Chapter by Chapter features me reading one chapter 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.
Last time we got more scenes not in the episode, or at least not in the episode we recently watched before starting this review of the novelisation.
This is where we should start talking about Vicki, Susan’s replacement. Problem is I barely knew her. It wasn’t long after this episode that Ian and Barbara would leave and where the lost episode count came into play. So what few episodes I’ve seen with Vicki are few and I’ve only seen them once. Thanks to Tubi losing the license before I could get to them, Sling coming out with them in the same way as YouTube, and the 24/7 streaming channel jumping between Doctors even if I had time to sit there and watch them live, I probably won’t get to for a very long time. What little I’ve seen shows she was a lot more bubbly than Susan, if I’m using the right word, and she did fulfill the “granddaughter” role without Susan’s knowledge as a space/time traveler (the show writers not yet deciding they were aliens called Time Lords). Apparently the actress got along well enough with William Hartnell.
You may have also noticed if you actually read the tags she’s listed with a last name she never had in the show, Pallister. This first appeared in one of the later non-adaptation original novels, Byzantium!, and later novels and Big Finish all ran with it as her now semi-official last name. According to the TARDIS fandom wiki they were going to name her Tanni at first, and later considered Millie (after a pop singer of the time), before finally settling on Vicki. Another piece of trivia:
She was written out of the show after Maureen O’Brien complained about her dialogue. This came as a shock to O’Brien, as she had not expressed any desire to leave. Both William Hartnell and Peter Purves (who played later Companion Steven) were upset at her departure and (script editor) Donald Tosh later admitted that it could have been handled better.
But enough trivia. We last left the Doctor about to have his throat cut out, so we really should check on that.
Bennett revealed as the villain, and the one who really killed anybody, the Doctor calls him out on it. He tries to kill the Doctor but as the Doctor is out cold the real Didoans show up and force him through a trap door to his death. It’s what happened in the episode…until you look at the specifics.
I don’t remember the sonic laser being used or the Doctor reflecting it with the mirror, and the TARDIS wiki summary (I don’t have time to rewatch the episode so feel free to correct me if I’m wrong) doesn’t mention it either. It does mention Bennett taking off the outfit to better fight the Doctor, the Didoans arriving, and their dispatching of the villain.
Then there’s the stuff that was added. Bennett claims that the original killing that led to all this was justified, that he caught the crewman high and messing with the ship’s course, which is why they crashed. Since nobody was able to tell Earth, he cooked up the plan to get rid of the evidence and use Vicki’s testimony to blame it on the locals. The Doctor points out a flaw in that the other killings were overkill if the original was in self-defense, but Bennett’s kind of gone crazy at this point. This seems like an unnecessary addition if Bennett is telling the truth and we only have his word, not the omniscient narrator’s. He might be lying, given all the other lying and killing he’s done since we know he’s guilty of. If Marter’s attempt was to say this is what happened, then it seems like a last-minute attempt to make Bennett in the right for the initial killing, but he’s still guilty of the rest of it, so why bother adding this to the backstory except to pad out the novel.
While other additions kind of help the prose version of the story this is more unnecessary. Also, maybe it’s how I was reading this, but I don’t remember Hartnell’s Doctor ever being this spry. I haven’t seen any of his earlier productions but Hartnell was getting on in years and that was still before the health issues that caused him to leave the show and introduce regeneration to keep the title character around. In the book, however, seeing him run around the chamber, breaking out mirrors, and a more energetic struggle for “Koquillion’s” sonic weapon, which is now claimed to be a “peaceful tool” (says the man who later weaponizes a screwdriver that also operates on sound because alien science) does make for a more action packed read. Though we again see First acting more like Fourth in how he distracts Bennett. Sometimes I think the author borrowed from the wrong Doctor.
We only have a few more chapters left, though the villain is now defeated. However, we have a few really short chapters and an epilogue, so I might be combining chapters for the next couple of installments. Still better than the last book I read.
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