dicks describes his walk home ‘through the green countryside’ making him ‘a faintly incongruous figure in his dark business suit’ (58), reminiscent of Monty Python’s brolly-carrying, bowler-hatted establishment figures often shown in leafy environs.

    All that said, once whisked off to Zolfa-Thura, George doesn’t become the Arthur Dent you might expect but, thanks to the necessities of plot, actually reveals ‘unexpected reserves of strength and courage’ (59) and the description of him ‘fighting for survival’ in the face of an invasion of ‘his body and his soul’ (60 – my italics) lends the character an unexpected grit. Maybe George’s opening embrace of suburbia isn’t supposed to be read as blissful ignorance of the harsh world around him but instead as resilience against its gravity?

    This is what I meant when I said at the start that Dicks makes me think ‘Meglos’ really should have been good – this here is a mash-up of contemporary popular-TV staples from The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin and Minder, plus dashes of Monty Python, Laurel and Hardy, and maybe Hitch-hiker’s, all topped off with an evil cactus. And yet, even as Dicks makes all this clearer in the mix, Meglos isn’t really any better than ‘Meglos’. The problem is that Grugger, Brotodac, George and even Meglos spend quite a lot of the story being a bit off to the side. Centre stage are the Tigellans and they are spectacularly bland, even for all the talk of tensions between Savants and Deons, and it’d be a harsher man than me who’d suggest they’re the Doctor Who part of the mash-up. It feels like Dicks tries to lampshade this issue when he comments on how the Savants ‘all looked and thought alike’ (61). I’d argue he doesn’t go far enough – even Lexa, who does much better than the likes of Caris or Zastor, effectively has only one juicy moment, strongly hinting she’d very much like to reinstate ‘crushing [unbelievers] beneath a huge rock’ (61) but has to appear open to compromise. Besides which, one snarky aside doesn’t really fix the fact the book has to spend so much time with the Tigellans. That said, after the last book, a bland palette cleanser still represents a bit of a win.