Doctor Who does not get more High Church than this. The first of the many, many novelizations. Although this would have been considered more of a tie-in than a novelization.Twas the way of the word then, so to speak. One of the standout features on the very recent Doctor Who Season Two Bluray Set was an amazing documentary piece on the life of David Whitaker, the writer of An Exciting Adventure With The Dale's. David Whitaker was the first Doctor Who writer I became familiar with, being old enough to have found a copy of the Armada paperback, a few years before the Doctor Who novelizations really kicked in with Terrence Dicks which helped them become as familiar a bookshop mainstay as Agatha Christie or Zane Grey or Sven Hassel( Like I said, old enough.) Toby Haddoke investigates the life and times of a writer of legendary status in the Whoniverse. And what a great job he does of that investigation, narrating with precision, care and wit. An unexpectedly moving piece in a blurry set which had already proved itself an embarrassment of riches.
I had been gifted the boxset by my two chums Jim and Jamie at Christmas while Santa Claus had gifted me a copy of the new illustrated edition of Doctor Who and The Daleks. Which I jumped right back into, as I have reread it at different times in my life. I think I might also have jumbled up different interpretations, or is it iterations, from the original text to the television series or the Peter Cushing starring movie adaption. The passing years pays tricks, the lumpy organic sponge which is my brain gets jumbled up. My brain is a house with many rooms but sadly the doors to those rooms are hanging on broken hinges. The original I interior sketches I remember as moody pencil sketches with a scratchings that strikes me as almost meta by the standards of the day. I remember owning two of these books, another being an adaption of David Whittakers own scripts for Doctor Who And The Crusades. As a boy Wiliam Hartnell was a high church figure to me, the original who bestrode the alter of The Whoniverse. I actually still have those books somewhere in my Steptoe And Son set of a home.
Like the documentary The Illustrated edition of Doctor Who And The Daleks is a charmingly familiar step into another time and place. The artist Robert Hack takes us on a journey to the planet Skaro and brings an Armada style epic storytelling quality to the yarn. There are some page filling additions to the story as seen through the eyes of hijacked companion Ian Chesterton. As it is quite clear The Doctor abduct both him and Barbara Wright as neither e aptly volunteered to take this insane trip to a terrifying world populated by killer mutants in travel machines. Skara is an ashy petrified wilderness whose inhabitants also petrifying all who come into contact with them. Skaro will either poison you, eat you or most familiarlally exterminate you. Originally published at the height of Dalekmania in the UK it was considered a tie-in as opposed to the now familiar idea of a novelization. in a world where you generally only ever had one chance to view something upon point of transmission, before it drifted off on an endless journey through space. For so many of us this was generally the only way to re-experience a classic yarn. There would be differences off course, from a title change to different scenes that were never in the original transmission which served to flesh out the story in another format. These moments could prove a joy to diehard fans and pass relatively unnoticed by casual readers( And The enormous success of the Target novelizations would suggest a casualty in readership that is a little unlikely. So many readers would strongly imply the readers knew what they liked.)
This version began quite differently to the introductions of the companions in an Unearthly Child ( What a great title.) with a fog bound heath, a traffic accident and an unusually dressed man with a perpetually burning match stick. The bones of what we know are there but theres a multiversal quality to the yarn, familiar yet different. The character of the Doctor is somewhat changedas well. He is a tad more mysterious, even sinister but before too long he has his new crew dancing in the middle of his palm. As they look to their next adventure and beyond.
And that's a tale that's still being told.
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