Logopolis

Target novelisation Doctor Who - Logopolis

Author	Christopher H. Bidmead
Published	1982
ISBN	0 426 20149 3
First Edition Cover	Andrew Skilleter

Back cover blurb: In theory the TARDIS should be able to change its appearance to blend in unobtrusively wherever it happens to materialise. In practice, however, because of a fault in the chameleon circuit, it always looks like a police box - a minor inconvenience the Doctor now hopes to correct. Fixing the mechanism involves a visit to Earth and a trip to the planet Logopolis - normally a quiet little place that keeps itself to itself. But on this occasion the meddling presence of the Doctor's archenemy, the Master, ensures the disruption of normality. And even the Master is horrified by the threat of total chaos he unintentionally precipitates - until he finds a way to turn the imminent destruction of the universe to his own advantage...

• When Novelizations Mattered by Jason A. Miller
• Sheer Poetry by Noe Geric

When Novelizations Mattered by Jason A. Miller 10/1/04

I first read the novelization of Logopolis when I was in the sixth grade. At that point, all I knew about Doctor Who was from the few 5th Doctor episodes I'd seen on PBS. I borrowed the book from a classmate who was trying to explain how the 5th Doctor came to be. Said classmate is now a life insurance agent in South Dakota and hasn't had any contact with Doctor Who in fifteen years. The book he loaned me, however, remains one of my enduring favorites.

The novelizations of the Doctor Who TV adventures were an unusual breed: for many fans, they served as (at worst) a replacement for, or (at best) an improvement on the series itself. The condensing of a TV script into 120 pages gave rise to a peculiar richness of language that laid the groundwork for a dozen years (and counting) of original Doctor Who novels.

Reading the back cover of the Logopolis novelization reveals a host of words you don't find any more in books aimed at 12 year-olds. "Precipitated", for instance. The opening paragraph of the story is unusually literate, presaging the Fourth Doctor's death: "Events cast shadows before them...".

The story's condensation is most keenly felt in author Bidmead's prose: a lot of on-screen dialogue is converted into plain text. This keeps the narrative moving without turning the novelization into a mere transcript, but also preserves the richness of the original script. In some instances, the story improves from the condensation: most of the shots of Tegan and Adric running up and down the TARDIS corridors have been omitted; instead, we're given a scene were Adric reads from "Paradise Lost". The Doctor introduces Adric to the TARDIS's "logic circuits", a visually striking piece of equipment never seen on-screen.

Best of all is the restaging of the death scenes. When the Monitor dies on-screen, it's done through a straight visual effect, and doesn't make all that much sense. In the novelization, Bidmead makes the demise more graphic, in a manner that couldn't have been realized on television.

The Doctor's death, too, is improved. On TV, he climbs along a tilting catwalk on a telescope high above the ground, and is knocked over the edge by an explosion of sparks from a cable he's unplugged. In the book, however, he falls from the catwalk first, and is left clinging to the cable for support. By unplugging the cable he effectively commits suicide; this adds dramatic heft to his final choice and turns the Doctor into, if possible, an even more heroic figure than he was on TV.

Much of the relevance of the Doctor Who novelization has faded with time: video and DVD have made the stories more accessible than they were in the 1970s and '80s; the fan base has grown up and no longer needs to read books that are 120 pages long. Logopolis, however, in spite of a few instances of purple prose and some clunky similes, retains a poetry distinct from the TV story from which it was adapted, and thus still bears reading today.

Sheer Poetry by Noe Geric 16/4/25

Since we can access every existing Doctor Who episode with DVD and Blu-ray, there's absolutely no need for novelisations anymore, except if it's to correct or expand on the original story. The 2017 releases managed to be a curious mix of straight adaptation (Christmas Invasion) and alternative take (Day of the Doctor, Rose) of the original story. Logopolis was published a long time ago and is itself a sort of straight adaptation with some additions that barely change or have any impact on the original material. It add some new dialog and scenes but might be remembered for the Fifth Doctor first words never spoken on TV. The prose form helps to follow all that technobabble but still doesn't give any clear explanation.

I haven't seen the TV version for a while, but I didn't remember it felt like the episode with the greatest number of scientific trivia it is in prose. The Doctor and Adric work on logic circuits (I get what it might be about) and things that are just a mix of intelligent terms. Default Locator Register Data System is a term I just made up, and you couldn't guess it if it was in the middle of this novelisation. Chris has big knowledge on science and wants you to know. So what if it drains all the fun from the characters? You can just read along, telling yourself it's not that complicated and perhaps not important, until the next page points to how useful it was to help stoping the end of the universe. I quite enjoyed how the E-Space trilogy was put to good use and explained in a few pages. The origin of the CVE might be the only bit you'll not have to read again to be sure you know what it was all about.

The prose style is hard to follow, written in a poetic way, but with a lot of repetitions in the same paragraph and not so good dialog (from TV or added in the novel). There are few breaks between scenes, and it makes it hard to follow. And the Doctor dangling from the antenna is the most confused moment of writing in the book, while being the most important! And all that "destiny" and "shadows of the future" stuff is quickly forgotten when we arrive at Logopolis. And, sadly, the TARDIS runaround is even longer! It spans nearly 50 pages and is even less interesting. I never get why it was in every Bidmead story? Shouldn't he have written Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS?

I acknowledge how sweet Adric turned out to be. Without Waterhouse (no offense to him, he was a young actor), the character is actually beareable! Tegan screaming and crying while running around the TARDIS is less embarrassing than it was on TV, and Nyssa's reaction to the destruction of her planet is more memorable. A round of applause for Bidmead finally explaining some stuff about the Watcher. How he can communicate while not talking, or what relation he has with the Doctor. The Time Lord is particularly afraid of him and becomes almost suicidal after their little chat on the bridge.

It's an OK novelisation. The prose is clunky and hard to read, but the characters are more charming than their TV cousins, and some of the new stuff gives more shapes to them. The TV episodes never said Adric wasn't aware of what cars were or had never read poetry. Or even where the Doctor's certificates are stored! Little things like that tend to makes me smile while not disturbing the original material. Logopolis as a TV story is good but overloaded with weird science. The novelisation is a nice reminder of how epic it could've been with a bigger budget. Though it feels incomplete for those who've not read Castrovalva. Not the best, but sweet in places. 5/10