Chapter By Chapter> Doctor Who: The Rescue prologue

Chapter by Chapter features me reading one chapter (or possibly multiple chapters for this one) of the selected book at the time and reviewing it as if I were reviewing an episode of a TV show or an issue of a comic. There will be spoilers if you haven’t read to the point I have, and if you’ve read further I ask that you don’t spoil anything further into the book. Think of it as read-along book club.

For those of you who missed the preview, “The Rescue” is from back in the days when arcs didn’t have titles, just individual episodes. Arcs have been retroactively added in to match the arc titles of later seasons of the classic series. This arc consists of two episodes, “The Powerful Enemy” and “Desperate Measures”. This is also going to be different from the usual novelisations I’ve reviewed one chapter at a time in the past. Those were based on the last available draft and production images the author had access to in order to get the book out on time alongside the movies. The Rescue novel came out in 1988, a year after the late writer wrote it and over twenty years after the David Whittaker script was written. So changes here are totally a matter of choice by the author.

This was also the first story without Susan, the Doctor’s granddaughter. Carol Ann Ford left the show, so Susan stayed behind on an Earth that was just freed from Dalek control to help rebuild the planet and build a new life with her new love interest. I think Big Finish did audio dramas with what’s next, but considering the young Time Lady in training has more knowledge than the Earthlings, you’d think she’d have had a hand in Earth’s eventual move into space and helping form a galactic federation with (of course) Earth as a centerpiece. After all, the show is written by Earthlings. It’s also why most of the aliens and ancient civilisations show up in the United Kingdom, because until Disney+ came along the show was very much British with the occasional Scotsman as the Doctor because they’re still in the UK.

The book itself has no chapter titles. I’ll be noting which of the two episodes is being adapted here, and remember that the BBC dropped this episode on the Classic Doctor Who YouTube channel just in time for me to use the arc as part of Saturday Night Showcase to set up this review. So watch that first if you want, or just follow along the novel. I have the Target Books printing from 1988, imported to the US because of the show’s American fanbase via PBS back when they still mattered. That’s for anyone actually reading along. Let’s begin with the prologue and set our story up with technically part one of “The Powerful Enemy”.

Now here’s something I wasn’t expecting, and this is the second time I’ve read this novel at least so clearly I forgot. At the time I hadn’t seen the episode. I don’t think I caught it until it aired on the old Sci-Fi Channel. What we have here is a completely original sequence that was never in the show: we get to see the crew of the rescue ship. If you watched the episode you know that the rescue ship only made an impact as Vicki tries to make contact. Rewatching the episode prior to this review I thought it was the villain (I’ll play along for those who didn’t watch the episode and keep the twists twisted for the time being) messing with her about the ship’s arrival. Only near the end did it seem legit.

My question is why Marter opted to start his book with a sex joke. >Sixty-nine< minutes to arrive, and some of the crew make the joke so you know it’s intentional on Marter’s part. Luckily it’s done in a way to go over a kid’s head. I have to be me now to get the joke as I didn’t even understand the reference in high school, which is when I got the novel. We’re also given names and personalities for characters who ultimately matter nothing to the story. I don’t think Big Finish was in operation back then, and nowadays they give any one-shot character with the mildest impact their own series. I supposed this could have been one for them if they cared, but all we saw in the show, or rather heard, is the communication officer telling Vicki they’re going as fast as they can. Here we’re told they’re worried about some strange anomaly that’s responsible for Vicki’s ship crashing, and it also gets a name: Astra Nine. I double-checked with the TARDIS Fandom wiki and while they were heading to the planet Astra, the ship’s actual designation was just UK-201. The ship getting an actual name is a novel-exclusive story. Also, just learned Big Finish did an audio drama about the actual crash.

Back to the crew. We have the Commander, just named Smith, the American pilot Weinberger (and I can just hear the fake American accent the Brits use to get back at us Americans for our bad British accents) that’s what you’d expect a British author to write an American ship pilot (for example he’s the one who makes the sixty-nine a joke), the trainee navigator Oliphant, and an unnamed gruff voice who seems to be in the all-concealing shadows. Smith goes for a nap, warning the crew about the disturbance, as the others have the usual bridge crew banter.

Then they get an anomaly passing through the ship, a blue oblong shape! Clearly this is the TARDIS, unless I’m clearly proven wrong later. I have never seen the TARDIS depicted as passing through anything like that before. I know the ship travels dematerialized through time but we have seen it travel through normal space as well. Come to think of it, despite seeing numerous videos about the TARDIS itself as a vehicle, I don’t think anyone (writers included) really understand how the TARDIS gets from A to B. Passing through a ship and temporarily disrupting it’s controls (and screwing up Oliphant’s 3D jigsaw puzzle) is not something I’m aware happens, and I’m curious why Marter included this scene at all. It doesn’t really establish anything beyond they’re going to a crash site, one of them is a “dame” (might be a bit young for you, Weinberger), and meeting characters who never mattered to the story before. I don’t think anyone cared about the rescue ship, but it does make them matter more to the story now, and given something I was going to talk about near the end it should make my planned statement on that a bit different than originally planned.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not a bad scene and maybe Marter needed to pad out the rather short arc (compared to how long they ran in the show at the time the novelisation was written, with some arcs being longer than five episodes without events like “The Key To Time” or “Trial Of A Time Lord”) and decided to have us meet the crew. Maybe he was always curious how they responded to being cut off like they were, but I’ll hold those thoughts for later. I’m more confused with how the TARDIS passed through the ship like that and why. We won’t learn next time as we start where the episode actually does and meet our new Companion and her current one.