Doctor Who - Galaxy Four by William Emms

Published: April 1986

Edition read: Target first, 1986

Coolest Cover: Shame that Andrew Skilleter had to do this one about ten years before we found out the Drahvin costumes were green...but they look very leggy and very surprised.

Purple Prose: "...the Rill was as much lost in thought as he was, wondering why the human form, or something like it, was so prevalent in the universe: two legs, two arms leading to hands with the vital opposing thumbs and a brain.The origins were too far back in time to be traced, yet there seemed little of genuine advantage in it. " (p.117)

The TARDIS dematerialises with..."the grinding sound of departure"

Childhood Recollections: I have the hardback of this back at my folks’, and I have pleasant memories of picking it up one night, sitting down in their rocking chair and reading it all the way through in one sitting.

Ramblings: One of the most rewarding consequences of Target’s mid-1980s turn to older stories and their original script writers came in the number of adaptations from the Hartnell era in particular which were adapted by writers whose involvement with the serieswas limited to one or two stories and yet turn in a good account of their tale on the printed page. William Emms’s ‘Galaxy Four’, his only contribution to the broadcast series and notoriously one of the last stories to be junked, was nevertheless regarded with a certain affection by early fandom, and it’s not difficult to see why, with two alien races plus cute robots and a simple but effectively presented moral.

Given that Emms can’t have had much more than his scripts to work from, it’s a tribute to the strong basic concept that the book itself is an engaging read. His comfort with the characters of the Doctor, Steven and Vicki is evident from the first page, although a reference to the events of ‘The Space Museum’ isn’t expanded on and it’s probably a bit early to be putting in comments about the Doctor starting to show his age. Where the book comes into its own, however, is with Emms’s enthusiasm for entering into the thought processes of his alien characters- while we hear some of Steven and Vicki’s interior monologues, some of the best moments are where we’re treated to a taste of the way Maaga and the chief Rill see the universe. Having spent two-thirds of the book building up Maaga as compassionless and consumed by blind hatred of the Rills, he takes a moment or two to show her as a victim of Drahvin politics, charged with finding a new world so that the population can escape their dying homeworld but inadequately equipped with mindless soldiers for a scientific mission. But this is surpassed by the passages where we have an insight into the Rills and their society, from their evolution and mating processes to the passage of time (which in part explains the misunderstanding of fourteen dawns)- it serves no purpose to the plot to digress into Rill culture and thought processes, but it enhances the book no end and gives a real sense of Emms attempting to create a genuinely alien society, but one explicable in human terms.

I’ve said that one of the strengths of ‘Galaxy Four’ as a whole is its simplicity and straightforwardness, and I think that’s also true of the book, as this makes two occasions when I’ve found it beautifully easy reading without being bland or uninteresting. As far as I can tell, the original was a solid little four-part story which fitted its slot nicely and the book does more or less the same; if the ending seems slightly rushed by comparison with the rest of the book, it also emphasises the urgency of the situation, as does the abrupt last sentence. William Emms clearly had a great deal of affection for his story, and we should be glad that after the best part of twenty years he could come back to his story and characters and bring them to life again.