BW Media Spotlight

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.

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