The Claws of Axos

Target novelisation Doctor Who and the Claws of Axos

Author	Terrance Dicks
Published	1977
ISBN	0 426 11703 4
First Edition Cover	Chris Achilleos

Back cover blurb: 'Axos calling Earth, Axos calling Earth...' The creatures stood before them, beautiful golden humanoids, offering friendship and their priceless Axonite, in return for - what? Only DOCTOR WHO remains suspicious. What is the real reason for the Axons' sudden arrival on Earth? And why is the evil Master a passenger on their spaceship? He very soon finds out...

• So just what is a Time Loop? by Tim Roll-Pickering

So just what is a Time Loop? by Tim Roll-Pickering 18/2/04

The television story The Claws of Axos is one of the weakest of the Pertwee years and the its failure to appear amongst the earliest Target originated novelisations may have been a hint that the story would not be novelised for a good time yet - especially since another great failure of the Pertwee years, The Time Monster, was also overlooked and was not to be novelised until 1986. However the book eventually appeared in 1977, at a time when Terrance Dicks had just produced one of his best novelisations, Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth, and it seems that the effort was not a one off as Doctor Who and the Claws of Axos feels like another book which is more than a mere retread of the camera scripts. The printed page lacks the horror of dodgy rubber tentacles and missing CSO backgrounds, whilst when the book came out in 1977 there were eleven novelisations released that year but this was the only Pertwee-UNIT story amongst them and so the formulaic elements did not stand out as much.

The novelisation is also far more successful than the television story in exploring the relationship between UNIT and the British government. On television this gets buried heavily amidst Chinn's arrogance and determination to control the situation but here we get some passages explaining how relations between UNIT and Whitehall are poor, with a new "super" Ministry of Security trying to bring all the intelligence organisations under a single controlling body but UNIT's UN status complicating matters. Throw in a civil servant that the Minister can't stand and decides to send to UNIT in the hope that at least one problem will be sorted out and the result is an explosive situation! Dicks takes great delight in showing the Brigadier's annoyance with Chinn, wishing he could send the man to a firing squad! The conflict between the two is all too clear, with the Doctor, the Axons and the reader all seeing Chinn's assertions of British control as being incredibly narrow minded and over localised. Unfortunately all Bill Filer brings to the story are some humourous scenes where he humiliates Chinn by refusing to discuss the Master with him, but otherwise his role in the plot is superfluous and in later years his role would clearly have been taken on by Captain Yates, Sergeant Benton or Harry Sullivan. However the character does at least come across as a determined individual rather than the spoof of a spy that appeared on television.

Otherwise Terrance Dicks does a lot to enhance the story, with many subtle additions to scenes - the ending where the Doctor, the Brigadier, Yates and Benton are all arguing over the transportation of the TARDIS whilst Jo notes that nothing has changed is a particular highlight - as well as enhancing characters through comments on their thoughts, even those with minor roles such as Sir George Hardiman who finds to his delight that after years and years of conferences and board meetings he can still carry out practical work when he disconnects the cables even though he gets killed in the back blast. The scenes where the Doctor is seemingly planning to escape Earth also have a new edge to them, with Jo genuinely believing that the Doctor could have decided to save his own skin, something that was never in doubt on screen. There is also an attempt to show that the Axon invasion is not confined just to Britain by reference to what happens to the Axonite samples around the world, something many a more straightforward novelisation would have left out. However there is still no clear explanation as to just what a Time Loop actually is, making the story's resolution feel very much like a "magic wand" solution to the problem. Despite these limitations, Doctor Who and the Claws of Axos remains a competent adaptation of the story that is far preferable to the video. 7/10