14) [Doctor Who:] Made of Steel, by Terrance Dicks
Yes, Terrance Dicks is still out there, still writing Doctor Who novels; this is in the BBC’s £1.99 “quick reads” series, picked up in Forbidden Planet last week. The Doctor and Martha get mixed up with a remnant cell of Cybermen (incidentally answering the question my wife asked me after we watched “Doomsday”) and also deal with thick and uncomprehending military types. Dicks makes a valiant effort to catch the Tenth Doctor’s character, and on the whole succeeds, with only a few passages which I thought too reminiscent of the Third Doctor of Dicks’ novelisations. A decent quick read.
I suppose that the large screen does puppets very few favours, where at least human actors still look like human actors when in close up.
In the climax of Thunderbird Six [SPOILER] a bunch of people are rescued by a Tiger Moth biplane. In long shots, it is seen flying over the rolling English countryside and is very obviously not a model, but a real Tiger moth with stuntmen clinging to its wings and struts. Flabbergasting.
As Barry Gehm said, “This stunt was too dangerous to risk losing valuable puppets.”