Two good ones among this lot, and one total dud.
This is rather good: Bidmead has a convincing intensity as he takes us through the narrative, and while it would be going too far to say that it all makes sense, it does at least hang together: there is a feeling that this is the beginning of a new era. The story is very much about the Doctor’s regeneration, and somehow this comes over better on the printed page. An impressive start for the Fifth Doctor novelisations.
Just to divert for a bit into the Virgin Missing Adventures, here we have a novel mainly about Five, Adric, Tegan and Nyssa, but also involving Seven and (rather more so) his companions from the Virgin New Adventures, Chris Cwej and Roz Forrester. There are some very nice character moments, especially for the Doctors and the female companions, but the plot was not particularly special, and I don’t think a tetrahedron of the size specified in those planetary conditions is very likely. There are some nice nods to continuity as well, as you would expect.
(And apparently, “Ανδ Ι τυρνεδ αρουνδ ανδ τηεψ ωερε αλλ ωεαρινγ εψεπατχηεσ” is a Gallifreyan greeting of some kind, and definitely not a well known Nicholas Courtney anecdote in a funny font.)
Oddly enough I also just listened to The Veiled Leopard, which rather more successfully unites Fifth and Seventh Doctor companions (Peri and Erimem, Ace and Hex) but I’ll leave that to my imminent giant audio catchup post.
A standard write-up from Dicks, losing the fairly impressive visuals of the original and thus exposing the weaknesses of the plot more visibly.
Another standard write-up, not doing any favours to a story whose impact was visual and implicit.
Two-part stories give a lot of space to add more to the narrative when it comes time to write the novelisation, and this has been done well (Ian Marter) and badly (Nigel Robinson). This is definitely more at the Marter end of the spectrum. Dudley adds much detail about the cricket match (as incomprehensible to me as to Adric and Nyssa) and roots the story in the class structure of the Britain of the period, the Dowager Marchioness coming across as a particularly memorable personality. He even succeeds in giving Adric a couple of memorable character moments.
It’s a good book – my favourite Fifth Doctor novel so far – but let down by lousy proofing: repeated references to “Portugese” and “Venezuala” (and by the way, the first is not actually spoken much in the second); also we have someone dressed as “Marie Antionette”. A shame that Target couldn’t take more care.
The next in sequence, Doctor Who – Earthshock, is one of the Ian Marter novels – indeed, the last of them in broadcast order – which leads us then to:
A terrible adaptation of a bad story. Wood and Miles rightly mock one of the particularly bad lines in About Time 5, but actually get it wrong; the full quote in all its glory is “‘Eevanaraagh’ cried out Kalid, as the Plasmatron cumulation entered his chamber.” Truly dreadful and over-written.
I’ve been in the habit of writing up each companion as they leave the sequence of novels. Adric really makes very little impression. His tendency towards siding with the baddies is almost his only interesting characteristic. Terence Dudley does make him rather more filled out in Doctor Who – Black Orchid but that is about the high point of his printed career. (And of course the Seventh Doctor and companions acknowledge his coming fate in Cold Fusion but apart from that he doesn’t get much to do.)
Edited to add: I see I forgot to include Eric Saward’s Doctor Who and the Visitation in this batch. Nt rushing to it, I must admit.
This used to be the system for the Australian Ditmar awards as well. We’ve since changed it so the awards are administered by a small floating committee that includes a representative from the con committee (and future and previous con committees) as well as a few volunteers. I have chaired that committee for the last few years (and all members are ineligible for receiving awards directly, though we allow recusal from a specific award for indirect connections).
Although the con committee have only a fairly limited link to the committee that administers the awards, that hasn’t stopped people from making accusation of impropriety when con committees have won – we had a superficially similar situation in Australian fandom this year, in which people connected with the convention chair and her small press did very well in the Ditmars, but the situation differed in that she was genuinely and provably unconnected with the administration of the awards process. It does happen that, with a small and restricted voter pool, people well known within that pool can do very well – which is a good reason why the process needs to be clearly seen to be fair when it does.