by Marter, Ian
Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Authors
Also by BBC Books
Title Page
Introduction by Steven Moffat
The Changing Face of Doctor Who
Prologue: The Intruder
1. The Second Invasion
2. Sarah Vanishes
3. Sabotage!
4. A Fatal Wound
5. The Wirrrn
6. Time Running out
7. A Tight Squeeze
8. A New Beginning
Between the Lines
Copyright
About the Book
The survivors of a devastated future Earth lie in suspended animation on a great satellite. When Earth is safe again, they will awaken. But when the Doctor, Sarah and Harry arrive on the Terra Nova, they find the systems have failed and the humans never woke.
The Wirrrn Queen has infiltrated the satellite, and laid her eggs inside one of the sleepers. As the first of the humans awake, they face an attack by the emerging Wirrrn.
But not everyone is what they seem, and the only way the Doctor can discover the truth is by joining with the dead mind of the Wirrrn Queen. The price of failure is the Doctor’s death, and the end of humanity.
This novel is based on a Doctor Who story which was originally broadcast from 25 January to 15 February 1975.
Featuring the Fourth Doctor as played by Tom Baker, and his companions Sarah Jane Smith and Harry Sullivan.
About the Authors
Ian Marter
Born in Coventry in 1944, Ian Marter is best remembered by Doctor Who fans as the actor who played the Fourth Doctor’s companion Harry Sullivan. In fact, his first role in Doctor Who came a couple of years earlier when he played the character of Andrews in ‘Carnival of Monsters’, and he had previously been considered for the role of UNIT’s Captain Yates.
Marter worked with his friend Tom Baker on ideas for a possible Doctor Who film, and together they developed a script. Though the film was never made, Marter continued to write – sometimes under the pseudonym Ian Don – and novelised nine Doctor Who adventures for Target books. He also novelised several films, and wrote the original novel Harry Sullivan’s War about the adventures of Harry Sullivan after he parted company with the Doctor.
Ian Marter died in 1986.
Robert Holmes
Robert Holmes Robert Holmes served with distinction in the army and also in the police before becoming a journalist. He also started to write for television series, including Emergency Ward 10.
After rewriting his proposed Doctor Who story ‘The Space Trap’ as ‘The Krotons’, Holmes went on to become one of the programme’s most prolific writers. He took over as Script Editor of Doctor Who in 1974, working mainly with producer Philip Hinchcliffe during one of the programme’s most successful periods at the start of the Fourth Doctor’s era. During this time he extensively revised or reworked many of the scripts for the programme and wrote ‘Pyramids of Mars’ under the pseudonym Stephen Harris.
Holmes wrote the introductory stories for both the Third Doctor (‘Spearhead from Space’) and the Master (‘Terror of the Autons’). Many of his scripts are considered amongst the absolute best ever in Doctor Who – including ‘The Talons of Weng-Chiang’ and the Fifth Doctor’s final story, ‘The Caves of Androzani’. In ‘The Deadly Assassin’, Holmes established a background and society for the Time Lords that has endured to this day.
Robert Holmes wrote for many other series including Doomwatch, Spy Trap, Dixon of Dock Green, Blake’s 7 and many others. He also adapted David Wiltshire’s book Child of the Vodyanoi for television, retitling it The Nightmare Man.
Robert Holmes died in 1986, while working on the final episodes of the Doctor Who story ‘The Trial of a Time Lord’.
Also by BBC Books
DOCTOR WHO AND THE DALEKS
David Whitaker
DOCTOR WHO AND THE CRUSADERS
David Whitaker
DOCTOR WHO AND THE CYBERMEN
Gerry Davis
DOCTOR WHO AND THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMEN
Terrance Dicks
DOCTOR WHO AND THE AUTON INVASION
Terrance Dicks
DOCTOR WHO AND THE CAVE MONSTERS
Malcolm Hulke
DOCTOR WHO AND THE TENTH PLANET
Gerry Davis
DOCTOR WHO AND THE ICE WARRIORS
Brian Hayles
DOCTOR WHO AND THE DAY OF THE DALEKS
Terrance Dicks
DOCTOR WHO – THE THREE DOCTORS
Terrance Dicks
DOCTOR WHO AND THE LOCH NESS MONSTER
Terrance Dicks
INTRODUCTION
BY
Steven Moffat
I was trying to remain calm, but it was a lost cause. My friend had just made a casual remark – he’d just said, ‘The Ark in Space is out.’
I knew by this, he meant the novelisation was now available, and that he himself now actually owned said novelisation. This was one of my all-time favourite Doctor Who serials, and I’d waited years for it to come out in book form. And here was my friend, just casually mentioning that at long last it was waiting in a shop for me.
Being a bigger Doctor Who fan than anyone else ever (sorry, you lot, you can all just get in line), my heart was now banging in my chest. In fact, I was so excited I skipped straight to Important Question 3.
‘Who’s written it?’ I asked.
The answer, to say the least, surprised me…
Back in the day, back when the world was young, Doctor Who books weren’t just written; no, it was nothing so simple. Doctor Who books were PREPARED. No, really, go back, have a look at those early editions. There would be a page near the front with a list of other Doctor Who books currently available, followed by – much more excitingly – another list of books ‘in preparation’.
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of those words, but whatever was going on with making new Doctor Who books, whatever cauldrons or vats they were bubbling away in, it was definitely more interesting than just boring old writing. They were being PREPARED. They were in that mysterious, exciting, deep-blue-before-the-dawn condition of PREPARATION.
Whatever that was.
And then of course there were the titles. I remember one in particular, which caused great consternation in the playground at Camphill High School somewhere back in the 1970s – Doctor Who Meets the Loch Ness Monster.
Eh, sorry, what? Meets?? What happened to the AND?? What happened to Doctor Who AND the Loch Ness Monster?? Doctor Who doesn’t MEET monsters, he ANDs them, and that’s a fact!
Of course, when the book was published the AND was back in place – possibly because of the whirlwind of anxiety emitting from a bunch of school kids in the West of Scotland – but please do note that none of us questioned, for a moment, that the book had a different title from the serial it was based on (‘Terror of the Zygons’) because that’s just the way they rolled back then. In those days, Silurians became Cave Monsters, space colonies became doomsday weapons, and frankly anything, anything that wasn’t quite exciting enough got a Target makeover.
Ah, those days. And all those books in preparation. When I learned the title of an upcoming Doctor Who book, I had four questions, and here they are, in ascending order of importance:
1. What would be featured on the cover?
Let’s be clear: Doctor Who covers were masterpieces. Frequently, the most thrilling visualisation of a Doctor Who story wouldn’t be on the telly, it would be on the front cover of the book that came after. How I’d stare at those covers.
2. Would the Doctor’s face be on the cover?
I had strong views on this. I hated i
t when the Doctor’s face wasn’t there, looking urgent and grave, while surrounded by floating monsters and realistic explosions. As time went on, there was clearly an instruction from above that only the current Doctor could be featured on the cover, and how I grieved. Just wasn’t the same!
3. Who was going to write it?
4. What colour would the spine be?
OK, let’s skip back to 3, because 4, quite frankly, is a human tragedy. The answer to 3 was always this – Terrance Dicks or Not Terrance Dicks. Most of the books, it seemed, were written by the mighty Terrance, and in the days before DVD, even before video, his books were the exact equivalent. They were Doctor Who TV serials you could keep on your shelf. Utterly faithful, not just to the detail of the narrative and dialogue, but to the feel and the atmosphere and even the pace. In precise, zingy prose, he’d turn a projector on in your head and you’d be watching the show again. And no one (except perhaps Paul Cornell, in later years) could sum up a Doctor so quickly and so perfectly as Terrance. In that distant era when you couldn’t just watch a particular television show any time you felt like it, Terrance was the next best thing.
Now sometimes, with the no-nonsense efficiency of a truly brilliant script editor, he’d sort the plot out a bit, and tidy away a few loose ends, and even – if he was writing a Hartnell book – shove the Doctor to the front of the story, because he was getting bored of the supporting cast hogging all the big moments. But for all that, what you got with Terrance, was the TV show in permanent, take-home-and-keep form.
Now and then, of course, the original writer would want a go at their own work, and that was exciting too. Usually because it was different, surprising, and maybe just a little more enthusiastic – but quite often, if I’m honest, it was a tiny bit disappointing too. Because however clever and well written they were, there were times it didn’t feel quite like Doctor Who. Not the way Uncle Terrance could nail it to the page.
So my general rule was this: if I’d loved the original story, I wanted Terrance in charge of the book – but, perversely, if it was a story I hadn’t liked, I was happy for the original perpetrator of my disappointment to have another go.
Which brings us back to ‘The Ark in Space’. To this day, it is one of my favourite stories. In fact, I think it’s perfect. This is the paradigm Doctor Who script! It’s possibly the only story you can imagine with any of the various regular casts. You could hand this one to Hartnell, Ian and Barbara, and it would work perfectly. Equally, it could be Matt Smith, Amy and Rory. Or David Tennant, Rose and Mickey. Think about it – it works for all of them.
It was written, of course, by the peerless Robert Holmes – and it was a fact (then, at least) that he never wrote his own novelisations. And since I knew who handled the books when the original writer wasn’t interested, I was pretty confident, all those years ago, when I asked who had written The Ark in Space that the answer would be…
‘Ian Marter.’
You could hear comedy tyres screeching in my brain.
… What? Sorry, no, what?? What, sorry, no, what, sorry, what, what??
‘No,’ I replied.
‘Yeah, it is, it’s Ian Marter.’
‘No,’ I elaborated.
‘It’s Ian Marter, seriously. I’ve got the book at home.’
‘No,’ I explained in greater detail.
‘It’s Ian Marter.’
‘Ian Marter,’ I pointed out to the poor fool, ‘was Harry. He played Harry Sullivan in a number of stories, including “The Ark in Space”. He didn’t write the book of it.’
‘Yes, he did,’ said my friend.
Yes, he did, said the cover of book, a few hours later, as I stared at it in the queue for the till. Magically, impossibly, an actor from the show, had written the book of it. Surely now anything was possible? I’d like to say that this was the exact moment I decided, one day, to become the Doctor Who showrunner. But actually I just decided to go straight home and read the book. Because the big question was this – an actor writing a book? Could it be any good?
Yes, in fact. Actually it was brilliant. Now let’s be clear, it wasn’t the Terrance version. It wasn’t a note-perfect recreation of that brilliant serial. On telly, ‘The Ark in Space’ had been a crisp, cold thing, all whites and blues and dark scuttling insects. There were brave, posh people in crisp uniforms, boldly going where stiff upper lips had never gone before. But when Dr Sullivan got hold of the story, suddenly it went visceral. All the hinted-at horror was leaping and sliming and glooping off the page. There was crackling and oozing, and a lot of the kind of body horror you can’t really achieve with bubble wrap. If the TV version had been all gleaming and icy, this was in your face and bursting with colour. And Tom Baker’s Doctor – how strange! He was perfectly captured, of course, but somehow it felt like the boggle-eye, hair-brained, even-longer-scarf version of his later years rather than the gloomy, doomy original. Yes, how strange – but how funny and wonderful.
I loved it. Simply loved it. I read the crackling, oozing bits over and over again. For a while, I dared to declare it was the best Doctor Who book ever.
Is it though? Is it really? Who knows, there’s a lot of them. But if you haven’t read this book, and you think you know this story, brace yourself for a whole new version. I like to think this one isn’t just a novelisation – it’s the Hammer Horror remake. In Eastman colour.
OK, that’s enough warm-up, off you go and read. See if you agree with a word I say.
Oh, but before you go, the answer is, of course, yellow. When I finally made it to the shop to buy Ian Marter’s debut novel, the colour of the spine was yellow.
Sorry, I just really needed to tell you that.
PS: You may think you have found some factual and historical errors in this introduction, but you are quite mistaken. Time has been rewritten.
The Changing Face of Doctor Who
The Fourth Doctor
This Doctor Who novel features the fourth incarnation of the Doctor. In this incarnation, the Doctor seemed more alien than ever. He was a constant surprise to his enemies and to his companions.
Instantly recognisable in floppy hat and long scarf, the Doctor became less authoritarian and aristocratic than his predecessor. This Doctor was a rebel as well as a hero. He was Renaissance Man made real – a Jack of all trades and master of all of them. And, for all his alien mutability and Olympian detachment, the Fourth Doctor could be the most ‘human’ of Doctors.
But, as with the Second Doctor, there was an air of superficiality to much of his banter and playacting. It is in the quieter, deeper moments that we glimpse the darker and more ‘genuine’ Doctor. A Doctor who is conscious always that he is essentially homeless, and that he ‘walks in eternity’…
Sarah Jane Smith
Sarah Jane Smith is an investigative journalist. She first met the Third Doctor while working ‘under cover’, and was soon caught up in his adventures – whisked off back to the middle ages in the TARDIS to battle a stranded Sontaran.
It is Sarah’s intelligence, determination, loyalty and conviction that the Doctor comes to value and admire. In his fourth incarnation, he describes her not only as his friend – a rare admission for the Doctor – but as his best friend. When they are forced to part company as the Doctor is summoned back to Gallifrey, both are saddened by Sarah’s departure.
As we now know, this was not the last time they would meet. Intelligent and determined, Sarah never misses the opportunity for a good story and is not afraid to take risks. Of all the Doctor’s companions, Sarah Jane Smith is the one whose exploits and adventures after she left the Doctor have continued to fascinate, enthral, and excite us all.
Harry Sullivan
Seconded from the Royal Navy to become UNIT’s Medical Officer, Surgeon Lieutenant Harry Sullivan is called in to care for the Doctor after he regenerates into his fourth incarnation. The task is made more difficult as Harry does not appear to be aware of the Doctor’s alien physiognomy and is startled to discove
r he has two heartbeats.
But in the process of keeping a professional eye on the newly regenerated Doctor, Harry soon comes to appreciate his scientific genius, and the Doctor comes to see Harry as a friend. He even invites Harry to join himself and Sarah for a trip in the TARDIS. For Harry, it’s a bizarre but life-changing experience.
Despite his bravado and enthusiasm, Harry can also be inept and naive. At heart, whatever his aspirations, Harry is not really an adventurer. He hints that given the chance he would like to retire to become a General Practitioner in the country. Certainly, at his first opportunity Harry decides to stay behind on Earth and let the Doctor and Sarah travel on in the TARDIS without him…
Prologue
The Intruder
Out among the remotest planets, in faithful orbit through the Solar System, the great Satellite revolved slowly in the glimmer of a billion distant suns, reflecting their faint light from its cold and silent surfaces. All within remained utterly quiet and still, but primed and ready: ready for the eventual moment of awakening. Deep in its innermost structure an atomic clock oscillated, waiting for the moment when it would cause a tiny electric current to flow, activating circuits which branched throughout the vast Satellite, bringing it to life once more out in the wilderness of Space.
Patiently it waited. Then suddenly, after many centuries, something stirred within it: something alien, that was not part of its intricate programming. Panels began to slide smoothly open. Faintest shadows ran over the gleaming walls. The deserted tunnels and chambers, forming the ‘rim’, the ‘spokes’ and the ‘hub’ of the enormous wheel, which was the Satellite, began to echo with rustles, hoarse squeaks and whistlings. Cautiously feeling its way into one of the spherical control chambers – positioned like gigantic pods along the ‘spoke’ sections – there crawled an intruder. It dragged its massive leathery body along on angular tentacle-legs, which bristled with sharp hairs and scratched shrilly against the metallic walls. Swinging its domed head slowly from side to side, it pierced the half-light with giant, globular eyes. At the end of its long, scorpion tail there glinted a menacing claw which clattered in the creature’s wake.
