Ian Marter (1944–1986)

The author of this novelisation is no ordinary author; it's the Target debut of Ian Marter, who played Harry Sullivan on screen and would go on to write ten Doctor Who books for Target in total, more than anyone other than Dicks. (Though, of course, Marter is a very, very distant second. I don't have any of Marter's other novelisations, but two decades ago I did read Harry Sullivan's War.)

Almost certainly because of this, we get a strong sense of Harry here, much more than we saw in the show more earlier The Loch Ness Monster (1976) or The Genesis of the Daleks (1976), where Harry often felt like an extra body in the room. Here, he is usually the viewpoint character for the strange discoveries on the Terra Nova (what Marter's book dubs the tv serial's "Space Station Nerva"), and while sometimes flabbergasted, he also occasionally contributes good ideas to the proceedings. I particularly liked a segment (added by Marter) where, while Sarah Jane is crawling through the space station ducts with the power cable, he tugs out an encouraging-but-patronizing message on it in Morse!

Equally, though, Marter has a good command of Tom Baker's Doctor in his flippant but foreboding mood, continuing the improvement we've seen in this area since The Pyramids of Mars (1976). It makes sense—standing alongside Tom Baker for a year's worth of recordings would probably give you a pretty good sense of the way he plays the Doctor!

The weak spot here is thus probably Sarah; Marter uses the Doctor and Harry as his main focalizing characters (sometimes switching which one within a paragraph, which is a bit jarring to a modern reader used to these things being more clearly demarcated), and tends only to use Sarah when there's no other option. Though as someone else pointed out to me, Sarah often has little to do in the actual stories on screen; it's only because of Lis Sladen's performance that she comes across as a strong character, Lis being a gifted actor who could do a lot with a little!

I don't know anything about Marter as a person, but based on this, I wonder if he read science fiction growing up; I feel like this book demonstrates an affinity for sf lingo and concepts you don't quite see in Terrance Dicks, whose interests seem elsewhere (in the adventure and the action and the history). I couldn't tell you why exactly, but in the book's somewhat moody, somewhat elliptical tone, it made me think of Fritz Leiber's sf from the 1950s and '60s, like The Big Time and The Wanderer; Marter is certainly the right age to have read Leiber growing up. Anyway, I sometimes found transitions confusing, but otherwise this is a solid piece of atmospheric sf; like some of the first Doctor books I read for my previous project, I think you could (Doctor and company aside) imagine this standing alone as a novel in a way that's not quite true of a Terrance Dicks effort. show less

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Marter may well have been tempted to write this from the viewpoint of Harry Sullivan; if so, I think he was wise to restrain himself.

He both adds and subtracts from the TV show here. He adds some simply superb descriptive passages which one really regrets were not realised on-screen. Harry gets almost an entire chapter to himself exploring the Sontaran spaceship, a passage completely absent from the TV story; and the nightmares inflicted on both Sarah show more and Harry by the Sontaran experimenter are graphically described as is the fight between the Sontaran and the Doctor.

Basically, if your attention is suddenly held by the prose in one of Marter's novelisations, it's a fair bet that it's something he added to the original story. Doctor Who and the Sontaran Experiment makes a below-average DW story into a well-above-average DW novel. show less

Instead of going off on holiday, the Doctor has been roped into carrying out an urgent mission: recover the six segments of the Key to Time and keep them out of the hands of the Black Guardian. He’s given a device to help him locate each segment, and an assistant to help him with the mission: a Time Lady named Romanadvoratrelundar, whom the Doctor immediately christens “Romana”. The first segment is on the planet Ribos, which is rife with monsters, con men and spooky catacombs.

I show more wasn’t crazy about this Doctor Who story, to be honest. As much as I like having a story arc that spans multiple episodes or books, the Key to Time feels a bit forced as a framework. (I had similar restlessness with The Pirate Planet.) The characters struck me as being over-the-top in their dialogue, especially the Graff Vynda Ka, and I had a hair trigger for adjectives and adverbs. Part of that could be chalked up to my mood, part perhaps to having seen the TV story and remembering the slow pace of that. But I did like K9, as always, and Romana acquitted herself very well.

Overall, I wouldn’t consider this a must-have for a Doctor Who fan—more if you’re determined to complete your collection. (That’s the main reason I’m still hanging onto this one.) show less

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Marter may well have been tempted to write this from the viewpoint of Harry Sullivan; if so, I think he was wise to restrain himself. He both adds and subtracts from the TV show here. He subtracts, somewhat to my surprise, most of the humorous lines of dialogue - specifically the Doctor's line "Well, my doctorate is purely honorary, and Harry here is only qualified to work on sailors." It is of course a joke against Harry (a naval doctor, but one who show more appears rather a twit at times), but I don't think that is the reason; perhaps Marter just felt the line didn't work as well on the page as it does on the screen, as he also drops the banter between Rogin and Lycett just after they are woken up.

He adds, however, some simply superb descriptive passages which one really regrets were not realised on-screen. Sometimes it's just little things, like the Doctor opening a door on the space station by thinking at it. There's also Sarah's journey through the ventilation duct, through the mass of Wirrrn (another thing added by Marter is an extra "r" in the name of the monster). He also adds graphical nastiness and violence. Noah's head explodes, revealing the Wirrrn within. Rogin's body is "burnt to a colourless crystal".

Basically, if your attention is suddenly held by the prose in one of Marter's novelisations, it's a fair bet that it's something he added to the original story. Doctor Who and the Ark in Space is a really good read. show less