Who Reviews Doctor Who and the Sea-Devils by DJ Forrest

Written by Malcolm Hulke

Published in 1974

Target Books

Doctor Who and the Sea Devils took me back to my childhood in more ways than one. I vaguely remembered the episode, but it was the book that brought me back to summer holidays and book shops on the beach, with novels ‘read in a day’ with black and white illustrations tucked into a few chapters here and there. So, for that reason alone, I enjoyed leafing through the book seeking out the black and white sketches of the Doctor and the Master. However, I did often chuckle at the Venusian Karate Chops, which even now writing it up makes me laugh out loud.

OK, it was a long time ago and to all intents and purposes, writing the moves of defence by the Master and indeed the Doctor does lead to some tongue in cheek moments. It also seems that the Master lost much of his early ‘look into my eyes’ hypnotic approach, opting for a much more up to date and believable hypnosis by using satellites and phone signals, (Sound of Drums, Last of the Time Lords) and the four knocks, which played into our psyche for ever more afterwards.

Back in the Sea Devils story, the ‘look into my eyes’ approach sucked in a lot of soldiers to do The Master’s bidding, but it took Trenchard, who wasn’t hypnotised, a while longer to realise he’d been duped by the Master, and too late to prevent a take over by the Sea Devils in the prison.

The Sea Devils seemed far clumsier than the Silurians if this is who they were cousins of. You could understand their annoyance at the way Man dominates the Earth and abuses all that he touches but the way they retaliated seemed suicidal. As much as their approach to Man sending in ships and sinking them all to protect the seas; when they came up onto the shore, they seemed like ‘fish out of water’ and had very little protection, and it wasn’t going to take much to ‘wipe them out’.

In the earlier stories it seemed that the Doctor also adopted the ‘no second chances’ approach. If they weren’t going to see reason, then destroying a few enemy aliens along the way seemed a justifiable reason. Obviously, the Doctor wasn’t going to destroy based on killing for nothing, it would all be justified.

I did enjoy this story and it was a quick read novel in much the same way as The Tenth Planet currently is. Malcolm Hulke keeps the momentum going throughout.

Who Reviews Doctor Who and the Green Death by DJ Forrest

Written by Malcolm Hulke

First published 1975

When I was a kid, Jon Pertwee had been my Doctor, and Jo Grant his companion. He was rarely seen with the TARDIS. He used a sonic screwdriver a few times, and he drove around in a yellow car called Bessie. So with this all ingrained in my memory, it was no surprise that when I selected The Green Death for my lunch time read at work, I could picture the story well from the television series.

The story itself plays out like any other story. You have the alien creature mutated from the regular toxic chemical waste pumped into a disused coal mine. You have the protagonists, those who live a simple life of no meat and Ban the Bomb and living off the land – fungus all the way! You’ve got UNIT and the Brig, the Doctor and Jo, then you have the antagonists, Panorama Chemicals, a local refinery with a man – Dr Stevens, who takes his orders from the Boss upstairs.

I only remember the tail end of this story on the television. It had been the time when Jo Grant had followed Professor Clifford Jones to the church, then sped off to the Amazon rainforest with him, leaving the Doctor to head off into the blue box and travel alone, tearfully!

When I began reading the story, I had a feeling I’d seen a familiar story in the NuWho series, with Christopher Eccleston. It involved Simon Pegg as the Editor and the Mighty Jagrafess screaming the orders from the ceiling. This has a familiar feel. All the staff are brainwashed. Must obey the BOSS. The boss being a megalomaniac computer keen on taking over the world and creating a new world order. Where have we heard that before???

Of course, as with many megalomaniacs, things fail to go completely in their direction and the good old Time Lord with his hippy friends seize the day.

One of the irksome things about this book, and if I’m honest, any book that tells the story of the television serial is, that it’s far from a story, more a commentary of the events.

I understand that there are different styles of writing, and it would be difficult I would imagine to capture the story exactly as a storyteller would, but perhaps if that were the case, perhaps, not telling the story in this way would have been better. (IMO).

One of the other differences that I’ve noticed in the old Classic novels are the illustrations, which really help the story along, even though to be fair, you’ve a pretty fair idea of what the creatures look like from the description in the story. What I enjoy about the illustrations is the detail, and how they always remind me of the old Enid Blyton drawings in the Famous Five novels. They’re dated if anything, but that’s the true nostalgic feel of the novel.

It’s a fairly short story when it’s all said and done. It took me the length of a week to read it – half an hour lunchbreak for 5 days. If you’re a fan of Target Novels you might feel differently to me about how the story is written. I’m a NuWho fan, for me the journey was interesting, in that, the Doctor didn’t rely too much on the sonic screwdriver but used the little grey matter and he wasn’t using the TARDIS as much. I’m unsure where Bessie came from though. I’m sure that she wasn’t part of the transport system on Gallifrey! But, as the TARDIS is bigger on the inside, I guess she came with the ship.