Doctor Who - The Smugglers by Terrance Dicks

Published: November 1988

Edition read: Target first, 1988

Coolest Cover: Absence of reference material strikes again- there’s Hartnell, the TARDIS, a ship, a church and some casks of brandy- but it’s a nice touch of Alistair Pearson to put his own initials on one of the graves.

Crimes Against Literature: The opening of the book is as follows: "A Police box stood in a London square up against the railings that surrounded the garden in the centre. There was an Out of Order sign on the door. Police boxes like this were common in the London of the sixties." What, out of order?

The TARDIS dematerialises with... "a strange wheezing, groaning sound".

Childhood Recollections: I can remember buying it but don’t think I ever read it.

Ramblings: One of the contemporary reviews of this adaptation was of the opinion that it was a shame that the hardback Doctor Who range should come to an end with such an uninspiring volume. Not only does that comment place Terrance Dicks’s novelisation quite precisely in the chronology of the Target range, it also identifies ‘The Smugglers’ as one of that batch of stories from the back end of the Hartnell era which probably wouldn’t have been adapted for Target if it hadn’t been for the dedication of the likes of Dicks and Nigel Robinson. On the surface of it, there’s a certain if limited amount of potential in the story- there’s something to be made of Ben and Polly’s first trip in time, as well as a rollicking adventure in a recognisable historical setting, and it’s clear from the audios that George A. Cooper’s Cherub had a definite presence as a villain.

So it’s perhaps unfair to criticise Dicks too harshly for turning in an adaptation which, although a little short on characterisation, emphasises action and danger. One of the characteristics of several stories from William Hartnell’s last few months as the Doctor is the way in which the story happens around him- here he seems to wander through the plot encountering all the major characters, but he doesn’t really push the plot forward; it’s all Doctorish mannerisms and guile. It’s difficult to point to any part of the story and say that it wouldn’t have happened that way if the Doctor hadn’t become involved- the action happens because Pike and Cherub turn up looking for Avery’s treasure, while Blake the Revenue man is already investigating the Squire’s smuggling ring. Our heroes only become involved because Longfoot tells the Doctor the Deadman’s Key riddle (which, true to the original story, changes every time it’s recited)- as Pike himself admits, he’s quite prepared to ransack the village to find the treasure and having the key is essentially a means of getting what he wants more quickly and with less chance of injury to his men.

The spare style of the adaptation does drive the story along at a pace which makes the book very readable, and it’s fair to say that it never drags- one advantage of adapting a story with a historical setting is that you can take a fairly broad-brush approach as far as the setting and characterisation are concerned, because everybody has their own image of what a seventeenth-century squire, innkeeper and so on are like. Cherub probably comes off best as far as the supporting characters go, because so much of his personality is communicated in his playfully sadistic threats to cut off various bits of people, while Pike is strangely low-key and undistinguished. It’s not Terrance Dicks at his best, and it can’t really be claimed as either great Doctor Who or a great Target novel either, but to pass an entertaining couple of hours you could do worse than a taste of Thomas Tickler.