Doctor Who -The Five Doctors by Terrance Dicks

Published: November 1983

Edition read: Target fifth reprint, 1986, although the cover says it’s the second edition.

Coolest Cover: There is only Andrew Skilleter- his second lovely piece of work for this story.

Crimes Against Literature: "‘It’s Zoe!’, said the Doctor. ‘Zoe and Jamie!’ Both had been the Third Doctor’s companions on his travels for many years." (p.104)

Childhood Recollections: Of having to make an impossible choice between this and a Fighting Fantasy Gamebook which ended in tears.

Ramblings: If Terrance Dicks’s adaptation of ‘The Five Doctors’ is famous (or notorious) for one thing, it’s for being on the shelves of the nation’s bookshops a good couple of weeks before the transmission of the anniversary special. In my case, that meant knowing the details of the plot in advance (although still being taken by surprise by the William Hartnell clip, and disappointed that we didn’t see Susan’s New London), with the end result that I was slightly disappointed with the special and only recently learned to love it for the celebration that it is. In today’s world of script conferences and style meetings, it’s practically inconceivable that a writer could be asked to produce a script to order for a 90-minute slot featuring guest stars whose availability would be in doubt until shortly before filming, summing up twenty years of adventures and yet providing a satisfying self-contained story in itself. In an ideal world (and indeed in book form), ‘The Five Doctors’ should have been a relaunch- a summing up of two decades and a direction for the future; in reality, of course, it took all of eighteen months for the wheels to come off, but that’s another matter.

On reflection, between writing the script and adapting the story himself, Terrance Dicks must have lived and breathed ‘The Five Doctors’ for several months. It’s a very generous piece of writing, which allows the actors space to play their characters the way they know best (although the key difference here is of course that in your mind’s eye you can have William Hartnell playing the First Doctor and even Colin Baker as Maxil if you want) and the book strives for the same effect- the Second Doctor, for instance, is a distillation of his strongest characteristics, which works equally well on screen where Patrick Troughton’s Doctor hadn’t been seen for more than a few episodes since 1969 and in print, where the character would have been known to the Target readership from half a dozen novels. If Terrance Dicks was the perfect choice to write a special which summed up Doctor Who for the general viewer, he’s even more so when it comes to turning the script into prose fiction; at several points his knowledge and experience of the series’ ongoing story comes to light, as he alludes to past adventures- admittedly most of which he either wrote, script-edited or adapted for Target, but it’s important with an adaptation like this that the odd references to Yeti, say, are developed rather than cast into the wind. In the 1970s, such references would have been asterisked and footnoted, but by the 1980s the practice had been abandoned; probably just as well, as several pages probably would have turned out half footnotes.

Rather like the original special then, this is a condensed version of what twenty years of Doctor Who were all about, but also leaves the reader hungry for the next adventure. It’s less interested in character and ideas than in enjoying itself and bringing back familiar characters just as you think you remember them, and it’s just a shame that the schedule didn’t allow Dicks the opportunity to improve on his television script.