Written
by Terrance Dicks
Published
by W.H. Allen & Co. PLC
Target
Zone
The 49th novel
in the Doctor Who library, this, another by Terrance Dicks was a fascinating
story and this time with the Fourth Doctor and Romana. K-9 was limited to the
TARDIS for this journey, purely because he’d sink and all his circuitry would
fry. The Doctor and Romana are on the quest to find all the Keys to Time and
have located one on the swampy marshland – to be more precise, they have
located where it might be, but not what it might look like. That is revealed
towards the end of the story – but no skipping the pages because that just
ruins a jolly good read. I must stop saying jolly
it’s a word that conjures up church fetes and tombola stalls and lashings
of ginger beer and boys wearing tank tops and shorts and uttering spiffing good
show and all that.
I also need to remind
myself that Doctor Who is a children’s television programme and so I shouldn’t
really expect to find anything ultimately scary in any of the novels.
I’m reliving my childhood.
I’m remembering episodes of Doctor Who, with scenery unlike anything we see
today, and remembering the Fourth Doctor in all his jolly jaunts and the
language of the day, and the outfits, and the general way of how things were
back then. It’s jolly. Jolly good fun. Jolly scary!
The Fourth Doctor was how
we see our Doctors of today – the 10th and 11th
especially, and perhaps a little of the 12th, but most definitely 10th,
with the wide eyes and the beaming grins and the gung ho attitude.
When the methane based
catalysing protein refinery threatened to do another orbit shot, which would
seal the fate of all those on the ill fated refinery and those living in the
swamps, the Doctor worked his magic to save as many lives as he could, while
facing the prospect of losing his own life in the process.
It was a long time ago
when I first watched the Classic series and yet, scenes were coming alive in my
brain, and weirdly in the voice of Tom Baker!
Kroll is an oversized
creature of the deep who has come to the surface to feed, because someone woke
it up, and unfortunately for them, has an insatiable appetite for anything that
moves.
There are some fun
characters to be aware of in the story, thankfully there’s no idiot planning to
take over the world, but an idiot who has ploughed a lot of time and resources
into the refinery and doesn’t want the Sons of the Earth or the Swampies
ruining it for him by existing. Not quite the Master but someone who you
initially thought was a decent bloke turns out to be a complete nut job.
The green coloured natives
who live in the swamps worship the great Kroll, who none of them have seen for
hundreds of years because it sleeps beneath the lagoon, but who know that in
order to keep Kroll happy should it awaken, must feed it dryfoots – those from the refinery, or all will be lost.
So, there’s religious nuts
to contend with also. All in all though, it’s a fun read and the joy (not
jolly) thing about Target novels, is that you could, if you had time on your
hands, read a book in a day, or over two days as I did.
One rib tickling fact in
my copy of the story is that during one portion of the story, it looks as if
one of the Swampies might be a descendent from the Midlands. (someone forgot to
proofread the novel before publication).
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