Secret Classrooms, by Geoffrey Elliott and Harold Shukman

First published in 2011, this absorbing history of the Joint Services School for Linguists (JSSL) describes how, during the 1950s, some 5,000 young men underwent intensive teaching in Russian, the aim to produce translators for signals intelligence (Sigint) as well as interrogators, field agents and spies.

That bit in Doctor No (1962), when we see the cardigan-wearing men and women in London listening in on coded signals and realising Strangways has been murdered? That’s where these people came from.

The book was inspired by a piece by Alan Bennett in the London Review of Books, in which he happened to mention that, as a National Service conscript on the Russian course in the early 1950s, he’d been required to clean the urinals of a mess with his bare hands. Another conscript, Geoffrey Elliott, thought “Hey, me too!” and, with historian Harold Shukman — another veteran of the course — set out to tell the full story.

That origin story gives something of the flavour of this book, full of telling detail. Such drudgery contrasts with the big names involved. The “kursanty” — Russian for students — included many who later forged careers in words: as well as Bennett, there were Jack Rosenthal, Michael Frayn and Dennis Potter, in an adjacent cabin at the JSSL school in Bodmin to his later producer Ken Trodd. Also, not mentioned in the book, Terrance Dicks was at JSSL in Crail, Scotland, around 1958. 

But it wasn’t just writers.

“JSSL’s pupils went on to scale many commanding heights. Professors of Russian, Chinese, Philosophy, Psychology, Economics, German, History, Japanese, Politics and Drama at leading universities, ambassadors to Argentina, China, Italy, Libya and the former Yugoslavia, authors, a member of the Royal Academy, novelists, playwrights, poets, screenwriters, actors, leading members of the Bar, economists, Heads of Oxbridge colleges, public school housemasters, officials of the Royal Household, historians, rare book dealers, journalists, including several Moscow correspondents for Reuters, the BBC and Fleet / Street, churchmen — a bishop among them — diplomats, a Director of Public Prosecutions, Controller of Music at the BBC, the British Government’s senior interpreter over many key Cold War detente years, the current proprietor of the New Statesman, the editor of New Society, an authority on medieval German manuscripts, officers in the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), ‘perhaps the best Rugby coach Wales ever had’, the Coroner of Greater Manchester, the Governor of the Bank of England, a Discalced Carmelite Friar, a professional bridge player, and many officers, including a Director and Deputy Director, of Government Communications Headquarters” (p. 13)

It’s a whole generation of boffins, “an unusually large number of them bespectacled” as the authors say (p. 6) of ranks they were themselves part of. They also refer to, “JSSL’s unmilitary, bottle-eyed swots in their baggy uniforms” (p. 40).

The book describes a rigorous educational regime for these dorky swots, with long days spent cramming lists of obscure words, and classes using the “direct method” of teaching — ie all spoken in Russian — with constant conferences, exercises and tests. They read Crime and Punishment, they put on plays, they did dictation during lunch. Sometimes against their best efforts, it got into their heads. Decades later, Sir Peter Hall could remember Lermontov’s “The Officer Cadet’s Prayer” by heart, and Alan Bennett the Russian for “rolling barrage” (p. 222).

There was an extraordinary incentive to work. Those who failed were RTU’d or returned to their former units, which was no small threat given the chance of active service in such places as Cyprus or Korea. Even so, “pupils were bright and instinctively rebellious” (p. 12), while conscripts who showed prowess in fighting and traditional army skills were exempt from JSSL. It must have been “a temptation for a regimental commanding officer, or his naval and air-force counterparts, to fob off on JSSL anyone who looked or indeed was odd, or likely to be an unmilitary nuisance” (p, 47). 

Among this Awkward Squad was Jeremy Woolfenden, who I read about in Some Men in London. Here we learn he wore odd socks “to irritate people on the Tube”, is said to have quipped, “We can’t all be brilliant but I find it helps’ and, when challenged on the paucity of his accent, claimed to speak the language of the Moscow racetrack (p. 162).

That all gives the impression of Carry on Sergeant only with nerds. But there’s something richer, stranger and more tragic in the story here, le Carre through the eyes of the League of Gentlemen.

Much of that is because the staff were just as much misfits as the kursanty, many of them exiles or refugees from across eastern Europe. The characters we’re told about include Mitek Gigiel-Melechowicz, who lost both hands and an eye in the war, but could still work a piece of chalk — or glass of vodka — with scissor-like attachments in his stumps (p. 161). Young Mr Ross enthralled students with first-hand accounts of the siege of Leningrad where he had been captured by Germans and then escaped to Denmark (p. 80). Or there’s

“The tall, sad-eyed Alexei Ivanovich, always impeccably turned out with his trademark bow-tie” (p. 135)

Elegance in exile, I thought, like a former lord of time in his velvet jackets and frilly shirts.

Much of JSSL was overseen by the extraordinary Liza, as the kursanty almost certainly did not call Elizabeth Hill to her face. Her mother had been Russian nobility and her father a Lancing-educated Scottish businessman who fled the Russian revolution. Liza is an enthralling character, blustering, self-aggrandising and over-exited but inspiring adulation in her students (p, 156). She also had a lifelong companion in Doris Mudie, who invited Liza back to her large family house in Vincent Square, London, with the immortal words, 

“Why don’t you come and live with me there and do your studies. Don’t worry, I’m not a lesbian.” (p. 17).

There’s plenty here on Liza’s battles with other colleagues and with the students, determined to ensure they exert themselves. It’s irresistible stuff, such as when another exile, Alexandra ‘Sasha’ Chernysheva, fell out with Liza. 

“The proximate cause to judge from the latter’s memoirs seems to have been that Alexandra had wandered into the complex electromagnetic field of emotions that made up the relationship between Liza and her ‘Sister in Chief’, Doris Mudie, whom Liza supported financially and morally with unremitting commitment. He was always at pains to find, and invent, a role for Doris, who fluttered helpfully in the wings of Salisbury Villas, making recordings and copying texts and diffidently giving small group classes in phonetics, even though most suspected she actually spoke little or no Russian.” (p. 138)

I’d so love to read more, but Jean Stafford Smith’s biography, In the Mind's Eye: The Memoirs of Dame Elizabeth Hill, is eye-wateringly expensive. And I have a hundred other things to be reading and writing first.

At the end, the authors sum up that the course provided value for money for the British government, and had lasting positive effects on the kursanty — instilling confidence, drive, a love of language and so on. But I’m especially taken by the idea that understanding Russian meant understanding what the enemy was up to, enabling swift and efficient response. That meant the kursanty who found jobs within the intelligence system helped to prevent escalation — and war.

In effect, these non-soldiery soldiers, unsuited to conventional fighting, were an extraordinary weapon. Don’t underestimate boffins with their books.

Writing Magazine #251

I've written a piece for the new issue of Writing Magazine, out now, on handling factual material. There are pointers on copyright, libel and building good relationships, but I also hoped to get across why working in non-fiction can be so creatively rewarding.

This issue includes tips for writing dialogue, "the latest romance trends in YA and romantasy and guidance on how to fight back against AI. Plus, explore cosy fantasy and creating your own literary gardens, and discover what self-awareness can add to your writing."

• Buy Writing Magazine #251 (November 2025)
• Writers' Guild of Great Britain free online guide to Working With Factual Material

Doctor Who — The Three Doctors, by Terrance Dicks

I said of Terrance’s previous book, Doctor Who and the Planet of the Spiders, that there was loads of Doctor Who in 1975, with 35 new episodes on TV as well as in-character appearances by Tom Baker in other TV shows and real life. There was also the ongoing picture strip in TV Comic and a novelisation of his first TV story. Then, in time for Christmas, there were three special books.

The first, published in September, was the Doctor Who Annual 1976 (or, as per the cover, THE DR WHO annual 1976). This, the tenth Doctor Who annual from Manchester-based World Distributors, is a rather nice-looking 64-page hardback with a lot of colour inside, which originally retailed for £1. The cover boasts a photograph of a glowering, serious Doctor, with the words “Starring TOM BAKER as DR WHO”. No monsters are mentioned or seen; the focus is all on the titular character — in fact, on the leading actor.

On 20 November, Target published two special titles of its own. The Doctor Who Monster Book is a 64-page paperback, the interior all black-and-white, retailing at 50p, ie half the price of the annual. While it also boasts Tom Baker’s face on the cover, here he’s got a huge grin and is surrounded by monsters. I’ll dig into this wondrous book in a future post.

The same day saw publication of the 17th in Target’s range of Doctor Who novelisations: Doctor Who — The Three Doctors. This wasn’t just more of the same; it was something a bit extra.

That’s evident when you compare a first edition to the novelisations released immediately before and after this. Doctor Who — The Three Doctors comprises 128 pages, as do Doctor Who and the Planet of the Spiders and Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster. But the paper stock here is thicker and of better quality, so this book has more heft. It feels more like, and is almost as wide as, one of Target’s first 12 novelisations.

Another thing linking it to that first run of books is the return of cover artist Chris Achilleos after four novelisations with cover art by Peter Brookes. Once again, there are good-quality, stippled portraits of the Doctor (x3) in black and white, with the monstrous Omega and sparkling-energy in colour. But Omega also radiates energy all around him— white hot near the top of his bronze-green mask, cooling to yellow and then orange as it fills the frame.

In that sense, this cover is an amalgamation of the montage-on-white covers that Achilleos produced for the first 12 novelisations and the subsequent full-frame comic-strip panels favoured by Brookes. Achilleos had previously used comic-strip art as reference for particular elements in his covers artwork, such as borrowing individual Daleks from the old TV Century 21 comic strips. But now he used comics to inform the whole composition: as is well known, for this one he drew inspiration from Jack Kirby’s cover for Fantastic Four #49 (April 1966).

I think the logo on the cover is also an amalgamation of the two styles of Target book to date: it’s the new logo with curving “Doctor”, as per the TV show’s opening titles and used on the books since Doctor Who and the Giant Robot. Yet, for the first time, it’s in black rather than a bright colour, recalling those first 12 books.

The back cover blurb sets out that this story is something special:

“Jo glanced up at the Doctor.

‘Things must be pretty serious then’.

‘They are, Jo. Very serious indeed. The whole of the Universe is in danger.’

The most amazing WHO adventure yet, in which Doctors One, Two and Three cross time and space and come together to fight a ruthlessly dangerous enemy — OMEGA. Once a Time Lord, now exiled to a black hole in space, Omega is seeking a bitter and deadly revenge against the whole Universe…

DOCTOR WHO scripts — awarded the 1974 Writers’ Guild Award for the best British children’s original drama script.”

As with the previous book, the bit of this blurb apparently quoted from the text inside doesn’t quite match what’s there (on page 28), but is a punchier, more concise version. 

Again, I don’t think Terrance wrote this blurb. The clue, I think, is the reference to Omega as “once a Time Lord.” On TV, Omega says that because of the supernova he created, he was “blown out of existence into this black hole of antimatter [while] my brothers became Time Lords”. That is, Time Lords were created after Omega was lost, so he was never one himself. 

(Yes, he refers to the Doctor as a “brother Time Lord” and speaks of “our fellow Time Lords”, but that’s in his efforts to reclaim his place in the society they created without him.)

The award mentioned is also worth noting. At the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain’s 14th Awards Presentation Dinner, held at the Cafe Royal on Wednesday 12 March 1975, “Best British Children’s Drama Script” was awarded to Doctor Who writers Robert Holmes, Malcolm Hulke, Terry Nation, Brian Hayles and Robert Sloman for all 26 episodes and five stories comprising Season 11 (1973-74). 

The award therefore did not include The Three Doctors or its writers Bob Baker and Dave Martin, as that story was from the previous year’s run (1972-73). It would have made more sense to mention the award in the blurb for Target's previous book, Doctor Who and the Planet of the Spiders, as it was adapted from a story in the award-winning season. The fact that it wasn’t added to that blurb suggests that by 13 March, the morning after the awards do, the back cover for Doctor Who and the Planet of the Spiders had already been set and couldn’t be changed, with a seven-month lead time ahead of publication on 16 October.

ETA Paul MC Smith points out that the award was included in the blurb for the hardback edition of Doctor Who and the Planet of the Spiders, published a month after the paperback (and on the same day as Doctor Who — The Three Doctors and The Doctor Who Monster Book):

Dustjack from Doctor Who
and the Planet of the Spiders

Speaking of which, I think Terrace must have written and signed off on Doctor Who — The Three Doctors before he wrote The Doctor Who Monster Book. My sleuthing is as follows:

The latter provides short, pithy biographies for a range of monsters, each headed by the monster’s name. That includes, on page 48, the “Gellguards” (one word) from The Three Doctors. These creatures weren’t named on screen; instead, to meet the format of the Monster Book, Terrance drew from stage directions of the script for Episode One, which initially speak of animated “jelly” and “gel” before we encounter large, mobile actors-in-suits referred to variously as “Gellguards” and “Gell Guards”.

(That surely means they’re pronounced with a soft G, an abbreviation of Jelly Guards, and not — as I always thought as a kid reading the Monster Book entry — with an alliteratively hard G as in "Girl", or the more colloquial “Gel”, the term both the First Doctor and Arthur Ollis use in the novelisation to describe Jo Grant — see p. 36 and p. 75.)

In the novelisation, these monsters are simply “jelly-like creatures” and “blobs”. If Terrance had written the Monster Book first and then moved on to the novelisation, he would surely have used “Gellguards” again for consistency. He didn’t, so the novelisation came first.

Had he also written Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster, published 15 January 1976, before he wrote the Monster Book? We’ll look for clues when we reach that novelisation…

As usual with Terrance, the novelisation generally follows the story as seen on screen, though with improved effects — whether because Terrance thought the TV version looked a bit lacking or to make this book extra special. For example, he details the way the alien jelly separates and then assumes humanoid shape (p. 22), how bullets slice through these creatures without causing harm (p. 23) and how one is destroyed by an explosive shell but the scattered bits reform (p. 24). The latter is, I think, lifted from what happens to the grotesque Bok in The Daemons.

There’s an extra fight with the jellies later in the book that doesn’t happen in the TV version, the Brigadier wielding a Sterling submachine gun, Benton with a Bren and Jo Grant being knocked over by the recoil of her rifle (pp. 111-112). The latter is odd given Jo’s UNIT training (as detailed in Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons, where she knows how to jump safely from a moving vehicle), and in contrast to her successor Sarah Jane Smith, who coolly points a gun at Hilda Winters in Doctor Who and the Giant Robot.

Omega’s world has a dull grey sea (p. 48), purple sky (p. 74) and a storm (p. 108). Omega himself lives in a castle (p. 65) with enormous brass gates (p. 76) and polished brass floor (p. 89), matching his brazen mask. This fantastical realm is, I think, more in line with what Bob Baker and Dave Martin had in mind in their initial idea for this multi-Doctor story, originally called Deathworld (available now from Big Finish, script edited by me, yadda yadda).

Terrance seems to have worked from the scripts of The Three Doctors rather than rewatching the story, which would have required the faff of a special screening at the BBC. For example, 1m 20s into Episode One on iPlayer, a (prop) sign informs us that the tree-lined lake — really a reservoir in Rickmansworth — is “Minsbridge Wild Life [sic] Sanctuary”. The place isn’t named in the script, it’s just “Ext. Bird Sanctuary. Day” with a later reference to “marshes”. Mrs Ollis, wife of the warden there, is described as having a “Norfolk accent”, which is our only clue as to where Minsbridge might be.

In the novelisation, the setting is “the flat marshy ground of an Essex bird sanctuary” (p. 7), matching the words in the script and not what’s seen on screen. Why Essex of all places? Well, between his work on novelisations, Terrance spent time mucking about on a boat he kept at Althorne in Essex, opposite Bridgemarsh Island which is a great haven for birds. Just as his novelisation of Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion relocated the sequence of dummies breaking out of shop windows from the unnamed Ealing High Street on TV to the named Oxford Street, this is Terrance grounding events in real places that he knew well.

Terrance is also specific about another setting. While the TV story doesn’t tell us where in space the black hole is located, in the novelisation we learn that the Veil Nebula, “an enormous mass of gases and cosmic dust” (p. 69), is all that remains of the star Omega destroyed. The Veil Nebula is a real place, in the constellation Cygnus. As observed from Earth, it’s in the same part of the sky as Cygnus X-1 which in 1971 was the first object in space to be identified as a black hole — a key inspiration for this Doctor Who story. My guess is that Terrance consulted a map.

Space and physics stuff generally is considered of sufficient importance to be given a capital letter: “Galaxy” (p. 11), “Universe” (p. 28), “Time Streams” (p. 29), “Force” and “Anti-matter” (p. 30), “Time Travel”, “Nebula”, “Solar Engineers” and “Time" (p. 69). As in Doctor Who and the Planet of the Spiders, “University” also warrants a capital (p. 8). In contrast, when Omega exclaims that, “I should have been a god!” (p. 70), it’s a lower-case apotheosis.

Yet given this enthusiasm for specific places and proper names, it’s notable that Terrance doesn’t give the name of another key setting in the story — the planet of the Time Lords.

Gallifrey was first mentioned on screen in Part Two of The Time Warrior (tx 22 December 1973), written by Robert Holmes and script edited by Terrance. By that point, it had also been used in an issue of TV Action, but we think drawn from The Time Warrior script. The name wasn’t used on screen again until Part Four of Pyramids of Mars, script edited (and largely written) by Holmes and broadcast 15 November 1975, five days before this novelisation was published. That Holmes remembered the name and Terrance didn’t — he doesn’t mention Gallifrey in the Monster Book either — suggests it was coined by Holmes. 

(In contrast, Doctor Who — The Three Doctors includes a reference to the Doctor’s car, Bessie, being fitted with a “Superdrive” (p. 97). This was seen in action in Episode One of The Time Monster (1972), script edited by Terrance. The car’s “minimum inertia superdrive” was also mentioned in the preceding adventure, Episode One of The Mutants; I wonder if, in novelising The Three Doctors by Bob Baker and Dave Martin, Terrance recalled adding that bit of continuity to their previous TV story.)

Even though the name Gallifrey was used in Pyramids of Mars, it doesn't feature two stories later in The Brain of Morbius, despite that delving into Time Lord lore. That story was initially written by Terrance in July and August 1975, then rewritten by Holmes and broadcast in January 1976. “Gallifrey” wasn’t used again on screen until Part One of The Hand of Fear (tx 2 October 1976), where it foreshadows the next TV story — which is set there. It’s only then, I think, that the name becomes a key part of Doctor Who. As I work my way through Terrance’s books, I’ll keep an eye out for the first time he cites it.

Despite this absence, we get quite a lot on Time Lord life in Doctor Who — The Three Doctors. The huge “Temporal Control Room”, containing “hundreds of monitor screens”, is where Time Lords are employed in, “keeping a benevolent and watchful eye on innumerable planets and times” ie as couch potatoes throughout eternity. “It was many years since the Doctor had stood in that room,” we’re told, implying that he used to have a job here before deciding to experience this stuff in real life. The Time Lords are also Olympian figures, powerful and virile:

“Despite their age and wisdom, the Senior Time Lords had always been lively, vigorous figures, burning with energy and authority.” (p. 29)

One younger Time Lord is described as a “boy” of 200 (p. 31). We’re also told that,

“Time Lords had immense strength and endurance but they are not superhuman or immortal. They can tire, they can be hurt, and they can die. Doctor Two wondered what would happen to him is his other self [ie the Third Doctor] were to be killed. Presumably he too would wink out of existence, and cease to be.” (p. 92)

Note the shift from past to present tense in that first sentence, as if changing gear from an old story being recounted to a statement of current fact. Note also the odd idea that if the Third Doctor should die, his former selves might wink out of existence. It would surely be the other way round: if the Second Doctor died while battling Omega instead of as the result of his trial (as in the TV story The War Games), there could be no Third Doctor.

(The odd repetition that Doctor Two thinks he might “wink out of existence” and “cease to be”, makes me think he’s been watching Monty Python's Parrot sketch. Next he’ll be gone to meet ’is maker, ie Tecteun.) 

In fact, the mechanics of multiple Doctors is a bit confusing here. A caption on p. 1 tells us that, “The cover illustration portrays the first, second and third Doctors”, the ordinals uncapitalised and the order wrong: in fact, the cover illustration portrays the first, third and second Doctors. 

The back cover blurb speaks of “Doctors One, Two and Three”, with capitals, but that does not mean the first, second and third Doctors. In the book itself, Jo thinks of her Doctor — the incumbent, as played by Jon Pertwee — as “Doctor One” (p. 53), matching stage directions in the script where script editor Terrance was keen to denote that Pertwee remained the first among equals. 

However, the Time Lords in the book number the Doctors in the opposite order, referring to his “earliest” incarnation and then the successive “second” and “third” Doctors (p. 51). The two systems get a bit muddled: the “third Doctor” referred to on p. 114 in a scene set within the TARDIS is Jo’s Doctor Three and the Time Lords’ first Doctor, ie the one played by William Hartnell. 

Keeping up?

Now, obviously, as Terrance wrote this novelisation, Tom Baker was establishing himself as the Fourth Doctor on TV. If we were to continue the numbering system used in The Three Doctors where the incumbent is Doctor One or the first Doctor, Jon Pertwee would have been duly relegated to Doctor Two / second Doctor, Patrick Troughton to Doctor Three / third Doctor, and Hartnell to Doctor Four / fourth Doctor. A new actor taking over the role from Baker would mean they all had to change again. It was evidently much simpler to fix a proper name to each incarnation, with capitals — Hartnell is and will always be the First Doctor we encountered on screen, even if The Brain of Morbius subsequently introduced the idea of prior incarnations.

As I said, calling the Third Doctor “Doctor One” was a means to placate Jon Pertwee while making The Three Doctors, and that was obviated by him leaving the role. That the novelisation contains the last vestige of this outmoded naming system is because Terrance wrote it by working from the scripts.

There are some other odd ways of describing things. When we first encounter the Second Doctor in the novelisation, he’s “a rather small man in eccentric and colourful clothing” (p. 31). “Colourful” is surely Terrance remembering the way costume designer James Acheson recreated Patrick Troughton’s original costume to suit colour TV, with a blue shirt and colour-flecked tweed for his trousers. But the mental image now conjured is of something else; I thought of Troughton in the Sixth Doctor’s clothes.

In raising the stakes of this story, Terrance also seems to have forgotten other adventures he worked on. Jo feels at one point that, 

“It was the first time she had ever seen the Doctor afraid.” (p. 68)

But, as just one example, in The Mind of Evil (1971) she rescues the Doctor from a machine that makes him experience nightmares. Later, we’re told that the Doctors’ battle with Omega is something special because,

“With the exception of the Master, this was the first time he had found himself opposed by a fellow Time Lord.” (p. 82)

That’s forgetting the War Chief and the presiding judges in The War Games, cowritten by Terrance. (Let alone the Meddling Monk, or Susan Foreman arguing back.)

Then there’s the Second Doctor’s recorder. Terrance makes a point of mentioning this more often than it featured in the TV story, nicely seeding the important role it plays in the denouement. He repeatedly refers to it as a “flute”; while technically a recorder is a duct or fipple flute, to me the mental image conjured is of a different musical instrument — a longer, metal one. It’s important to the end of the story that the Doctor’s recorder can roll, hence the initial description of it being a “round wooden object” (p. 32). But “round” surely suggests spherical; “cylindrical” is the word.

That might seem pedantic but, as we’ve observed before, Terrance is often very good on concise, vivid description using well-chosen words. There are plenty of striking examples of that here. Early on, he throws in “iridescent” then immediately explains that it means like oil on water (p. 17), helping to advance the vocabulary of younger readers. There are “paradiddles” and “cacophony” (p. 36), “parabolic” arches (p. 66) and “reconnaissance” (p. 81). He also uses “brazen” (p. 67) in the technical sense of being made of bronze, and Arthur Ollis refers to Jo as “tidgy”, meaning small (p. 75).

In surviving production paperwork included on the Blu-ray sets of this era of Doctor Who (thank you, Richard Bignell), Terrance refers to his meetings with writers to discuss the mechanics of storylines and scripts as “conferences”, a rather serious word for a long natter in the office followed by drinks in the bar. I wonder if that’s why the quick-fire sharing of exposition between the three Doctors here is referred to as a “telepathic conference” (p. 35). 

(I now imagine Terrance at his usual table by the main door in Albertine’s on the corner of Wood Lane, raising a big glass of red wine to Bob and Dave, to the toast of “Contact”.)

So, all in all this is a bigger, more opulent version of the TV story, in part because Terrance worked from the scripts and thus the imaginations of the two writers, rather than from a screening of the story as realised on a modest budget. Even so, he makes a lot of the special nature of the story, the whole Universe at stake from a foe unlike any the Doctor has previously encountered (whether or not that’s quite true). But some of the details aren’t right, with words and phrasing that are not always as precise as in Terrance’s previous books. We get our first sense, I think, of the production line process behind his increased output. And yet it’s only a quick polish off being perfect.

At the end of the adventure, Omega is destroyed (for now), the Universe saved and the past Doctors sent back to their time streams. The First Doctor’s closing words are, sadly, as per the script and not the last-minute rewrite done while filming with William Hartnell on 6 November 1972. On p. 124 of The Three Doctors production documentation included on the Blu-ray, we can see that the brilliant last words he delivered as Doctor Who, “I shudder to think what you'll do without me”, are an amendment in Terrance’s distinctive handwriting on the shooting script for that day. 

It’s especially sad to lose such fitting final words given that Hartnell died on 23 April 1975, around the time Terrance was writing this novelisation. My guess is that they’d have been in the book if Terrance had been able to rewatch the story. Instead, the First Doctor is cut off mid-sentence while complaining: a rare example of a novelisation failing to improve the TV version.

The Second Doctor fares a little better, consoled for the loss of his recorder with the gift of a mouth organ, on which he immediately picks out “Oh Susannah”. And the Third Doctor is granted his greatest wish, as the suitably grateful Time Lords end his exile to Earth in the late 20th century. On TV, he’s keen to get going and a new era of Doctor Who begins. Here, Terrance makes the moment bitter-sweet. Jo protests about his eagerness to leave and the Doctor muses on the family he has found among his pals at UNIT. 

“For the first time, in many years of wandering, he’d found somewhere that could be called home, and he didn’t want to give it up. Not completely, that is. One or two little trips from time to time, of course…” (p. 126)

It’s a nice character moment but I read it with a pang. As viewers would have seen by the time this novelisation was published, the Fourth Doctor soon abandoned UNIT. That means that the Third Doctor’s sense of home died with him. In the closing moments of this special novelisation, Terrance spares a moment to mourn.

*

These long, involved posts take time and involve expenses, such as buying the first edition copy of this novelisation which so helped me tease out meanings. If you’d like to show your appreciation and support the ongoing endeavour to explore the work of Terrance Dicks, please make a donation:

Huge thanks to the kind people who responded to my last rattling of the tin; I’ve received just under £50 to date. This has been spent on what I thought was a first edition of Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster but is a later reprint (with some interesting quirks I’ll address when we get there) as well as the next two books Terrance published and a work of non-fiction he drew from. Posts on all those goodies to follow the next instalment, which will be on The Doctor Who Monster Book.

How long I continue beyond that depends on contributions to the cause.

Barry Cryer Same Time Tomorrow, by Bob Cryer

This is a lovely, funny and often moving biography of the comedian Barry Cryer (1935-2022) written by his youngest son. Each chapter is preceded by one of Cryer’s well-worn jokes, which I could easily hear in his distinctive, warm gravel tones. There are more great jokes peppered through the text, as well of bits of showbiz history and gossip. 

There are, too, some shocking moments such as the time Cryer tried to end his own life and was saved by his neighbour Douglas Camfield — then assistant floor manager on TV shows such as Garry Halliday and later a celebrated director on Doctor Who and other drama. But really this is a history of a hardworking, professional writer and performer plugging away at his trade as the entertainment world changed around him.

In early 1961, while still relatively green, Cryer and his friend Ted Dicks (no relation to Terrance, though their credits sometimes get muddled up) began writing for revue show This is Your Night Life. The show was headed by Danny La Rue, who we’re told described himself as a “female impersonator” rather than “drag artist”, and it was performed at Winston’s nightclub in London where La Rue had been in residence for some years. 

“Shows usually started at 12.45 am, meaning they often finished around 3 am. Almost all the performers, including Danny, had jobs in other West End shows and came to Winston’s afterwards” (p. 108)

The cast of This is Your Night Life included Terry Donovan, who Cryer married in 1962. Their son describes them cycling from their home in Maida Vale to rehearsals for Danny La Rue during the day. Terry would then cycle to her evening show in the West End and her husband would be off to a stand-up gig at the Players’ Theatre. They’d then head to Winston’s for 11 pm for their next performance, get home in the not-so-small hours and then do it all again, night after night after night. It’s exhausting and thrilling and mad. You can smell the cigarette smoke and tiredness.

Cryer Jnr says his dad was an almost perfect match for revue shows of this kind, given the OED’s definition of revue as “a light theatrical entertainment consisting of a series of short sketches, songs, and dances, typically dealing satirically with topical issues.” The fit was almost perfect because, “to my knowledge Strictly Come Dancing never called” (p. 78). 

To Cryer Jnr, that’s because revue matched his father’s love of “professional amateurism”, that mix of spontaneity and chaos where it seems as if the wheels might come off at any moment. I know exactly what he means, having grown up on Cryer Snr’s work with Kenny Everett on TV and hearing him on I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue on the radio. In fact, Cryer Jnr is good on why the late-night revue show on stage morphed into the panel show on radio and TV.

“The Theatres Act of 1968 meant that the Lord Chamberlain no longer had the power to censor the West End and a new kind of liberated and more confrontational voice was now being heard. Innuendo, that great staple of cabaret and Danny’s nightclub shows, not to mention one of Dad’s great weapons (if you pardon the, ahem, innuendo), was now seen as quite quaint.” (p. 174) 

The panel show, and Kenny Everett, allowed the informal, wheels-coming-off to continue in new guise.

Given Cryer Snr’s prolific career, of the many shows in different media mentioned in the book there’s a single, brief reference on p. 182 to Better Late…, a revue show broadcast over nine weeks on BBC Radio 4 in the summer of 1970, filling the gap while Any Answers? was on holiday. 

By Cryer Jnr’s reckoning of revue shows as given above, that mean it was a bit quaint, though BBC audience research reports from the time suggests that listeners were still uncomfortable — even outraged — to hear politicians being very lightly mocked.

Cryer didn’t write for the series; he was one of the performers led by Peter Reeves. Reeves also co-wrote the scripts with his friend Terrance Dicks — NB not, this time, Ted.

So, here’s some of what I can add about this long-forgotten revue show:

Better Late… was a kind of summer holiday for Terrance, who’d just completed work as script editor on Jon Pertwee’s first series as Doctor Who — the final episode of closing story Inferno, directed by Douglas Camfield (and, uncredited, by Barry Letts) was recorded on 29 May and went out on 20 June. Terrance duly commissioned scripts for the next series of Doctor Who and must have co-written this revue show while waiting for those scripts to come in. 

On Tuesday 7 July, Robert Holmes delivered his scripts for what was then called The Spray of Death, the debut story of Doctor Who’s 1971 series. The following day, Reeves, Cryer, Elizabeth Morgan and Bill Wallis, with producer John Dyas and I assume co-writer Terrance, rehearsed the first episode of Better Late… ahead of recording in the Paris studio at BBC Broadcasting House that evening, accompanied by the Max Harris Group and announcer David Dunhill. The show went out at 7.30 pm the following evening.

The pattern was basically the same for the next eight weeks.

Sadly, Better Late… no longer survives in audio form but the scripts are (mostly) held by the BBC’s Written Archives Centre. Since the revue show was topical, a lot of the material must have been written the week of recording and transmission, and skips in page numbering on surviving script pages suggests that a lot more material was written than used. The scripts also include many handwritten rewrites — refinements and rephrasings, whole jokes added or cut, the swapping of roles between performers. The sense is of a lot of work, right up to the last possible moment.

Terrance formally accepted draft scripts from Don Houghton for what was then called The Pandora Machine — the second story of the 1971 run of Doctor Who — on 2 September, the same day he was in rehearsals on the ninth and final episode of Better Late… The following week, finished on Better Late..., he completed edits on the scripts for The Spray of Death so it could go into production, received a storyline from Malcolm Hulke for the third story in the run, and commissioned Bob Baker and Dave Martin to write scripts for the fourth story.

So, he finished work on the 1970 series of Doctor Who, which had been something of an ordeal, plunged into this demanding radio series and then went straight back to Doctor Who. Exhausting, thrilling, mad! 

Social Care Today report: People First With AI and Tech-Enabled Care

I did some work on the new Social Care Today special report, People First With AI and Tech-Enabled Care, now available to download for free.

The report includes my interview with Luke Geoghegan, Head of Policy and Research at the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) about the way AI is already changing the provision of social work and care. A longer version of the interview is available on the SCT website.

There is also an interview with William Flint, Director of Bluebird Care NEW Devon, who oversaw a trial of the Access Assure system of discreet sensors in the home that monitors a person’s activity and is able to recognise anything out of the routine.

Other case studies in the report include the rollout of Cassius by Suffolk County Council, the Dorothy app designed to support people living with dementia and the Earzz acoustic monitoring system.

Penda’s Fen Scene by Scene, by Ian Greaves

This is an impressively detailed, close analysis of compellingly nuts and unsettling TV film Penda’s Fen, originally broadcast on BBC-1 on the evening of 21 March 1974. 

Ian Greaves — a friend for decades and now a stablemate at Ten Acre Books — devotes a chapter to each of the 27 scenes in the play, in order. He carefully compares different drafts of script and other sources, with new testimony from many of those who worked on it. Many of these chapters are followed by ‘Interludes’ that explore a topic in further depth — for example, the role of Sir Edward Elgar and his music, the history of one of Rudkin’s other plays (for radio), or biographies of leading figures in the cast and crew.

Of the latter, I was blown away by the extraordinary life and output of producer David Rose. I’ve often seen his name attached to compelling works of drama but Ian lays out how brilliant he was at facilitating good work from others. 

“In every anecdote about him, the wording and circumstances may vary, but they each tell the same story — of his light touch, his willingness to delegate, to enable good work, and above all to trust and empower those around him” (p. 123)

What an epitaph! 

The scene-by-scene analysis is so brilliantly done, full of top facts and smart insight. Then the last chapter, on the context of transmission, is a revelation. 

How extraordinary to see this weird film in the context of the otherwise mundane TV that day of broadcast, in the context of the oil crisis and in the context of everything else. We understand what Penda’s Fen is and its impacts, the mixed reactions to it at the time and after, by knowing what it sat amidst in the schedule and in people’s lives.

Ian then continues this to cover repeat screenings and the sharing of the play on video among jitter-fingered fans. So often, analysis of a particular TV programme or film sees its subject as a discreet unit, cut off from context. A film of this sort gets labelled as “folk horror” and bracketed with other stuff of what is seen as similar type. But that excises what made this so strange and jarring: it wasn’t like anything around it. By wading into that context, Ian makes Penda's Fen even more odd and interesting. 

I read the book a little guiltily, as it’s unrelated to the huge heap of work I need to get done on my forthcoming biography of Terrance Dicks (who, at the time that Penda’s Fen was first broadcast, was just coming to the end of his full-time job with the BBC as script editor of Doctor Who). And yet there are overlaps here. 

For example, on p. 151 Ian identifies two special effects shots in the play as the work of Bernard Lodge, who got the job in September 1973 and made use of his own version of the ‘slit scan’ technique from the end of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Of course, this was at just the same time that Lodge was also using the same technique to create the new opening title sequence for Doctor Who.

That prompted me to look at the transmission of Penda’s Fen in the context of Doctor Who. Of no interest to anyone but me, it went out in the week between Part Four of Death to the Daleks and Part One of The Monster of Peladon. That was also the week in which the novelisations Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon and Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks were meant to be published; the archive of the Official Doctor Who Fan Club of the time suggests that both books were delayed until July.

One of the things Ian discusses in the book is that Penda’s Fen was never expected to be repeated; viewers were expected to make up their minds about its strange, opaque meanings from a single viewing. That’s true of those working on Doctor Who in the same period. These things are, quite by accident beyond the cast and crew, ephemera that has endured for half a century now, while so much of the stuff around it has long faded.

The Heartless Sea

Big Finish have announced another new Doctor Who audio play I've written, to be released in February 2026.

The Heartless Sea by Simon Guerrier

As Harry Sullivan and Naomi Cross investigate the apparently haunted “Warehouse 9”, they come across someone who they didn’t expect to meet – the Doctor! But one who hasn’t met them yet… and soon after they find themselves dealing with the wrath of the most furious sea there has ever been. 

The story is part of Companion Chronicles: The Legacy of Time, paired up with a story called The Kraken of Hagwell by Barbara Hambly. What a thrill to be teamed up with Barbara, who I've sat on panels with at conventions.

The Heartless Sea stars Michael Troughton as Doctor Who, Eleanor Crooks as Naomi and Christopher Naylor as Harry. It is directed by Nicholas Briggs and produced by Dominic G Martin.

Doctor Who and the Planet of the Spiders, by Terrance Dicks

Peter Brookes’s cover artwork for this Doctor Who novelisation has haunted me since I first saw it, aged four. It was one of 16 covers featured, in colour, on the back of the Doctor Who Monster Book (1975) — which I’ll blog about in due course.* Of all of those books, this was the one I most pined for, because of the extraordinary cover. A book where you see the Doctor change…

Following the pattern of his covers for Doctor Who and the Giant Robot and Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons, Brookes focused the main part of the full-frame image on the story’s titular monster. Again as before, he shows a moment from very late in the story — in this case, the giant spider being revealed on Sarah’s back occurs on p. 106, just 15 pages from the end.

The inset image at the bottom of the frame happens even later. In fact, it happens beyond the pages of this book. Here’s how Terrance Dicks concludes his novelisation:

“‘Brigadier, look!’ said Sarah. ‘It’s starting.’

A golden glow was spreading round the Doctor’s body. Even as they watched, the features began to blur and change. ‘Well bless my soul,’ said the Brigadier. ‘Here we go again!’ (p. 120)

Note that we witness here only the beginning of the regenerative process. Unlike on TV, there is no glimpse of the new Doctor and, unusually for Terrance, no pithy, one-line description to distinguish this incarnation (“all teeth and curls”, as Terrance later put it). 

I think that’s because there was simply no need. The new Doctor’s face is featured on the cover, in the regeneration montage. Besides, when this book came out the new Doctor needed no introduction. 

This book was published on Thursday, 16 October 1975, two days before the final part of Planet of Evil went out on TV, the 27th of 35 new episodes of Doctor Who broadcast that calendar year, all starring this new Doctor. He’d also appeared, in character, on Disney Time and Jim’ll Fix It, and switched on the Blackpool Illuminations. Everyone knew what he looked like.

The back-cover blurb of the novelisation also focuses on the climactic moment of change, but provides a subtly different version:

“‘It’s happening, Brigadier! It’s happening!’ Sarah cried out. The Brigadier watched, fascinated, as the lifeless body of his old friend and companion, Dr Who, suddenly began to glow with an eerie golden light… The features were blurring, changing… ‘Well, bless my soul,’ said the Brigadier. ‘WHO will be next?’

Read the last exciting adventure of DR WHO’s 3rd Incarnation!”

Note that the text inside the book itself doesn’t answer the Brigadier’s question. The blurb also makes the Brigadier’s response fascinated rather than eyebrow-arching wry, and says the Doctor is his companion rather than the other way round. I don’t think Terrance wrote this.

But the golden light, and the “features” that blur and then change, are consistent in both versions. The implication, surely, is that Terrance delivered his manuscript and then Target editor Mike Glover or his assistant Liz Godfray reworked the last paragraph to make it function as a blurb. Their version may not match the text of the novelisation, and departs even further from what was seen on TV, but it’s also more active: “happening” rather than “starting”, and all at once fascinating, sudden and eerie.

The four-step regeneration shown on the cover surely owes something to an image from almost a year before: the four-step photo montage featured in Radio Times in December 1974 to promote the new Doctor’s debut in Part One of Robot. 

But that montage, in turn, surely derives from Peter Brookes’s own artwork for the Radio Times special marking the 10th anniversary of Doctor Who, published a year previously in December 1973. This shows seven ages of the Doctor: a four-step regeneration from the First to Second Doctor, and a four-step regeneration from the Second to Third.

In revisiting this idea for Doctor Who and the Planet of the Spiders, Brookes used the same composition, with each new face overlapping the last. The spacing between iterations is the same. Look, for example, at the final two faces in the Radio Times illustration:

The right-hand edge of the left-hand Doctor — i.e. his hairline — just meets the left-hand side of the next Doctor’s left eye. It’s the same with the first two faces on the book cover:

The book cover is smaller than the Radio Times illustration and correspondingly less detailed. It’s also less atmospherically lit and the Doctor’s gaze less piercing. Though the main and inset images of Jon Pertwee’s Third Doctor are good, the likeness of Tom Baker is not. 

Unfortunately, what we see here is an improved version of the Fourth Doctor. Brookes’ preparatory sketch was worse, prompting Doctor Who producer Philip Hinchcliffe to complain to Target on 1 May 1975 — five and a half months ahead of publication, giving us a sense of lead times on these books. The production team provided Brookes with more photographs of Baker, from which the artist produced the cover as seen on the book. (Source for this: The Target Book, p. 29, the sketch reproduced on p. 34).

Brookes did not work for the Target range again. From the next novelisation, Chris Achilleos was pressed back into service — more on that next time.* I raise this not to criticise Brookes (I really love this cover!) but it strikes me that he wasn’t the only one to depart the Target range following complaints about the artwork. 

Barry Letts — Hinchcliffe’s predecessor as producer — recalled that he “always disliked the internal illustrations” in the books and, presented with the artwork for his own novelisation Doctor Who and the Daemons (1974), insisted that one image be redrawn. He did this, “at a meeting with [editor] Richard Henwood and the artist” (The Target Book, p. 21). Letts says they complied with his request but I wonder if we can read anything into the fact that the artist in question, Alan Willow, was commissioned to provide artwork for a further six Target Doctor Who titles but Letts did not write for the range again for 20 years.

Maybe there wasn’t any great falling out. There could be other reasons why Letts didn’t write another book sooner. He says in his memoir Who and Me that he often struggled with writing deadlines. He would also have had other commitments as a freelance TV director. Whatever the reason, it makes Letts very unusual: for the first decade of the Target range of Doctor Who novelisations, he was the only author to write just one book. 

(Caveats a gogo: By “first decade”, I’m counting from Richard Henwood first working on the range, in late 1972. Bill Strutton is also a one-off Target novelist but Doctor Who and the Zarbi (1973) was a reprint of a book originally published in 1965. Following Letts, the next one-off author for the Target range was Andrew Smith, with Full Circle published in September 1982. By that time, Terrance had published 43 of his 64 Doctor Who novelisations, Malcolm Hulke 7, Ian Marter 4 (+5 to come), Gerry Davis 3 (+2), Philip Hinchcliffe 3, Brian Hayles 2 and John Lydecker 1 (+1).)

Letts’s sole novelisation is adapted from his own TV serial, co-written with Robert Sloman, and Target had scheduled two more novelisations of Letts/Sloman stories. Doctor Who and the Green Death and Doctor Who and the Planet of the Spiders are listed as “in preparation” in the first edition of Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen, published 21 November 1974 — just a month after Letts’s Doctor Who and the Daemons.

My suspicion, then, is that Letts was initially signed up to novelise three of his own four TV serials. (Of the fourth, “I would agree that The Time Monster is flawed in a number of ways,” he says in his memoir, p. 153.) But, having delivered the first book, I think something changed and the other two stories were reassigned. Malcolm Hulke novelised The Green Death (published 21 August 1975, the only Hulke novelisation not from a Hulke script), and Terrance took Planet of the Spiders.

Doctor Who and the Planet of the Spiders is a breezy, exciting story, the six half-hour TV episodes conveyed in just 115 pages of text. Even with ads for other books etc, it’s a slim volume — thinner than other Target novelisations that are also 128 pages, not least the next one. My memory is that, as a child, I found this less daunting than other Doctor Who books.

Even so, Terrance takes the opportunity to add to events seen on screen with a short prologue, bringing us up to speed with what emeritus companion Jo Jones (nee Grant) has been up to since last seen on screen / the end of the last-published book. To get the story started with a bang, she is facing death.

This prologue is, I think, steeped in the kind of adventure fiction Terrance had grown up with and still loved. The indigenous people of South America are “Indians” here, “used to be head hunters not too long ago” (p. 9) and Jo speaks of them being “on the warpath” (p. 7). Professor Clifford Jones, on screen a kind-hearted hippie, is now more like Indiana Jones (a character who debuted in 1981 but was drawn from similar archetypes). Jones is an “explorer” (p. 7), “fluent in all the Indian dialects” — because, Jo thinks, having learnt Welsh anything else “must seem simple” (p. 8) — and ready to defend himself with “the heavy revolver packed somewhere at the bottom of his luggage” (p. 7). 

It will be interesting to see how this kind of thing compares to the Mounties trilogy, the non Doctor Who books Terrance wrote for Target around the same time. (If you can’t wait, there’s a compelling review of the first Mounties book, The Great March West, by the great Matthew Kilburn.)

We’re quickly back to the story as seen on screen, the Doctor and the Brigadier spending an evening out at a cabaret show. It’s mostly told from the Brigadier’s perspective: he groans at the comedian’s jokes while the Doctor chuckles along. We then switch to the Doctor’s POV, when he’s left “open-mouthed” after the Brigadier “makes one of his rare jokes” (p. 13). As in previous books, Terrance is really good on the enduring friendship of these two very different characters. 

Then, wallop, he drops a bomb: for all the Doctor might enjoy his night out, we’re told it’s “the prelude to the most dangerous adventure of his life” (p. 14).

Things largely follow the TV story, though Terrance adds some fun details. Sarah Jane Smith, for example, is “researching a story on grass-roots resistance to property speculation [in London] for that [unspecified] magazine” (p. 14). It’s akin to the stuff about her day-job in Doctor Who and the Giant Robot. 

When we glean something of the Brigadier’s love-life, we’re told that Doris gave him his wrist watch when he was still a “gay young subaltern” (p. 22), i.e. long before his first screen appearance in The Web of Fear. At the end of the story on TV, Brigadier offers some comfort to Sarah, who is losing hope of seeing the Doctor again given that he’s been missing for three weeks.

“Oh, that’s nothing. One time I didn’t see him for months — and what's more when he did turn up, he had a new face.” 

The implication is that the events of The Invasion take place just months before Spearhead from Space, perhaps even in the same year. In The Invasion, the Brigadier says it “must be four years” since his first meeting with the Doctor in The Web of Fear. The novelisation of Planet of the Spiders muddles these two things:

“‘That’s nothing,’ said the Brigadier stoutly. ‘After the first time I met him, we didn’t meet again for some years. And then he turned up with a completely different face.’” (p. 119)

But otherwise the novelisation is peppered with neat little fixes. Here, the villainous Lupton and his cronies acquire their nefarious powers by stealing “forbidden books” (p. 30) from the monastery — making me wonder if K’anpo Rinpoche has brought volumes to Earth from his home planet. The Doctor feels guilt for the death of Professor Clegg, even though the man is revealed to have had a heart condition (pp. 32-3), whereas the death is rather glossed over on screen. Another neat fix is to describe UNIT as a “semi-secret organisation” (p. 40), what with its poor record on security.

The planet Metebelis 3 is more impressive than on TV. As well as the sheep mentioned but not seen on screen, there are also fields tended by the humans. Perhaps the biggest change, though, is the death of Lupton — his battered corpse held in the air by the murderous spiders, who then close in to feast on his body (p. 113). Even Earth is more impressive: in the aerial chase, Terrance tells us about tactics, and how the Red Baron made use of the position of the Sun to hide himself from his enemies (p. 47); that implies a sunnier day than the drizzle seen on TV.

I’ve noted before Terrance’s delight in dropping a precise, unusual word into his straight-forward novelisations. That doesn’t really happen here, though I suppose “regenerate” (p. 109) is a big, mind-blowing concept, even if taken from the scripts. But this is also the first book in which he refers to the Doctor’s car, Bessie, as a “roadster” (p. 39).

Technically, it’s not the right word: a roadster is a two-seater without a fixed roof whereas Bessie is a four-seater tourer. But I think “roadster” works better to convey a mental image of the a cheerful, characterful motor, the kind of car seen in Genevieve or filched by Mr Toad. Oh, and speaking of Terrance’s delight in specific words, what joy that K’Anpo, dying, refers to himself as “had it”.

“He produced the newly-learned colloquialism with evident pride” (p. 114)

Several additions to what we see or hear on screen explore the philosophy underlying the story. The Doctor and K’Anpo discuss, in “sonorous Tibetan”, obscure and ancient texts. But their conversation about fitting an ocean into a goldfish bowl (p. 58) has a wider bearing; it’s an analogy for the TARDIS and so for Doctor Who as a whole. 

On TV, K’Anpo speaks of the coming of, “The moment I have been waiting for,” which is “the moment of truth” for both himself and the Doctor in facing what is to come. In the book, K’Anpo is more pointed about the nature of this threat:

“‘The moment of death,’ said the old man placidly. ‘The moment I have been waiting for.’” (p. 109)

There’s an echo of this in the Fourth Doctor’s final words at the end of Logopolis, where the moment is prepared for. Coincidence — or did Christopher H Bidmead read this novelisation before he wrote the next story to kill off a Doctor?

With Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen, the last novelisation Terrance wrote while in his day-job as script editor on TV Doctor Who, I suggested that Barry Letts advised him on the details of life in a Buddhist monastery. I don’t think that happened in this case, perhaps because they no longer shared an office. For one thing, the novelisation lacks the same kind of specific detail. For another, there’s evidence that Terrance worked from draft scripts, for example when he calls UNIT’s medical officer “Sweetman” not “Sullivan” (p. 35) — a detail Barry Letts would have picked up on, having cast Ian Marter as Harry Sullivan. 

Had Letts been consulted, he may have had different ideas about what happens to the newly enlightened Tommy after the events of this story. Terrance has Tommy go to University — with a capital U (p. 120) — I think following in Terrance’s own footsteps as a working-class grammar-school student caught in what he called an “educational updraft” that transformed his life.

There’s a hint in this novelisation of Terrance’s life transforming once again, no longer in partnership with his producer and now a freelance out on on his own. This was Barry’s TV story but it is Terrance’s book.

Next time: Doctor Who — The Three Doctors. Only first read below...

* These long, detailed posts about old Doctor Who novelisations written by Terrance Dicks have proven to be a lot more popular than I expected. In recent weeks, the site stats for this ‘ere old blog have gone off the scale. So, first of all, thank you for reading.

But also, posts like this take time and effort when I should be working. If I’m going to do more, I’ll also need to buy some of the rarer of Terrance’s books which are expensive. Basically, I can’t keep doing these posts for free. 

A few people have been in touch to suggest I should set this up as a paid newsletter. Looking into the details, that all seems a bit involved and requiring of commitments. Instead, I’ve set up a simple Kofi account.

I’ve busked for your entertainment, now I’m rattling the tin. Throw in a coin or two and I’ll busk some more. If not, I will shuffle off into the shadows.

Bret Vyon Lives!

Big Finish have announced the details of Bret Vyons Lives!, the second volume of adventures for the Space Security Service. This time, as well as being producer, I've written one of the three stories. 

The set is out in January. Blurb and puff as follows:

Bret Vyon Lives!

Jane Slavin and Joe Sims encounter some familiar faces in the second volume of full-cast Space Security Service audio adventures, due for release January 2026. 

The guardians of the Solar System – agents Anya Kingdom (Jane Slavin), Mark Seven (Joe Sims), and Sola Akinyemi (Madeline Appiah) – return for three thrilling original adventures. 

Their most dangerous enemies, the Daleks (Nicholas Briggs), are back, in greater numbers than ever, exterminating their way across the cosmos. And when she becomes their prisoner, Anya encounters a man she used to know and love – her uncle Bret Vyon. 

This Space Security Service agent was originally played by Nicholas Courtney in 1965-66 Doctor Who TV serial The Daleks’ Master Plan, and here is voiced by Jon Culshaw. Anya knows her uncle is dead, so who is this living, breathing Bret Vyon? 

The Worlds of Doctor Who – Space Security Service: Bret Vyon Lives! is now available to pre-order for just £19.99 (as a digital download to own). 

The three exciting interplanetary adventures are: 

The Man Inside by Simon Guerrier 

Anya Kingdom is a prisoner of the Daleks on a very peculiar space station orbiting a very peculiar star. The Daleks don’t want to kill Anya; they want to break her down psychologically.  

One way to do that is to lock her in a cell with someone Anya knows is a fake. Whoever, whatever, this man really is, he cannot be her beloved uncle. Bret Vyon is dead, end of story. 

But if Anya is to survive, she will need his help… 

The Wages of Death by David Llewellyn 

Furiosa 237 is a remote world in the hinterlands of the galaxy. Anya and Mark teleport in and quickly take jobs on a cargo shop. They’re undercover – on an urgent, secret mission. 

Their task is to locate a device called a Progenitor, then drop it into the nearest black hole — and quickly, before it can hatch. 

But at least one person on board is determined to save the Progenitor and unleash its deadly contents: a whole army of Daleks. 

The Sky is for Sale by James Kettle 

A huge satellite mines the atmosphere of Saturn. Following a number of threats, agent Sola Akinyemi of the Space Security Service is on board, tasked with keeping the workers and their families safe. 

Meanwhile, Anya Kingdom is at Triple-S headquarters, working to expose and eradicate corruption in the service. But just as she’s making progress, HQ is attacked. And then the mining satellite is invaded – by a different hostile force! 

In the desperate battle that follows, Anya and Sola will have to make impossible choices. Who can they really trust? And what horrors are they willing to sanction if it means defeating the Daleks? 

The guest cast of Space Security Service: Bret Vyon Lives! includes Shobu Kapoor (We Are Lady Parts), Forbes Masson (The High Life), and Louiza Patikas (The Archers), plus further names yet to be announced. 

Producer and writer Simon Guerrier said: “Anya Kingdom faces her greatest challenge yet as a prisoner of the Daleks. But help is at hand from the least expected person – Bret Vyon, traitor of the SSS and Anya's long-dead uncle! With this second batch of adventures, we really wanted to raise the stakes. With the Daleks on the warpath, Earth's future depends on alliances – but who can Anya really trust? 

“What a delight it’s been working on this set of three thrilling adventures steeped in the rich lore that Terry Nation created all those years ago. I’ve loved every stage of collaboration with John Dorney and Barnaby Kay on this compelling, fast-paced series. 

“The one I've written is a particular treat. An age ago, I worked on stories featuring SSS agent Sara Kingdom as played by the brilliant Jean Marsh. So it's been a particular pleasure to revisit Sara’s brother Bret and tell something of his side of their fateful story. And then there's what David and James have written to follow... Oh, just you wait!” 

Big Finish listeners can save money by pre-ordering Bret Vyon Lives! in a multibuy bundle with the previous volume of Space Security Service (June 2025’s The Voord in London) for just £38 (download to own). 

All the above prices (including pre-order and multibuy bundle discounts) are fixed for a limited time only and guaranteed no later than 28 February 2026.

The Official Doctor Who Fan Club vol 1, by Keith Miller

In late 1971, 13 year-old Keith Miller from Edinburgh wrote to the BBC to ask about the status of the official Doctor Who fan club, run for the two previous years by Graham Tattersall. Within months, Miller had taken over as secretary and thrown himself into things with great zeal. He soon produced Official Doctor Who Fan Club (ODWFC) pens and badges, a newsletter — the first ever Doctor Who fanzine — and got the popular comic TV Action + Countdown to print his name and address, so that fans across the country could send off for these goodies.

Oh blimey. Then he had to deliver.

It’s an extraordinary story, which I’ve read before, told through contemporary paperwork: the original newsletters and a wealth of correspondence. Miller didn’t keep copies of the letters he himself wrote; what’s here are the replies, mostly from Sarah Newman, secretary to Doctor Who producer Barry Letts. 

Newman was encouraging, warm-hearted and patient, helping where she could by providing addresses of Doctor Who cast and crew he could interview, as well as stencils for Keith to produce the newsletters so that she can then have them duplicated, and reminding him to not let the club get in the way of school work. She’s kind and practical when Keith’s father suddenly dies, having lost her own father when she was around the same age. Newman is also stern when she needs to be, and doesn’t mask her thoughts about some other young, keen fans — famously, including one P. Capaldi. It’s all rather raw and unguarded and sometimes excruciating, but also very moving.

Keith and his newly widowed mum journeyed down to London to visit the studio recording of Carnival of Monsters, Keith telling us in his notes which celeb he stood next to in the urinals of TV Centre. A year later, he was trusted to make the journey on his own to see recording of The Three Doctors; he made the nine-hour journey, visited the studio and then raced for the bus home, all in one very long day. 

There are some very interesting details for my own selfish needs. For example, the first original Target novelisations, Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion and Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters were scheduled to be published on 17 January 1974 but according to Target editor Richard Henwood here, the widespread shortage of newsprint meant they were delayed for several weeks. The next pair of books, Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon and Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks were then due for publication in March but, according to Keith’s newsletter, delayed until July — which explains the big gap between their scheduled release date and the next books published by Target, that September.

This and other such minutiae help to illuminate the timeline I’ve already built up from other sources, and provides leads for further enquiry. I have much more to say (about the changing running order of stories in production and the actors expected to be in them, about a particular party…), but I’ll save it for my book.

The last letter in here, dated 2 September 1974, is from Ann Burnett, secretary to incoming Doctor Who producer Philip Hinchcliffe. As Keith says in his closing words, there was no goodbye from those he’d been in constant touch for years. How abrupt. How haunting. My sense from the notes is that it still feels raw.

Doctor Who and the Giant Robot by Terrance Dicks

First published on 13 March 1975, this book must have come as a surprise to the now well-established readership of these Doctor Who novelisations. For one thing, it had not been listed among titles “in preparation” in previous books — not even in Doctor Who and the Cybermen, published just 22 days before. 

From this and other evidence we can deduce that Doctor Who and the Giant Robot was commissioned relatively late, fast-tracked through production (with no internal illustrations, saving time) and then slipped into the existing schedule as swiftly as possible, the first of a relaunched range. 

That’s another thing that would have surprised readers: this book looked and felt very different.

First editions of the initial 12 Doctor Who novelisations, published between 2 May 1973 and 19 February 1975, are easily distinguished. The covers are all in a similar style and by one artist, Chris Achilleos. He later recalled that he was asked to emulate the work,

“that Frank Bellamy had done for the [listings magazine] Radio Times; in fact it turned out that they had already asked Frank if he would do them but he had turned them down, so they asked if I would do them in that style” (The Target Book, by David J Howe with Tim Neal, p. 22).

Bellamy produced a great deal of Doctor Who artwork for Radio Times — enough to fill a book. The Target team seem to have a favoured a particular piece: the striking cover art Bellamy produced to promote the 1972 series of Doctor Who and the return of the Daleks.

Frank Bellamy’s cover for
Radio Times, 1-7 January 1972

Compare that to the first of the cover art Achilleos completed for Target:

Chris Achilleos’s cover for
Doctor Who and the Crusaders, 1973

In both, there’s a prominent, stippled black-and-white portrait of the Doctor, surrounded by smaller illustrations of the antagonists in the given story, largely in bright colours, along with stars and cosmic phenomena. This dynamic montage is on a white background and takes up the lower part of the frame, so as not to obscure the title logo in black and other wording — which are all the more striking against white.

That is also true of the next 11 books. On these early novelisations, the Doctor Who logo dominates in big, thick, black letters, establishing the range. The rest of the title is in smaller lettering but still bold capitals, in a striking colour that compliments the artwork. 

The spine of each book is in the same colour as its title. That makes the books, together, distinctive even lined up on a shelf — iconic, in the true sense of the word.

Ten of the first 12 Target books, and four
of the relaunched titles with white spines

Picking up a first edition of one of these initial 12, they also have some heft. They all — with one exception — comprise 160 pages, or five sections of 32 pages, on relatively thick paper. (Doctor Who and the Sea-Devils is 144 pages but still feels substantial.)

The start of each new section is easy to spot: they are marked at the foot of the page with the initials of the title and then a letter indicating the sequence in which they should be bound. For example, Doctor Who and the Cybermen by Gerry Davis has “D.W.A.T.C.—B” at the foot of page 33, “D.W.A.T.C.—C” at the foot of page 65, “D.W.A.T.C.—D” on p. 97 and ‘D.W.A.T.C.—E” on p. 121.

(John Easson at the British Printing Society tells me that that the spines of sections were also often marked, usually in descending “steps”, to make the correct sequence obvious in binding — but I’m not unpicking the covers of my precious books to check! I’ve consulted John about the mechanics of producing subsequent editions of these books, more on which anon. Maybe. If you are good.)

Doctor Who and the Giant Robot begins a lengthy run of shorter novels, reduced by 20% to 128 pages and four sections — with some longer books on occasion. That this was as part of an overall relaunch of the range is evident from the cover, which boasts a bold new look.

First, there’s the distinctive new logo to better match the one used on TV and now in vibrant cover. The artwork by Peter Brookes is in a very different style to that by Chris Achilleos. While it still has a comic-strip flavour (Brookes says in The Target Book that he, too, was asked to emulate Frank Bellamy), this is full frame instead of a montage of selected items on white. The logo and wording are placed on top of the artwork — partially obscuring one of the planes as it blasts away at the Robot. 

The comic-strip feel is further conveyed by there being two different-sized panels on the cover, and two more on the back. On the cover, prominence is given to the titular monster, emphasising its giant size by showing it attacked by small planes and clutching a human. On the back, we see its huge foot kicking a truck, scattering tiny soldiers. This is perhaps overselling the contents of the book, in which the Robot is giant-sized for a mere four pages (pp. 116-120). 

That emphasis on the Robot is striking. The new incarnation of the Doctor and new companion Sarah Jane Smith, both making their debuts in the range of novelisations, appear only as small insets. Neither is a particularly good likeness. Compare that to the cover of Doctor Who and the Sea-Devils, published some six months before this, where immediately recognisable portraits of the Doctor and Jo Grant are bigger and more prominent than the monsters.

In fact, the relaunch doesn’t even feature the Doctor in the main cover artwork. Instead, his head is part of the new logo, in the “o” of “Who”. The plan was for the next books in the series to follow the same format, as we can see from Brookes’s original sketches for Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons and Doctor Who and the Green Death, as published in The Target Book (pp. 32-33). These both use the same illustration of the Third Doctor’s head. 

My guess is that this was to streamline the process of producing cover art, whether because each stipple-portrait took time or because every new likeness required approval from the BBC. I wonder, too, if this new format meant Brookes could produce covers more quickly and therefore at lower cost than whatever Achilleos was paid.

Brookes and Achilleos say in The Target Book that the changeover was to give the latter a break from the relentless schedule. But I think other factors were also in play. Businesses often look for ways to reduce internal costs and maximise profits. The Target Book also explains that while the Doctor Who books sold very well, Target’s parent company in the US was in trouble and draining money from the London office. 

Then there was the global shortage of newsprint — the paper on which newspapers and books are printed — which had delayed publication of Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion and Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters, according to Target editor Richard Henwood in a letter to fan Keith Miller on 1 February 1974 (see Miller’s The Official Doctor Who Fan Club vol 1, p. 194). The shortage continued over subsequent months; in July 1974, Michael Meacher MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Industry, provided a Written Answer on newsprint manufacture in the UK, providing statistics that production had fallen from 789,400 tonnes in 1969 to 441,900 four years later.

These factors, between them, may explain why the relaunched range of Target books had a significantly reduced word count while selling for the same price. In fact, my second-edition reprint of Doctor Who and the Giant Robot, published in Autumn 1975, retailed at 40p, double the RRP of each of the first three Target novelisations when published just two years previously. Less book, twice the price, and selling so fast they went to reprint in months — the bosses must have been delighted.

I wondered if the reduced word count was part of the brief that incoming Target editor Mike Glover gave Terrance Dicks when they met for lunch on 30 April 1974, two days before Terrance began work writing Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons. Did he initially write that as a 160-page book, then get commissioned to write Doctor Who and the Giant Robot quickly at 128 pages and, once he’d completed that, go back to Terror of the Autons and cut it down to matching size?

The archive of Terrance’s papers includes several original typescripts for his Doctor Who novelisations, though sadly not for Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons. But the archive also includes the 1974 diary in which he recorded progress on writing the book, which says that chapter 1, written between 2 and 3 May 1974, comprised 10 pages. The published version runs from pages 7 to 16, so it’s roughly the same. 

That record of progress on writing ends with him reaching Chapter 10 at a total of 84 pages; it’s 96 pages in the book (up to page 103, with the story starting on page 7), but the book includes several internal illustrations by Alan Willow which take up space. The implication is that the full typescript, comprising 12 chapters, was about 100 pages. With Willow’s illustrations, front matter (title page, indicia, lists of other books in the range), that gives 128 pages of book. It’s certainly nowhere near enough to fill 160 pages. So Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons was always meant to be this length.

But I also don’t think this was a new direction for Terrance. Here is where things go a bit hardcore. There are even graphs.

The excellent, exhaustive Based on the Popular BBC Television Serial by Paul MC Smith provides word counts for the main text of each Target novelisation. Here is the data for the first 12 in order, with the titles of those written by Terrance:

The first six of these books are roughly between 45,000 and 50,000 words, except for Terrance’s one contribution which is more like 40,000. The second six books are roughly between 40,000 and 45,000 words, excerpt for Terrance’s two which are more like 35,000.

The relaunch saw a drastic reduction in word count by all authors compared to the first 12 books (in darker orange below) — but Terrance, now writing a greater proportion of the Doctor Who novelisations, still delivered fewer words in each one than his peers.

This isn’t always obvious from the physical books themselves. The wordiest of the first 12 novelisations, Doctor Who and the Daemons (49,699 words) contains the same number of pages as the least wordy title, Terrance’s Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen (34,723). That uniformity required some skill from the typesetter. Differences in leading and font size mean a full page of text in Doctor Who and the Dæmons contains 38 lines but in Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen there are 34. 

Some books were also padded out with adverts for other titles; the first advert at the back of Doctor Who and the Giant Robot is for, er, Doctor Who and the Giant Robot. (Paul MC Smith tells me he discounted this extra material from his word counts.)

But I don’t think Terrance was skimping on work by producing shorter books. His editors could always have asked him for additional material if they felt a book needed padding out. In fact, the work he delivered seems to have been cut. The surviving typescript of Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion includes a whole section in the prologue not included in the published book: following the Second Doctor’s trial, Time Lord Scanners cooly observe Earth and then, on the planet’s surface, UNIT’s Lance Corporal Walmsley detects the incoming meteor shower. (There’s no female UNIT Officer in charge, as played on screen by Tessa Shaw.)

As a result, I think the shorter books are evidence of Terrance’s dictum, as cited by his friend Barry Letts:

 “Anything can be cut, and cutting will always improve it.” (Letts, Who and Me, p. 154)

He wrote short, pithy novels because they were better. Incoming editor Mike Glover could see the sense of this, editorially and to save paper / reduce internal costs, and asked other authors to follow Terrance’s lead.

So what about the book itself?

Doctor Who and the Giant Robot was published just 54 days after the conclusion of the TV serial on which it was based. It’s a relatively faithful prose version of what we see on screen but with some notable differences. The TV serial begins where the previous story ends, continuing the scene in which the Doctor regenerates. (This was all the more seamless on TV because Planet of the Spiders was repeated, in omnibus form, the day before Part One of Robot went out.)

In the book, Terrance switches the first two scenes so that we now begin with the Robot — as with the cover, focused on the monster. When we return to the Doctor’s laboratory at UNIT, it’s been a several days since he regenerated.

We can deduce that Terrance wrote the novelisation from his own scripts, not the versions amended in rehearsal by the cast and director. Hence the Doctor doesn’t skip with Harry Sullivan, he doesn’t say “There’s no such word as can’t” or the Brigadier’s middle name, and he uses a pencil and paper rather than typing at super-speed. At the end, the Doctor vanquishes the Giant Robot from a UNIT Land Rover driven by Harry Sullivan not Benton. The Doctor's car Bessie does not feature in the book at all.

Terrance seems to have muddled up what he must have been told about the new Doctor’s costume, which he describes as,

“wide corduroy trousers, a sort of tweed hacking-jacket with a vaguely Edwardian look, and a loose flannel shirt” (p. 24)

It’s the other way round: in Robot, the new Doctor wears tweed trousers and a corduroy hacking jacket.

The book adds several lovely details. The Robot kills an unnamed sentry, then lays out the man’s body “almost tenderly” (p. 8). Terrance repeats the word “tenderly” when the Robot kills two further victims, on p. 22 and p. 55, making this a telling bit of character detail. Three times we’re told that the robot is a bit like a giant cat (p. 37, p. 67 and p. 117), again I think helping to build the reader’s sympathy for the machine. 

Another repeated word is the unfortunate sentry’s “ruddy” (used by other characters on p. 17, p. 18, p. 89 (twice) and p. 106). I wonder if Terrance was told that word was okay for child readers, and so used it wherever he could.

There’s more threat in the book than on TV. While the Doctor is recuperating at the start, the Brigadier refers to his friend’s comatose state as a “living death” (p.11), a disturbing idea that works here because more time has passed since the regeneration. When the Doctor recovers, he rifles through the pockets of his former self’s clothes — mirroring a scene in Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion (and in the script of Spearhead from Space but which never made it to the screen). When the Doctor battles the Robot, it throws him across the room (p. 83). It’s also nice that we get to share Harry’s first sight of the interior of the TARDIS; on TV that would have required an additional set.

Some additions are less about threat or scale but about better establishing character, such as why journalist Sarah Jane Smith wants access to Thinktank (one word):

“You see [a very Terrance phrase!], I’m very keen to get away from all this woman’s angle stuff, and if I could come up with a really good scientific story…” (p. 13)

Later, she’s worried about heading off in the TARDIS because she has “deadlines to meet” (p. 122), again helping to make her real (and riffing off Terrance’s own new freelance status). It’s from Sarah’s perspective that we first see Harry, who she likens to Biggles, Bulldog Drummond and the heroes of the Boy’s Own Paper (p. 15). We later learn that her journalistic instincts are dead right:

“Suddenly Harry spoke up. ‘What you need, sir, is an inside man.’ He produced the phrase with obvious pride. ‘Someone planted to keep tabs on them.’ Harry spent a good deal of his off-duty time reading lurid thrillers” (p. 49)

Of course, the italicised phrases are examples of Terrance’s love of specific vocabulary, despite his reputation for simple, straightforward prose. On p. 80, the Doctor is described as a “mountebank”, while on p. 119 he refers to the metal-eating virus as a “bucket of jollop”. (On the same page, he refers to Harry as “my boy”, perhaps a ghost of an early draft, before Tom Baker had been cast.)

I think the book reveals some of the influences on the original story. On p. 114, the Doctor muses that the Robot is suffering from an Oedipal complex, which is surely a reference to the robopsycology of Isaac Asimov’s famous sci-fi stories. (And also makes me wonder what plans the Robot had in mind for Sarah once the rest of humanity had been destroyed...)

The Giant Robot being attacked by planes, as seen on the cover, is obviously drawn from King Kong. But it’s notable that Terrance says the Robot grows to “fifty feet” tall — the specific figure surely suggesting he had in mind Attack of the 50 Ft Woman (1958).

But the reference that stopped me in my tracks was the one about the,

“peculiar business at the meditation centre.* ...

* Told in DOCTOR WHO AND THE PLANET OF THE SPIDERS” (p. 9)

This was the previous TV adventure — but the book that Terrance would write next, published seven months after this one. It is whetting the appetite of readers. But also, up to this point, his books had made reference to other, already published Target titles. This, just at the moment he greatly increased his output, is the first sign of him thinking in series, of books still to come. 

It is a footnote from the future.

• See my list of 236 books by Terrance Dicks 
• My biography, Written by Terrance Dicks, will be published by Ten Acre Books next year 

ETA: I hadn't intended this to be a series of posts on each of Terrance's books in turn, but the ones so far have gained quite a following and a few kind readers have even been in touch to suggest that they'd be willing to pay for more. That would certainly be useful in my efforts to source some of Terrance's more obscure book, whether I buy them second hand or hole up in libraries and archives.

I've had a look at options and have set up a Ko-fi account. All donations gratefully received. I'll keep going so long as there is sufficient demand...