John Lucarotti (1926–1994)

This is a novelization of one of the First Doctor’s entirely missing serials (at least at the time of this review). It’s one of the “historical” stories, with the Doctor, Susan, Ian, and Barbara. The crew are stranded on the roof of the world when Marco Polo comes upon them and rescues them—but for a price: he wants to give the TARDIS to Kublai Khan as a gift because a “flying caravan” will make him the most powerful ruler in the world. Naturally the Doctor and crew don’t want that. And meanwhile, the war lord Tegana is also interested in keeping the TARDIS for himself. From what I’ve read online, the novelization differs in some ways from the original story, most notably in the ending, but I liked the book ending better. Overall this is a good retelling.… (more)

http://nhw.livejournal.com/1015730.html?#cutid1

Doctor Who - Marco Polo is certainly the best of John Lucarotti's three Who books (the other two being Doctor Who - The Aztecs and Doctor Who - The Massacre). Possibly the need to be fairly concise - cutting down from a seven episode story, rather than writing up from four - made a difference. It's a cracking good story anyway, and the fact that we have only sound rather than video records of it makes Lucarotti's presentation all the more valuable. He has a rather peculiar fascination with detailing the various different Chinese prawn dishes that the Tardis crew consume en route, but this of course just adds to the depth of the setting. Really rather a good one.… (more)

http://nhw.livejournal.com/871029.html

I was disappointed by Lucarotti's novelisation of The Massacre, which stuck much more closely to his original script than the show as broadcast. Here again he has added bits and pieces which presumably were in his original concept, and I was again disappointed, but for a different reason: the narration is strangely flat, and you really miss the performances of the actors breathing life into Lucarotti's lines back in 1964. One cannot help but feel that the production team on the whole did Lucarotti a favour by editing his material. Also he has a really annoying habit of mixing indirect speech with direct speech, which reads like a desperate attempt to make a novel out of a TV script.… (more)