Ian Briggs (1) (1958–)

The book form of one one the the classic Who era’s best adventure is equally great. We have more detailed background of the relationship of the camp commander and the scientist and of the priest who is much younger than in the tv version. Such a shame that the Cartmel Masterplan about the origin of the Doctor remained only a plan....

This is the novelization of one of the Seventh Doctor adventures and it is a complex story with an overtone of horror and some wonderful hints at how Ace’s storyline might have gone if the series had not been cancelled. One of the things that I love about the Target novelizations is that most of them are done by the writers of the scripts and they were allowed to elaborate on their scripts. Gaps are filled in, explanations are given that were hard to do in a TV script, and the story is show more allowed to really flow into what the author intended which is often a much richer, more complete story that we see on the screen. This is one of my favourite Seventh Doctor stories, although it is also one of the most disturbing, involving ancient evil, code breaking and espionage set in England in 1943. It helps to have a familiarity with the Doctor and Ace, but it is not one where you need to have watched the episode in order to understand the story or see it in your head. For me, it added depth to a story that was sometimes confusing and I thoroughly enjoyed it. show less

http://nhw.livejournal.com/1081346.html#cutid3

Ian Briggs does a masterful job with The Curse of Fenric, perhaps the most adult of any of the Who novelisations (in the sense of talking about sex). The most striking change from the TV original is that the vicar, Mr Wainwright, is explictly young (rather than Nicholas Parsons). Apart from that, the whole narrative feels very soundly rooted both in itself and in Who - particularly with Ace's introduction in Dragonfire (which of course Briggs show more also wrote). For once, the Doctor's-hidden-past motif actually seems to make sense rather than feeling like a bolted-on idea (the only other story that achieves this is The Face of Evil). An excellent read.

Also a comfortable pass for the Bechdel test, what with Phyllis, Jean and their landlady on the one hand, and Katharine, Audrey and the Wrens on the other, with Ace wandering between them.

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/the-curse-of-fenric-by-una-mccormack-and-ian-bri...

Rereading the novelisation, the same points struck me again; it’s a surprisingly adult book for the range, with the London girls and Ace bantering about sex. And given the timings, it does make more sense for the vicar to be a young man, rather than 66-year-old Nicholas Parsons. There are a couple of good interludes as well, one of which appears to have a drown-up Ace marrying a Russian aristocrat ancestor of Sorin’s. It’s one of the best of the 160+ novelisations. show less

An enjoyable, easy read. However, a lot darker than I expected.