The Mothership Always Terrance Dicks by Tony J Fyler

There have been at least handfuls of really top-notch writers on Doctor Who. There will be more in the future.

There have been at least several great script editors on Doctor Who. There will more in the future.

There will only ever be one Terrance Dicks.

Terrance Dicks knew the shape of episodic stories. He knew how to write a solid hero quest. And he quickly found a connection to the character of the Doctor himself. He was appointed as Assistant Script Editor on the show in 1968, and quickly found himself promoted to Script Editor, in time to handle (along with Malcolm Hulke) the behemoth ten-episode War Games script that was Patrick Troughton’s swan song in the role of the Doctor. Faced with stories falling out of the running and ten episodes to fill, Dicks and Hulke created a sprawling epic of paranoia, grand design, and a personalised villain to drive the huge plot forward. They also, together, settled an enormous question – who were the Doctor’s people? – by inventing the Time Lords.

Many script editors would have been content to have made such a monumental addition to a long-running show. Dicks went on into the Jon Pertwee era and found another partner in new series producer Barry Letts. Between them, they revived the fortunes of the show in its Earth-bound format (a decision of his predecessors, with which Dicks was never particularly happy), establishing the UNIT family, delivering three all-time favourite companions – Liz Shaw, Jo Grant and Sarah-Jane Smith - and overseeing one of the richest periods in the programme’s history for memorable monsters and alien races: the Autons and the Sontarans (both written into being by Robert Holmes), the Silurians and Sea Devils (both written into existence by Malcolm Hulke) all became firm fan favourites during his time on the programme, along with memorable scares like the giant maggots of The Green Death and actor John Pertwee’s favourite aliens, the proud and haughty Draconians. He was also the script editor who introduced the idea of an anniversary special which brought multiple Doctor-incarnations together (initially for the tenth anniversary, with The Three Doctors), and who, with Letts, developed the idea of giving the Doctor an arch-enemy, his ‘Moriarty’ figure – the Master.

By the time he left the show as script editor at the end of Jon Pertwee’s era, Terrance Dicks – and the writers whose scripts he worked on - had added hugely to the canon of Doctor Who. He would be called back several times in the years that followed to write specific stories, like the grim, atmospheric Horror of Fang Rock and a script for which he had to fight, the Hammer vampire homage, State of Decay, both for Tom Baker’s Doctor. He returned again to deliver the 20^th anniversary adventure, The Five Doctors, when a script from Robert Holmes proved impracticable. That was the career hallmark of Terrance Dicks – when things weren’t working, you called on Terrance, and you ended up with a workable, and usually a twinkling script.

While his legacy in terms of on-screen Doctor Who was huge, it’s perhaps as a novelist that Terrance Dicks most earned the veneration of Doctor Who fans around the world. In an era when there were no VHS releases of whole stories from Doctor Who’s past, he was the show’s Great Novelizer. When Doctor Who was a watch-it-on-transmission-or-miss-it-forever phenomenon, like most TV, Terrance Dicks became the gateway for a generation of children to stories they’d never seen, novelizing over sixty Doctor Who stories in the Target range, featuring the first six incarnations of the Doctor. He became known for his workmanlike, unflowery style, and yet he enriched his work with a gift for phrasing that was intensely evocative, coming up with the notion of the Tardis making a ‘wheezing, groaning’ sound when in flight, with the Doctor having a ‘young old’ face and ‘capacious’ pockets. It’s to him we owe the encapsulation of the fundamental nature of the Doctor – ‘Never cruel or cowardly’ - a line which subsequently made it into the Doctor’s self-assessment in the fiftieth anniversary multi-Doctor story written by Steven Moffat, The Day of the Doctor. In essence, Terrance Dicks imbued his Target books with the spirit of Doctor Who, and became a living Tardis for a generation of young fans, taking them to unknown times and places and giving them the only idea of some stories that they ever expected to have.

Many children who read Terrance Dicks’ Doctor Who work became avid readers because whatever else they did, they had to read the latest Terrance Dicks Doctor Who novelization. His output was prodigious and the quality of his work addictive. Many Terrance Dicks fans of course went on to be involved with the show in later years when it returned to the BBC.

When the Target range was bought by Virgin and the age of the New Adventures began, it was almost unthinkable that it would fly without at least some contribution from Terrance Dicks – he was key to the readership, and those readers trusted his storytelling gifts. He therefore wrote the second New Adventure novel, Timewyrm: Exodus, and followed it up with Blood Harvest and Shakedown – all of them adding the Seventh Doctor to his repertoire. He would add the Eighth too, writing The Eight Doctors in 1997 and Endgame in 2000. Terrance Dicks was by then a synonym for exciting Doctor Who novels, so between 1998 and 2005 he was commissioned to write five ‘past Doctor’ novels, including Players (1999) which was reissued for the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who as an example of the Sixth Doctor’s adventures. He also wrote two Doctor Who stage plays, worked with Big Finish on its Bernice Summerfield, Sarah-Jane Adventures and Companion Chronicle ranges, as well as translating his plays into the audio environment. He’s also credited, alongside Malcolm Hulke, with writing one of the first real books about the inside of a TV show – the production process, from commission to shooting and broadcast – The Making of Doctor Who (first edition 1972, updated and re-issued 1976). While his comfort zone was unmistakably in Classic Who, he ventured into New Who with a couple of releases in the Quick Reads range – Made Of Steel and Revenge of the Judoon, both starring the Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones.

His final work in the Doctor Who universe, a short story in Doctor Who: The Target Storybook, will be published posthumously in October 2019.

Terrance Dicks was by no means ‘only’ a Doctor Who writer, script editor and novelist – he had made a name for himself in the sixties by writing scripts for The Avengers, and even worked on the legend that was Crossroads, as well as Space:1999 and an unfortunately short-lived BBC space drama in the seventies entitled Moonbase 3. During the eighties, he was prolific in the BBC drama department, first working with, and then succeeding Barry Letts as Producer on the Sunday Classics range, including memorable productions like Dombey & Son, Jane Eyre, The Invisible Man, Beau Geste and David Copperfield. The versions overseen by Letts and Terrance Dicks are widely regarded as being the closest to the books ever filmed, and remain, over thirty years on, gripping television drama in their own right.

Terrance Dicks also found time between 1976 and 2003 to write 141 non-Doctor Who novels, many for a children’s or young adult audience, and several in clusters or series, including the Baker Street Irregulars books.

Terrance Dicks then had a long career in both television and writing, his reach extending to both children and adults, and his influence felt by generations of readers who became writers and who are passing on his gift of telling stories with wit, with pace, and with a spirit of pure adventure.

But it is inescapably his work on Doctor Who, both as writer, script editor and novelist, that will make Terrance Dicks a name to remember for generations to come. Always amiable with fans, always willing to share stories from his time on the show, and always both a workman and a conjuror in his novels, he was beloved for decades by generations of readers, to whom he opened up whole new worlds and adventures unseen or unremembered.

Travel well, Uncle Terrance. Never cruel or cowardly. Always fun and funny.

Always Terrance Dicks.

Who Reviews Target Zone: The Day of the Daleks by DJ Forrest

Written by Terrance Dicks

Published 1974

In the 22^nd Century the world has fallen into chaos. The Earth has been reduced to rubble after nuclear war, and the Daleks have breezed in to take over the planet for its valuable minerals, to create their time travelling machinery to time jump through every century so that Daleks rule supreme. With lumbering Ogrons to carry out their orders, there seems little hope for the human race…except for a small outcrop of rebels, living in the basement of random buildings desperate to undo the present state of affairs by eliminating the one man that put them there in the first place. A small faction of humans prepares to time jump to the 20^th century and Austerly House and assassinate a high-ranking diplomat – except they haven’t factored in the Doctor, waiting for them!

It’s interesting these days how much of the state of the world plays like a Doctor Who novel. I’m sure you’ve all experienced that as you turn the pages of any of the many stories out there and this is no different. In fact, Day of the Daleks reads pretty much how any world news story plays out on the television screen.

The Daleks are always cast as the enemy and let’s face it, you can’t parlay with a mind that is hell bent on destruction for its own reasons. There’s no bargaining with a Dalek. They may let you think that they’re in agreement with a plan. They may go along with it for a while, but as soon as you lower your defences, it’s extermination time, just as soon as the Dalek has what it needs.

Terrance Dicks’ novel keeps the pace throughout and it was edge of the seat stuff when poor Jo Grant was sent back in time to the 20^th Century currently overrun by Daleks and Ogrons.

The story has a wonderful twist at the end and it’s played well. This is one story I want to see on the television, because as much as I recall seeing some of the Pertwee era Who, I can’t place this one in my mind. You’ll like the sneaky twist, that ahhh moment, and cool, and how can they stop history repeating itself?

A great story without giving a child the nightmares we so often face when reading some scary ass story from the Classic era – although Weeping Angels still freak me out from the New era.

On a nostalgic note, wouldn’t it be nice if you could still buy Target novels for 25p each???

Who Reviews Target Zone: Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster by DJ Forrest

Written by Terrance Dicks

Published by Tandem Publishing Ltd

For Target in 1976

There are many alien creatures with a thirst for dominance of a far weaker species, and yet they all seem to think that Earth is going to be such a push over. It always seems to be the arrogance of the alien species that likes to brag about its deeds to the one person who can easily overthrow their plans, and if failing to enable them to see sense, will thwart every single plan of theirs.

Of course, without the might of the Doctor and UNIT, although to be fair, the Brig only has the regular weapons known to man at his disposal and its this kind of military screw up that can push the might of an alien race to declare war on earth, rather than using a more diplomatic approach, or capture the Doctor and watch him take your ship apart and use it against you.

I love a good Zygon story and if I’m pushed to choose between which alien species I like the most, it’s a tie between the Daleks and the Zygons at every turn. Both of them are determined as ever to dominate a planet and begin cultivating it to their own needs. Both have tunnel vision. They see only the end goal and a means to get it, but don’t figure on the might of the human race or the meddling Doctor.

In both stories involving Zygons (in book form) that I’ve read so far, although a little bit more advanced in the 10^th but still, the end game amounts to the same, but at least the Skarasen isn’t a threat in the 10^th novel unlike it seems in this.

The Skarasen I felt sorry for. Most cyborg creatures which were created to do their masters bidding, are often only doing it because they have little choice, and the Skarasen is no different. It becomes the Loch Ness Monster for the story because those were the waters it grew up in, and wearing attached Zygon technology, it charges towards the very person holding the device in order to snuff them out, or at best, to crush the device into the ground, so it can go back to peaceful waters.

The only problem with killing a Skarasen is that you’ll need a nuclear weapon in order to do so.

The Fourth Doctor is helped by Harry Sullivan, Sarah Jane Smith and UNIT which includes the Brig. I’ve always liked the Brigadier but reading through the old novels of the classic series, I am beginning to question what it is about the military fool that I liked so much – because the writings at the time gave UNIT more of a Keystone Cops approach to tackling the alien races that came to earth to dominate us human species.

Maybe I’m not giving UNIT enough credit. Back in the days of the 3^rd and 4^th Doctors, the world was a much different place, and UNIT were only just coming into being, the stiff upper lip and male arrogance was rife back then. And maybe the odd alien landing, Daleks and Zygons and other species I’m still learning about, including the Master, are species that UNIT are only just understanding. Perhaps I shouldn’t be poking a stick at them wondering why they’re not as on the ball as I’d like – especially when you look at UNIT now, it’s more of a military likeness to Torchwood. On the ball with alien species. Has an arsenal of weapons in order to defeat a mighty army and has the daughter of the Brigadier in charge – and you don’t want to mess with her.

As you’d expect, the Loch Ness Monster story is set in Scotland, and around oil rigs that are being destroyed, the reason of which you will discover towards the middle of the story. It’s a wonderful read and you can’t help but smile at Broton and his suckered band of maniacs as they are thwarted at every turn to take over the world.

Who Reviews The Power of Kroll by DJ Forrest

Written by Terrance Dicks

Published by W.H. Allen & Co. PLC

Target Zone

The 49^th 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 10^th and 11^th especially, and perhaps a little of the 12^th, but most definitely 10^th, 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).

Who Reviews Target Zone: The Time Monster by DJ Forrest

Written by Terrance Dicks

Published in 1986 for

Target Books

‘Together we will become Masters of the Universe’

There’s something very quintessentially English about the Third Doctor era. It’s all very ‘pip pip’ and ‘jolly good show, eh, what?’. It’s very much a man’s world and women mustn’t even think of becoming a heroine, or lift a tyre iron, or the good old Brigadier will come over and patronise them – it’s amazing that he ever managed to marry and have children, what with that stiff upper lip and all.

However, the fictional world can often depict women in a much lesser light, and the Master who only really has eyes for himself, holds women in much the same regard as whatever he’s trodden in that day. Much like his likeness for Krasis, the High Priest of Atlantis, who suddenly finds himself zapped into the 20^th century grasping a crystal and feeling the might of Kronos – a creature that feeds on time itself as the crystal the High Priest is worshipping grows brighter.

Dr Ruth Ingram has been an instrumental factor in the scientific make up of the TOMTIT machine – I mean honestly, could they not have thought up a less ‘snicker behind the hands’ acronym? And when she begins to power up the machine before the big talk with the big wigs of the university it’s currently residing in, the Master can’t get there quick enough to pull the plug.

‘The meddling fools.’

By now we’ve come to realise that The ‘You Will Obey Me’ Master is a little too far up his own backside to notice the flaws in his machine. I guess when you’re that insane, you’re bound to miss a few key ingredients. Such as having the power to summon but not control the Chronivore.

Despite all it’s faults of the 20^th century, the actual story is a jolly good read, and in a way, it was fun journeying back to the 70s, the super speed ride in old Bessie, the Doctor recreating his TARDIS, the Master riding in his TARDIS cleverly disguised as a computer cupboard – of all the things to come up with. Might as well have been a Grandfather’s clock…oh wait…!

The Time Monster was a truly wonderful journey and I seem to remember scenes from the television episode that brought it all back to life for me.

 

Who Reviews Target Zone Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth by Simon Mallinson

For this month's special of the First Doctor I have reviewed a particular favourite of mine.

017 - Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth

Written by Terence Dicks

ISBN 0426 11244X

The Tardis lands in a London of future times - a city of fear, devastation and holocaust ... A city ruled by Daleks.

The Doctor and his companions meet a team of underground resistance workers, among the few survivors, but after an unsuccessful attack on the Dalek spaceship, they are all forced to flee the capital.

A perilous journey through England finally brings them to the secret centre of Dalek operations... And the mysterious reason for the Dalek Invasion of Earth.

This book was one of the first I ever read featuring the First Doctor, that mysterious figure which at the time in the 70s and 80s was not readily available for the fans to watch.  I remember being very transfixed to this book when young, Daleks, The Doctor and the mysterious Barbara and Ian, who were they and who was Susan the Doctor's Granddaughter.

After a while I saw the film with Peter Cushing, and loved this but the differences were just too much to consider proper Who.  Although at the time anything on TV featuring the Doctor was a rare and welcomed sight.

A few years ago I finally caught the original TV story and realised that Terrance Dicks, the master of Target, wrote better than the original script writers.  Added to this last year the audio version of this story voiced by the Legendary Mackem Actor William Russell (yes he is from just up the road from where I am from) added a new dimension to this wonderful story which has in my eyes never been bettered.

Okay the book, the story starts very well with a great description of a rundown London and an old battered police box landing sets the scene perfectly.  The pace moves on faster than the visual representations and the characters start to come alive in ways that will make you think, can we have more from this team.

The Daleks are perfect, totally uncaring and very evil, just the way I like them.  The resistance is portrayed much better organised than the visual ones, and you can almost believe given better weapons they would have a fighting chance.  The science is also very believable when written, less cobbled together to look syfy.  Doctor Who was never a great space opera, being more grounded in history and at a touch scientific.

This is a great starting point for the First Doctor, though with Susan's decision to leave, which to me was more hormones than love.  Okay female readers a challenge, fall for me after a couple of days with Daleks then I believe.  Ian as a character starts to look more credible and Barbara has more get up and go than previous stories suggested, except The Aztecs which we shall see later in this series.

So here is my tribute to the original dream team, The Doctor (William Hartnell), Ian (William Russell), Barbara (Jacqueline Hill) and Susan (Carole Ann Ford).  May you all carry on living in the memories of young people forever, as you lived in mine.

Who Reviews The Abominable Snowmen by Simon Mallinson

ISBN 0-426-11455-8

Publisher: Target Books, WH Allen & Co

Writer: Terrance Dicks

A single blow from the giant, hairy paw smashes the explorer to the ground.  Terrified, he flees from the monster's glowing eyes and savage fangs... Why are the peaceful Yeti now spreading death and destruction?  And what is the secret behind the glowing cave on the mountain.

When DOCTOR WHO discovers that a long-dead friend is still alive, he knows why his visit to the lonely Himalayan monastery has led to a struggle to save the Earth!

For the older of us that can remember Doctor Who with no repeats and no chance of seeing old stories, Target brings great and happy memories. How many times have I visited the local library as a kid hoping the latest book was in? No internet, no Amazon and no Twitter, was it a dark age, no we had Target.

Is it cold outside? Yes! Well pull up a seat and warm yourself with a much missed story from the Troughton era. Terrance Dicks stays true to the original script but seems to beam a picture of a furry yeti, monks and silver balls in your minds.

The story starts pretty slowly with Tardis scenes that will make the modern viewer groan for action, and scream ‘get on with it.’ Though the older viewer will start smiling from the off, the interplay between Victoria and Jamie is classic Who. 

The Doctor bumbles around as usual but always seems to be in the right place at the right time. Shifty monks (ahh the 60s stereotypes), make you wonder who is evil and who is well short of a few pennies. An old eccentric explorer who at times makes you think ‘shoot him now please.’

The story itself seems to lack the stamina of the later stories, but this adds to the general enjoyment of it, more fooling but with a touch of warning.

So, if you want a short smiling story please read this book and enjoy.