Bob Baker (4) (1939–2021)

Over the years, Terrance Dicks has come in for a lot of flak over his simple, workmanlike novelizations of various Doctor Who serials in the 1970s and '80s, often produced at the rate of about one a month. What a book like Sky shows up is that Dicks really did have consummate skill at putting actual sentences together, even if they only served as a descriptive version of what happened on the television screen, because Bob Baker does not. In fact, I'm pretty sure we have our answer as to why show more Baker never novelized any of his Whos in the first place.

Sky has been released as the first brand-new novelization in a line of republished works, all brought together in matching formats and cover art by Fantom Publishing. The others in the series - Children of the Stones, Raven, and The Moon Stallion - were all published more than thirty years ago, all based on children's telefantasy series by the same writers. Sky does seem a bit of an omission from that original line-up, so it makes sense to include it here, especially as one of its two creators is still very much a working writer. Unfortunately, Baker's prose reads like it was written on the back of a napkin. Far from providing detail or nuance to the ethereal and occasionally confusing plot of Sky, Baker instead reduces it to the most mundane series of actions stringing together transcribed dialogue, usually employing ellipses, for some reason. A sentence will end like this... And then like this... And then another like...this... It's very, very hard to read, ruining anything that resembles pace.

I really can't find anything good to say about the book other than the nifty cover art. I can only assume Fantom commissioned the book and then were unable, or unwilling, to edit the result Baker provided, because work of this minimal quality should never have been published in the first place (and certainly not at the premium price point). I'll stick to The Moon Stallion, thanks; writer and editor alike clearly put some time and effort into that one. show less

A passenger spaceship carrying a drug smuggler materializes on top of another ship.

Occasional great dialog and some clever ideas keep it watchable. The script is a mess, but it's a silly mess that might have made for a fun serial. It's execution, though, is bad at best.

Concept: C
Story: C
Characters: C
Dialog: B
Pacing: C
Cinematography: D
Special effects/design: D
Acting: C
Music: D

Enjoyment: C

GPA: 1.8/4

3

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/k9-megabytes-by-bob-baker/

A modest volume of four short stories featuring K9 Mark 1, subsequent to his Australian adventures. For two of the stories Baker revives other Whoniverse creations, namely Axos and Drax, and the Axos story in particular is an interesting revisiting of the concept. Bt in the end there’s not so much to see here; K9 can never progress much as a character, so it’s really adventure-of-the-week stuff.