In the trackless snow wilderness of the Antarctic, the chilling visages of a Cybermen squad, newly arrived from the Earth's twin planet of Mondas. makes another attempt to infiltrate the nearby human Snowcap base in a terrific and atmospheric image from the most important Doctor Who story since the show's launch three years earlier-time: The Tenth Planet, the final adventure for William Hartnell's tenure as the enigmatic time traveller, but also the memorable debut of one of the series most popular and enduring villains after the dreaded Daleks - the emotionless Cybermen!
It was a pleasure, after such a long time, to recently re-read Gerry Davis's Target novelisation of The Tenth Planet from the mid-seventies, and I was intrigued by how many important storytelling changes he brought to it in comparison to the original 1966 TV version.
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| Superlative front and back cover art by Chris Achilleos for the Target adaptation. |
Here are a few of those memorable differences and a few other interesting titbits...
The story is set not in the 1986 televised version but in 2000, with Mars having been visited by humanity, as well as the Moon.
Ben and Polly come from the seventies, around 1974/75 (the time Gerry Davies wrote the novelisation) rather than 1966, and the time of their onscreen introductory story, The War Machines.. This is confirmed as the Snowbase-confined Ben plays a reel of film from the Roger Moore starring James Bond movie The Man with the Golden Gun, then the most recent film in the series playing in cinemas.
Out of action for the TV events of Episode Three (due to William Hartnell being ill), the events of that hurriedly rewritten episode are not affected in novel form, as the Doctor is present throughout its events to deliver key dialogue ultimately delivered on screen by Polly.
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Key Cybermen would have names as listed in the end credits of the TV story (a practice that Gerry Davis had also done with his earlier published The Cybermen adaptation of The Moonbase, though that onscreen TV adventure would not give them names).
A black helmeted Cyberleader appears with the second invasion of the Snowcap base - perhaps Davis at the time of writing the adaptation had been influenced by the appearance of a similar figure in the then TV version of Tom Baker's Revenge of the Cybermen, which would itself be rewritten from Davis's original concept and script commission in 1974.
The Cybermen's attacking home planet of Mondas isn't destroyed as in the TV version but ultimately breaks up whilst heading back out into the solar system.
The Doctor's aging and lead-up to the regeneration is handed well in the book, better than the mostly tacked-on ending to the tale onscreen, with the companions (notably Ben) witnessing his growing state of frailness during three previous uneventful TARDIS landings prior to their arrival in the Antarctic. Ultimately, the Doctor regenerates not with the help of the TARDIS, after handling the instruments and collapsing to the floor in an eerie and magical TV sequence, but rather by regenerating through the use of a special sleeping compressor in the ship's control room, which has never been mentioned before or since in the novels I've read, nor mentioned in the TV series. In the novel, the Doctor's new face is revealed to the shocked Ben and Polly from a folding cover over the compressor's couch. If anyone out there knows why Davis made such an important change here, please get in touch...
Get hold of the unabridged BBC AUDIO BOOKS adaptation of The Tenth Planet here:
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