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.
I know they’re about to add stuff to this chapter and the epilogue. Our last chapter ended with only a couple of minutes left to the episode, and yet chapter 15 is nine pages. Even with the teaser for the next story arc (that’s what they did back in the William Hartnell years) and a slightly over one page epilogue there’s more book that there is episode left.
I’m not complaining about the padding in this one, mind you. I understand that they’re trying to extend two episodes to a novel length that usually handles 4 or 5 episodes, and I bet some really long serials in later years had to be cut down a bit to fit the same book size. It’s not even the shortest arc in the series. It’s the serial that’s just one episode that I’m curious what Target Books did with. I may never know.
What I do know is that I’ve run out of ways to pad out the intros for the homepage, so this is ending at just the right time. So let’s get into the last chapter, and the epilogue, and finish this book.
The first segment of the chapter is the scene where the silver people go into the ship and destroy the equipment as the TARDIS dematerializes. Instead of the physical ripping apart I remember from the episode, Marter decided to give them psionic powers or something. The narrator suggests they’re speaking telepathically to each other but doesn’t outright say they are. They could just be nodding in agreement, both knowing the beacon and communication system should be destroyed. They just wave their hands over it rather than physically destroy it. I have questions for later.
Then we get more padding with the rescue ship as they notice there’s no more beacon and they aren’t answering communications. Then for some reason we get the TARDIS passing through the ship again. I have never seen this happen on any episode in the past or present so I don’t know why Marter added this in. It just seems unnecessary. They write it off as something the Chinese are doing and even compare the Police Box to some future device the Chinese have been working on. Okay. Also, we have the American crewman always chewing gum, which makes me wonder how many Americans Marter had met or seen on TV, and something negative compared to a fictional substance (I’m guessing metal) called “Reaganium”. You couldn’t just say “hunk of junk”? It’s just a bit suspicious but I lived through the 1980s and I know certain parties didn’t like Ronald Reagan. Plus I live in 2026, where I’ve seen Presidents the other side doesn’t like attacked a lot by now.
Back on the TARDIS we see their reaction, the Doctor blaming space traffic not watching where they’re going. Not himself, of course. None of the Doctors admit to not being able to fly the TARDIS very well. They land on a planet, and the TARDIS falls off a cliff, which is how the episode ends. This leads to the next story arc, nowadays referred to as “The Romans”. You can guess why.
However, we still have the epilogue, and for some reason Marter decided to kill the happy ending of the episode by killing off the two remaining Didioians, confirmed to be a male and female. It does make sense to me that the rescue ship would want to know what happened and send an investigation team down. I don’t think they had to kill the remaining population in the process. After that they just decide to go away, file their report, and have Christmas. Up until this point the addition of the rescue ship’s crew was pointless. Now it’s depressing and I would have rathered they had found nothing, filed a report, and moved on. It’s just a sad way to end a story.
Over at The Clutter Reports this weekend I’ll give my overall thoughts on the novel in a book report, but the short version is that I rather enjoyed it until the ending. I see where the padding was necessary and it was nice that he took advantage of not needing a budget, but the epilogue kind of ruined things. Also, the episode is still available if you want to see it, and you’re better off in the end just watching the episode. As for our next Chapter By Chapter installment? We’re going to do something a bit different and get a bit more graphic. Graphic novel, that is, since I have one that’s big and broken into chapters without being a trade collection (as far as I know). No, it’s not the one I teased last week. This has a really long title, but I did get it at Free Comic Book Day. I’ll explain next week.
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