|
|
 |
|
Doctor Who - The Savages by Ian Stuart Black Published: September 1986 Edition read: Target first, 1986Coolest Cover: You can just imagine David McAllister thinking, "well, it’s got William Hartnell in it (or is that Dick Emery?), the TARDIS is in it and Frederick Jaeger...".Crimes Against Literature: The Savages’ own dialogue isn’t exactly inspired, although thankfully the Reacting Vibrator has been consigned to the bedside cabinet of Doctor Who mythology. The TARDIS materialises with..."a change in rhythm". Bossa nova? Childhood Recollections: I definitely have the hardback, although it’s doubtful whether I actually read it. Ramblings: There’s no doubt we should be grateful that Target even bothered to have ‘The Savages’ novelised, let alone by its original script writer; it’s one of that batch of stories sitting there at the back end of the Hartnell era with no surviving episodes and comparatively little reference material (and even less available in 1986). Even without that- and especially now that the soundtrack has been out on CD for a couple of years now- it remains little-known, and most fans would struggle to give much of a description of the story other than that Steven leaves at the end. It seems quite appropriate, then, that the cover of the book should be a collection of half-formed images barely defined against an absolute blackness. There’s nothing which particularly leaps out about Ian Stuart Black’s prose style; it’s a serviceable adaptation which fills its 127 pages without any real pretensions to be anything other than an account of the televised scripts. Similarly, the story is a fairly straightforward 1960s science-fiction story with one or two good concepts (the transference of life energy as a metaphor for the exploitation of one group of people by another and the way in which Jano absorbs the Doctor’s values along with his intelligence) but not necessarily sufficient interest in the supporting characters or the background to lift the story out of the ordinary. We don’t know the name of the planet or how the Elders began to exploit the Savages- were they originally one group, or was one group the original inhabitants of the planet and the others an army of occupation? Details like that can make all the difference, and it’s a shame that Ian Stuart Black didn’t see the opportunity to flesh that side of things out. Instead, having come up with a handful of good ideas, he’s thrown himself straight into the mechanics of the majority of Doctor Who stories- escape, capture, regulars in peril, escape, capture and so on. Neither does Black seem particularly interested in his characters, with the possible exceptions of Jano and Nanina- the two characters who can see beyond their own people groups to the planet’s society as a whole. Perhaps the problem with ‘The Savages’ is that, without a monster or a compelling villain, it’s competently written but for all the story’s moral about exploitation, there really isn’t that much in there to grab the attention and while it isn’t exactly special, neither is it sufficiently outlandish to make much of an impression. The story’s workmanlike and so is the novelisation- and I’m not sure there’s that much else to say.
|
