Published: June 1988

Edition read: Target first, 1988

Coolest Cover: I’ll go for Alister Pearson’s reprint effort- all of the characters in David McAllister’s first attempt seem wonky somehow, and I’m fairly sure Maldak had a mouth.

The BBC Budget Wouldn’t Run To: Let me hear you sing it: Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!!!

The TARDIS dematerialises...with a shimmer, fade and roar

Childhood Recollections: I can remember buying the hardback at a convention- quite frankly, most of the people there were amazed that it had finally been published.

Ramblings: In the ordinary course of events, Philip Martin’s adaptation of ‘Vengeance on Varos’ would have been published sometime in 1986 as its Doctor Who Library number of 106 suggests, in a more or less suitable slot in between ‘Timelash’ and ‘The Mark of the Rani’. It didn’t, of course, for various reasons, not least of which was Philip Martin’s being a respected television scriptwriter with projects on the go, not least another four episodes of Doctor Who to be written. To be perfectly honest, though, the delay seems to have been worth it- Martin’s professionalism is evident from beginning to end, and it’s clear that this is not just another writer adapting his own script to supplement his pension or get a book on his writing CV. There is, quite frankly, a sense of quality to the writing which gives the impression of Martin doing his best to make a first class job of the adaptation.

One of the best features of Martin’s adaptation is the way in which Varos and its society really do come to life in a seamless way which conveys a real sense of a culture which has been thought out from top to bottom. Using some of the supporting characters- particularly Bax, the Governor and Jondar, but also the Chief Officer, he develops the backstory of the planet, and in the blackest of ironies, how the descendants of the prison officers who appear to rule are as much prisoners as the ordinary population themselves. Without the familiarity of Martin Jarvis’s presence, the bleak hollowness and futility of the Governor’s existence comes through in a way which the televised episodes didn’t communicate, while the adaptation also cultivates a sense of paranoia around Etta and Arak- the spectators live in constant fear of being watched and reported on. It’s altogether a more complex vision than the televised story was capable of putting across- not necessarily darker, but deeper and with a clearer understanding of what living in a society like Varos would involve.

I haven’t mentioned Sil so far and while Nabil Shaban has as good a claim as anybody to be considered the iconic villain of Colin Baker’s tenure, it’s clear that the actor developed certain areas of the character while leaving other of Martin’s ideas to one side for reasons of practicality or because the production team had other things in mind. It’s fairly common knowledge that Sil was at one point intended to be amphibious, and indeed at points throughout the story he does fall into his water tank at times of stress. The marsh minnows are absent, though, but one enjoyable touch is the references to Lord Kiv and Thoros Beta which have slightly more weight post-’Mindwarp’ than in the original story; Martin’s other comic touch is Sil’s malfunctioning translator, which, although the televised story alludes to it, isn’t foregrounded as much as in the book, where the humour derives from the translator inadventently selects a word adjacent in meaning to the one intended, hence for example "the february of science". If anything, the novelisation does highlight one of the potential pitfalls of hiring a writer of Martin’s professional stature- it’s clear that he came to the challenge of ‘Vengeance on Varos’ with plenty of ideas, probably too many in fact, not all of which turned out to be realistic for the Doctor Who of 1985 or congenial to its production team. One of the most consistently rewarding aspects of the Target books, however, is the way in which original script writers such as Philip Martin were allowed to develop some of the latent ideas in their stories, and the end result here is certainly a notch above most of the other adaptations of Colin Baker’s stories.