Blimey, was not expecting this. Began what I thought would be a straight forward enough adaption of what i remember from the television series and within a couple of pages there was mention of feudal slavery, apocalyptic diseases decimating the population of Tara and even mention of terrifing coersive bed hopping and death by being buried alive. Told at a jaunty angle, as though to say "get a load of this medieval lot". Even as a thinly read Belfastian like my fourteen year old self, as I was in 1978 when this story was first transmitted, could tell this was a pastiche of some similar materia ( the Prisoner Of Zenda and possibly Herges King Ottaker's Sceptre. Probably because it felt so familiar in a BBC classic adaption sort of way, I barely considered Tara to be an alien planet , more a faux-Latveria filled with swah bucking high adventure and low paranoid robomania.
Tara is a pecuiar city state stretched planet wide (as sci-fi stories tend to portray when visiting other worlds, one planet, one race, one weather system,one political and social system. its a long standing trope that has never made much sense but readers mostly go along with it without realising how odd this actually is.) The villan of the piece, Count Grendel of Gracht,as played by fantastic character actor Peter Jeffreys, pops up in proceedings as a worthy, if moustache-swirlingly swarthy, adversary for The Doctor. He plays a wicked counterpoint to our child-like but brilliant hero. Grendel is a selfish bully, born to the purple. Yet he is very much a product of the society he inhabits where he the percieved "good guys" operate around a very aggresive class bound system (They even threaten to murder The Doctor because he does not immediately sucumb to their demands!) The class system on Tara is feudal and just about as undemocratic as Doctor Doom's Latveria. Social mobility is an impossible dream on this world and The Doctor and Romanna do absolutely nothing to change this. Passing through as they do "on little cat feet" like the fog in the poem by Carl Sanburg. The Count Grendel, as the name would imply, is a Wrong 'un, and it comes through even stronger in David Fisher's clever and exciting little novelization. The second of two recently released and botyh have proved to be a hugely enjoyable addition to the Doctor Who library. It even ends with a golden age of Hollywood sword fight between The Count and The Doctor, playing out across the villan's castle lair. Yes, very enjoyable with cheeky and unexpected liberties taken with the expanded text which add to the fun.
