newt5996
Chancellery Guard
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Post by newt5996 on Feb 1, 2018 4:51:15 GMT
I was reading this particular novelization and made a note of how different it was to the television series as a whole. Yes there are the differences of everyone meeting on Barnes Common and Suzann English, but all of the characters are not nearly as recognizable. Ian is an brat, Barbara is pretty meek and the Doctor is worse than his An Unearthly Child self. I find it interesting as it’s only really present in this particular novelization and I want to know why? Was David Whitaker going off story notes or the script? Was it done in editing?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 1, 2018 7:00:56 GMT
It's a funny old oddity. Particularly given how close the characterisations of the Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Vicki are to their television counterparts in The Crusaders.
I suspect that the initial changes followed the same preconceptions that The Doomsday Weapon later did; i.e. that Jo needed another introduction just prior to Uxarius because there was no guarantee of Terror of the Autons being adapted to print. I can't say anything production-wise (other than The Reign of Terror had only just finished as this book was published), but looking at the characters from their nascency it makes sense. They've yet to develop into the characters we know yet. A lot of Ian's frustration from "An Unearthly Child" is transferred to Doctor Who and the Daleks in full. He's not given any time to process events before Skaro and his adjustment to this new lifestyle occurs right in the midst of this book. The same is true of the Doctor. He's, well... very self-serving and pragmatic almost to the point of blind maliciousness. Almost.
Another big aspect is the shift in the group's dynamic. Ian and Barbara are strangers to one another in this story. While in the television series, he could take comfort and confide in her as a friend, he's very much on his own here. With Miss Wright being Susan's personal tutor, it's not him and Barbara separated from the Doctor and Susan, but the three of them with him as the ultimate outsider. It's over the course of the novella that they all grow to understand one another and follow the same motions that would have otherwise been done in An Unearthly Child. The Novel!Doctor here does what the TV!Doctor didn't do until Barbara forced it out of him in The Edge of Destruction, he admits to Ian and Ganatus that his lie with the fluid link was a bad move on his part.
At the end, when the two schoolteachers decide to remain aboard, we're essentially back to where we started with the group's dynamic circa Marco Polo. You could slot in that novelisation straight after as the second ever Doctor Who story and be none the wiser.
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Post by dannybl on Feb 1, 2018 14:40:39 GMT
Before The First Doctor Adventures were made, Nick Briggs said in a podcast he hopesd to adapt Exciting Adventure with the AAISAT casrt.
I hope it still happens, it's different enough to the TV story (and the film)
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Post by J.A. Prentice on Feb 1, 2018 20:16:58 GMT
I actually think it's stronger than either An Unearthly Child or The Daleks. It blends elements of both stories, adds to the characterization, and has lots of interesting elements like the glass Daleks that weren't in the TV story. Barbara is perhaps the one aspect that's stronger in the TV version. Overall, though, I feel like it's a better "second draft"/"director's cut" version of a first Doctor Who story that really builds on what worked and what didn't in the actual episodes.
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Post by doomlord on Feb 2, 2018 18:27:37 GMT
I adore the beginning of the book with the the dark, the fog, the crashed lorry, the leaking petrol and the matches, the footsteps of the approaching Doctor...
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Post by Deleted on Feb 3, 2018 3:26:19 GMT
I just decided to pick it up again and reread it. The first reveal of the TARDIS is terrific. I'd forgotten how much it draws you in little-by-little with Ian's disorientation. Then, we get into the console room and there's this genuine sense of weightlessness, timelessness, that something has changed since the street. The abduction isn't a crack of thunder like on television, but a slow, creeping horror as the two of them realise what's happened. It's nice that the Doctor tries to smooth over Ian and Barbara's initial culture shock once they get to Skaro. He doesn't like being right about his life being fact rather than fiction, but they're stuck with one another now, so it's important they all make the most of it.
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