Chapter By Chapter> Doctor Who: The Rescue chapter 1

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.

This might be the first chapter but it’s not our first installment. Last time we went over the prologue. I wasn’t expecting much in the way of changes, but the prologue was a unique scene not shown in the episode being adapted. I wonder what other changes are coming.

Changes are odd to see here. Like I wrote before, novelizations interest me because they’re based on the last available version of the script. Dialog changes, scenes edited in a different order than planned, reshoots that aren’t out of control (rare nowadays), and things cut for time might still show up in the novel, which has to be expanded for the page count. The author has to interpret scenes, giving you a glimpse into their heads the screenwriters probably didn’t think about. For example, when I went over the Total Recall novelization, we “learned” Quaid was a pervert while Hauser really did love Melina and switch sides without any of the doubt in the movie. We also met the race that created the oxygen machine and whye, which was never even a consideration since it was just a MacGuffin for Quaid’s/Hauser’s story. Also, the answer was kind of stupid, kind of like Cohaagen’s plan. “Are you smart enough to fly up here and press a button to terraform a planet? Then you can leave that planet and join us before the end of the universe” versus “I want to know the secret of this machine and get rid of my enemy, so I’m going to have the most convoluted scheme imaginable that shouldn’t work based on all sense of logic.” The former was the book and the latter the movie.

This chapter we get introduced to the Doctor’s replacement teenager and some other dude. Not spoiling him until the book does, even though we watched the episode, but Vicki’s history with the Doctor is pretty well known at this point so I don’t mind bringing it up. Since this is a scene from the episode, I’ll be adding the actual episode writer, David Whitaker, into the tags. If you don’t see him, it’s a scene Marter created himself. Not that we’re just starting “The Powerful Enemy”, the first episode of this arc, back when each individual episode had a title instead of the whole arc. “The Rescue” was also the name episode 7 of the season one arc “The Daleks”, and you can guess who debuted in that serial. So that’s confusing. The arc after the second Dalek appearance shares the name of an episode part of the first arc debuting the Daleks. This could get confusing, so let’s get on with the review.

The chapter starts with a description of the area around the crashed ship, which as a reminder the novel names Astra Nine but only had a number designation in the episode. The rescue ship is also given a name, Seeker. If that was mentioned in the episode I can’t recall it. The TARDIS Wiki just said the crashed ship was given a name the show didn’t give it. The way Marter describes the scene is meant to invoke death rather than just a crashed starship in the desert. The rocks are treated like skulls, the damaged ship is referred to as having a robot’s entrails formed from the wires and hoses. It’s very bleak and deliberate. I almost think Marter is trying to foreshadow what’s coming.

That also happens with Bennett but first we need to see Vicki. She thinks the radar has picked up a crashed ship, but if you saw the episode or know the show in general you know what it actually is. She’s described as having “huge eyes with eyebrows arched high” and her haircut is compared to Joan Of Arc. It also says her nose was definitely Norman and compared hier outfit to the “Maid Of Orleans”, which I’m guessing worked better for the original British readers than the American imports. We then see her run to tell Bennett, and that’s the only name he’s ever been given. Just…Bennett. He finds it hard to believe that she’s detecting the ship and tells her not to run out the battery for the beacon. The way the trip is described seems a bit longer than in the episode, where there two doors and a small hallway between the part of the ship she appeared to be living in, with radio of course, and the room where the supposedly bedridden Bennett is. Not a lot of room to run down the hall. UK-201 must be a shorter ship than the Astra Nine.

Speaking of foreshadowing, my cousin shows up again after she leaves and the supposedly scarred Bennett, warning her to not let Koquillion know about the rescue ship, starts laughing, which I also don’t remember from the episode. Probably pointing to things a bit early there, Marter. Of course, it turns out the ship is still sixty-eight hours away, and between that announcement and the audio delay Vicki knows it can’t be the ship up there, but then what is it? She’s disappointed, but curious.

I do like the way Marter visually lays out the crash site, but I think he’s trying to go longer with the ship than the sets did. Making Bennett look odd so early out spoils the fact that he’s hiding something. As fare as Koquillion, we’ll meet him later.

Next time we go to the ship that lan….okay, we all know it’s the TARDIS one way or another. We check in with the TARDIS crew minus one.