Book Review: Doctor Who - World Game, by Terrance Dicks

[lokheed]

I just finished reading the Doctor Who novel "World Game" by Terrance Dicks, and I have to say it was a pretty nice piece of fanwank.  How does the script editor for the entire tenure of the Third Doctor and author of more than 150 Doctor Who novels come to write a piece of fanwank?  Well, therein lies a tale...


Terrance Dicks' first episode as script editor also happened to be the final episode for the Second Doctor.  The story, "War Games", involved a race of beings who were plucking human soldiers from different eras in Earth's history, and plunking them down onto a battlefield to fight each other in an elaborate game.  At the end of the story the Doctor of course defeats the bad guys, but in order to send all of the soldiers back to their rightful eras he must enlist the aid of his own homeworld from which he was a fugitive.  His two companions had their memories wiped and were sent back to their respective times and planets.  The Doctor faced trial on Gallifrey for meddling in time, and was sentenced to exile on Earth with his TARDIS disabled and forced into a new regeneration.  Thus with the next season, the entire series changed.  It went from black and white to color, featured an entirely new cast, and with very few exceptions was completely earthbound and set firmly in modern day.  It was Terrance Dicks who invented the entire concept of the Time Lords and Gallifrey, used primarily as a plot device to completely reboot the series.

All well and good.

Fast forward fifteen years, and you get the Sixth Doctor episode "The Two Doctors" which features both the Second and Sixth Doctors, along with the Second Doctor's companion Jamie.  The second doctor has been sent on a top secret mission from Gallifrey after his arrest at the end of "War Games" but before his exile to Earth.  This presents a major continuity problem, since Jamie was sent back to his own time without ever knowing about the Time Lords, and this lead to fan speculation about a "missing season" in which the Second Doctor worked as an agent of Gallifrey in a series of secret missions before being exiled.

Along comes Terrance Dicks twenty one years later, and codifies that fun little bit of retcon magic.  The story begins with the Second Doctor being sentenced to death for his interferance in time, and then he is offered a chance to have his sentence reduced to being exiled if he will carry out a covert mission to stop more apparent meddling in Earth's history.  The bulk of the story is set around Revolutionary France, with Napolean and the Duke of Wellington being the key players.  It's a fun book which holds a few surprises (including an appearance of the psychic paper used by the Ninth Doctor in the new series), and overall I enjoyed it quite a bit.  It ends with a scene that segues directly into "The Two Doctors", and fills in what uber fans refer to as "season 6B".

I've only read one other of the BBC classic Doctor Who books (it featured the Eighth Doctor, who only appeared in the one tv movie but has gone on to be very popular in both books and audio dramas), but I may have to pick more of them up.  I'm rather fond of the Second Doctor, so I may have to look more of those up.

Comments

[bizarra.livejournal.com]

I just finished an 8th Doctor book called The Domino Effect that was really good.

I'm just getting into Doctor Who thanks to the new series. I loved Chris Eccleston's Doctor and am so far really enjoying David Tennant. My Hubby is a Whovian from way back and his favorite Doctor is Tom Baker. We've been renting some of the older doctor's episodes from Netflix. Cause I am well and thoroughly hooked and must..have..more. LOL

[lokheed.livejournal.com]

I'm a rare breed in that my first discovery of the Doctor was not through the tv show, but through the handful of books that were published in the US in the late 70's. They weren't in any particular order, and came from both the third and fourth doctors. The first episode I ever saw was a very grainy UHF signal out of Canada with the third doctor. Once the local PBS station started showing them I came in towards the end of the fourth doctor, and then saw most of the fifth. To this day I have actually never seen an episode with the sixth or seventh doctor (although I have a sixth doctor DVD I recently bought but haven't had time to watch yet).