The Curse of Peladon

Target novelisation Doctor Who and the Curse of Peladon

Author	Brian Hayles
Published	1974
ISBN	0 426 10452 8
First Edition Cover	Chris Achilleos

Back cover blurb: Again, the terrifying cry rang out. The Doctor quickened his pace along the gloomy tunnels of the castle. Suddenly, from the darkness lumbered the mighty Aggedor, Royal Beast and Protector of the Kingdom of Peladon! The Doctor fumbled in his pocket. Would the device work? As he trained the spinning mirror on the eyes of Aggedor, the terrible claws came closer and closer... What is the secret behind the killings on the Planet of Peladon? Is Aggedor seeking revenge because the King of Peladon wants his kingdom to become a member of the Galactic Federation? Will the Doctor escape the claws of Aggedor and discover the truth?

• No longer the best use of the medium... by Tim Roll-Pickering

No longer the best use of the medium... by Tim Roll-Pickering 11/12/03

The television story of The Curse of Peladon is one of the most successful attempts to create an alien environment, with a well developed backstory supporting a highly sophisticated tale in which every character stands out and is brought to life. Of special note is the way that the Ice Warriors are shown to have changed their ways, both confounding the viewer's preconceptions but also showing a strong degree of originality when many other creators reusing their own monsters would be content to merely churn out a rehash of the monsters doing what they always do. The design work is supportive, with only Aggedor letting the side down by being a cuddly teddy bear instead of a creature that can spawn fearsome legends, but otherwise it's hard to fault the story. Thus Brian Hayles producing the novelisation of his own scripts should be an automatic winner.

And yet reading the novelisation there is a strong sense that something is lacking. For the most part Hayles follows the order of events seen on television with a few divergances to detail the background, most obviously in relation to Peladon's mother. But there are other areas where more detail could help, such as why Peladon, Arcturus and Alpha Centauri all share their names with their home planets or briefly outlining the Doctor's previous encounters with the Ice Warriors to show just why he is so suspicious of them. The novelisation is the perfect medium to tackle such concepts and yet instead what's offered with feels like a straightforward retelling of the television story with a slightly higher budget that allows for effects such as Alpha Centauri's colour changing with his personality.

This is not to say that Doctor Who and the Curse of Peladon is necessarily a bad novelisation. The story moves at the right pace and Hayles' prose does much to convey the various emotions felt by the different characters throughout the tale. It's a good book that makes the viewer want to see the televised story, but it clearly falls into the category of novelisations that serve as "written videos". In 1974 domesic video recorders were extremely rare and the prospect of the vast bulk of the series being available for everyone to have their own collections was not really foreseen and so a direct translation of the scripts into a novelisation served a clear purpose. But from a more contemporary perspective this approach to the novelisations does not stand up so well when the original television story is easily available (which may explain why sales on the early 1990s massive reprint run tailed off as the video releases came out ever more constantly). This is not a bad novelisation but the video release is clearly preferable today. 6/10