The Caves of Androzani

Target novelisation Doctor Who - The Caves of Androzani

Author	Terrance Dicks
Published	1985
ISBN	0 426 19959 6
First Edition Cover	Andrew Skilleter

Back cover blurb: From the moment they land on the planet Androzani Minor, everything goes wrong for the Doctor and his new young companion, Peri. They become involved in the struggle between brutal gun-runners, ruthless federation troops, and the hideously mutilated Sharaz Jek, who lurks in the depths of the caves with his android army. Key to the struggle is spectrox, the most valuable substance in the universe. Suitably processed, spectrox is an elixir of life, but in its raw state it is a deadly poison - a fact which will cost the Doctor another of his Time Lord lives...

• Major Androzani by Andrew Feryok
• Robert and Terrance by Jason A. Miller

Major Androzani by Andrew Feryok 1/3/06

"I'm sorry I got you into this Peri... Curiosity has always been my downfall."
The Doctor, The Caves of Androzani: Part 1

It is therefore quite shocking that I should proudly proclaim that this is one of the very best book adaptations of a Doctor Who television story and quite possibly one of Terrance Dicks' best adaptation works! This book is truly amazing and had me glued to the pages from cover to cover. And this was a story that I don't normally enjoy revisiting!

What makes this story so good? One of the biggest reasons is that Terrance Dicks has taken greater care in his descriptions and narration than in the past. I have just finished reading his adaptation of The State of Decay, and before that I had read The Android Invasion, The Wheel in Space, and The Five Doctors. In all instances, there was one glaring problem with the prose: it was being written as if it was aimed at five year olds and under. Every little plot point was explained through narration in the biggest and simplest terms. There was very little creativity in presenting settings or characters, simply leaving this to the original script dialogues and descriptions. But The Caves of Androzani is a very different book. Instead of talking down to his reader, Terrance Dicks gets on with telling the story, allowing events and characters to play their part and reveal themselves as the plot advances. Terrance Dicks cannot completely get away from describing very simple things that the story could normally explain by itself, but they are less obtrusive and usually written so as to support the atmosphere and setting of the story rather than holding the hand of the reader. This is clearly a book aimed at an older group of children and even teenagers.

The Doctor and Peri are also well realized in this adaptation. When I watched the television program, I had always thought that the Doctor and Peri played very little role in the story. While plot-wise they play a small role, thematically they play a huge role and the book does a much better job of bringing out their characters so that their desperation is always present to the reader who is constantly wondering how they are going to possibly survive in this environment. I think the reason the Doctor and Peri seemed less important in the television story was that there were so many other well-drawn characters being played by strong performers in this story. Between Morgus, Sharaz Jek, Chellak, Stotz and Salateen (playing both human and android), the Doctor and Peri have some stiff competition for screen time. In the book, there are no scene-stealing actors to worry about, which means Dicks can better balance the story and make the Doctor and Peri stand apart more.

The supporting cast is also well portrayed in this story. It is interesting that Dicks chooses not to have Morgus do Shakespearean asides in the novel, but this is probably due to the medium rather than a choice by the author. However, when Morgus prematurely feels that the situation is slipping out of his control, Dicks manages to slip in a few asides as Morgus thinks to himself and wonders how he is going to get out the situation. It is also interesting that some of Morgus' background is fleshed out, including his wearing of a ponytail that indicates his highest rank in Androzani society. It is also made more clear that Morgus is paranoid and that he only fails because his paranoia gets the better of him and he begins to make mistakes as he rashly begins to act out more in the open thinking that his cover has been blown when it really hasn't. The scene in which Morgus' secretary takes over the company from him is also well recreated as we see an apparently emotionless character suddenly reveal her true colors.

Sharaz Jek is also memorable in both the television story and this novel. His madness is made very apparent. And while his love of Peri seems deranged at first, it gradually becomes more and more touching as his concern for her safety is the only thing which keeps him from teetering over into total insanity. And yet, despite all the sympathy we may have for Jek, Dicks also reminds us of how dangerous he is. When the Jek helps the Doctor find the queen bats, we get a temporary look into the mind of the Doctor as he marvels at how quickly he is becoming friends with Jek, and also realizing that if Peri does get cured, he may have to kill Jek in order to take her from him.

The planet of Androzani is also well portrayed in this story. So few Doctor Who stories make their planets interesting or alien, with only a few exceptions. Towards the end of The Caves of Androzani, you really get a sense that this is not just some Earth cave, but an alien cave filled with deadly magma monsters and molten mud flows that can catch you unaware if you are not careful. The planet feels like an entity all its own that could easily and indifferently kill both our heroes and the villains.

One of my favorite aspects of this book is the sense of the Doctor's desperation to heal Peri. The Doctor is literally reduced to his most basic and fundamental emotions and beliefs in this story. Dicks beautifully captures the almost superhuman strength of the Doctor who manages to keep back the effects of the Spectrox which has almost killed Peri, while managing to deal with Chellak's army, the Magma Beast, Sharaz Jek, androids, gunrunners, and countless other terrors that are all poised to stop the Doctor's fight to win against the disease. By the final chapters of the book, the Doctor is reduced to only an emotional state: he must save Peri at any cost to himself or those around him. And uses any means possible to simply survive and save her. This leads wonderfully into the regeneration as the Doctor collapses exhausted in the TARDIS, having kept all these forces at bay for so long, he can at last relax and let the regeneration take its course.

The regeneration itself is much faster than the television story. It is quick, strange, alien, vague, and shocking: everything that a good regeneration should be! And unlike stories such as Planet of the Spiders or The Parting of the Ways, where the regeneration seems to be a tacked on as an afterthought, this is a regeneration that has been a long time coming - ever since they first discovered the symptoms of the disease - and is part of a natural progression of the story.

In the end, this story is one of the best adaptations I have read by Terrance Dicks and one of the best overall, clearly ranking up with Doctor Who and the Daleks and Doctor Who and the Cybermen as one the most I have enjoyed reading. While the simple cover of Sharaz Jek and the half-formed face of Peter Davison and Colin Baker may not be the most exciting cover to draw the reader in, the book itself is a masterpiece and well worth seeking out. 10/10

PS: This novel sticks pretty tightly to the original television story, but does make one or two small changes: many of the scenes which were intended for the exterior of Androzani, instead of the caves, have been moved there in the novel. There is more mention of Androzani culture, including the use of ponytails to show rank and the presence of the Praesidium as an almost Roman Senate. The belt plates which are used by Jek to protect against the androids are also emphasized more. Also, the Doctor's journey to get the queen bat's milk is made more tense as the bats are written as hanging from cliff sides over the planet's magma flow. The Doctor must precariously climb down to get at them, something which is clearly suicidal, but necessary.

Robert and Terrance by Jason A. Miller 25/9/23

"Peri blinked - and in that blinking of an eye, there was a different Doctor in the TARDIS."
-- Terrance Dicks, 1984

To put it mildly and to not be over the top or portentous, The Caves of Androzani is the greatest Doctor Who story of all time, due in large part to having the greatest script of all time. It's got everything. A little Count of Monte Cristo. A little Phantom of the Opera (check that -- a LOT of Phantom of the Opera), a little film noir, liberal amounts of gun fighting and political backstabbing (or, in one case, front-shoving), and a little Hunchback of Notre Dame (check that -- a LOT of Hunchback). How did Terrance Dicks do with the novelization? How did Terrance, with his reputation for slim books topping out at 105 pages, max, do with the most perfect Robert Holmes script ever? Big shoes to fill, right?

He fills them.

Terrance gives everything away in the prologue -- the first two pages of Chapter One -- and lets us know everything that we're in for. He sets the scene perfectly, and we're off from there.

The characters in Androzani are vivid; everyone gets great lines. Working from Holmes' material, Dicks keys up his narrative descriptions of the characters to match. Stotz is "good-looking in a villainous kind of way". Krelper, his number two, is "seedy and depressed-looking"; later on, worried, "as usual he was whining about it". General Chellak as a soldier is "conscientious rather than inspired", and wears a "depressed, defeated look"; his HQ has "the shabby, worn air of a place designed for temporary use that has somehow become permanent". Chellak, who makes a series of disastrous command decisions throughout the story, takes "refuge in authority" when "defeated in logic" (just like Donald Trump!). Morgus (one of the all-time great villains, with one of the all-time great names) bears "thin, pinched features frozen in an expression of distaste". Krau Timmin, we learn early "always agreed with everything her employer said, outwardly at least. Her private thoughts she kept very much to herself" (not to give the plot away). And, "Like many politicians," the President was "handsome in a rather actorish way"'. Ha!

Jek for his part is called a phantom, and that word is chosen with precision. Jek's print reaction to Morgus's gun in the final chapter is also a delight.

Dicks also weaves in explanations for Holmes' signature world-building references, like telling us exactly what chacaws are, and how they are picked. The android that doesn't shoot the Doctor in Part Two is given a dizzyingly funny POV sequence. And Dicks doesn't stint on adding even more wicked elements to Holmes' portrayal of the double-dealing and back-stabbing. He has Morgus observe that it took the President "a surprisingly long time" to plunge down the elevator shaft to his death. And he adds a suitably cynical and witty explanation for why Morgus orders the lift engineer to be shot. Dicks clearly loves this story, and his additions make it, impossibly, even better. Holmes was magical. Dicks was magical. Together, one scripting and the other novelizing, they're transcendent.

In the midst of the treachery and death, Holmes scripted a Doctor as noble and heroic as we'd never seen before, the man who stood above it all and literally died for his companion (excepting the plot hole of why the Doctor didn't just drink his half of the cure as soon as milking it). And Dicks adds bounce to the Doctor in print, beyond what we saw on TV. Walking across Androzani Minor's barren, rocky surface in the opening scenes, the Doctor was "as alert and interested as if they'd been visiting one of the great beauty spots of the universe". Androzani on TV was a triumph for Peter Davison, his apex in the role, and the book does him justice, too. "The Doctor didn't really expect this approach to work, and it didn't." This Doctor is able to memorize a map of the cave system at once glance (an attribute Dicks also gave to the Doctor in the Hand of Fear book).

You might be wondering if the seminal Part Three cliffhanger, one of the finest Doctor hero moments in 56+ years of Doctor Who, works in novelization form? In a word: hell yeah.

Peri too gets a thought that has to rank as one of the darkest and most powerful sentences that Terrance Dicks ever wrote. After she's been kidnapped by Jek a second time, Peri thinks: "If this was all that lay ahead of her, it was almost a relief to recall that she was dying".

One lovely minor aspect to Holmes' TV work is that he wrote real characters with inner lives. His characters often stop to explain the plot to one another, and get it utterly wrong. Characters lie and exaggerate, like when Stotz recounts for Morgus his negotiatons with Sharaz Jek, to give himself a more heroic role. Dicks picks up on this, and giddily comments on the action: Morgus here reaches "an impeccably logical and totally incorrect conclusion". Dicks also delights in pointing out how Morgus is losing control of the plot and how he starts to panic, as the Doctor's wild-card involvement in the plot changes how each character acts and leads them (particularly Morgus, Chellak and Stotz) into increasingly bad decisions with dire fatal consequences. He also embellishes nicely on the already grim and funereal Part Four, adding Morgus's desire to kill Stotz (not really suggested on screen) and adding the Doctor's thought that he might have to kill Sharaz Jek in order to save Peri. Brr!

Sadly missing from the book are some of Graeme Harper's more visually inventive TV directorial flourishes. The book is based on the camera scripts, so we're missing a few last-minute changes. John Normington's brilliant soliloquies to the camera are absent here, largely delivered in straight dialogue instead (and his print death is less interesting), and we lose some of the more striking match cuts or dissolves between scenes, all stuff chalked up to Harper in studio. The Doctor doesn't hold back his regeneration in Stotz' spaceship, and doesn't apologize to an absent Peri while about to be shot in the sand dunes.

It's hard to find much fault with Dicks' writing in a technical sense, but he did use the word "hare" twice in three paragraphs in Chapter 10. And the mud burst is weirdly described as sounding like "a million whistling tea kettles" (actually that's a direct lift from Holmes's script directions, rather than Dicks' own prose). However, his action sequences are generally technically perfect and a delight to read aloud: "Suddenly a stream of boiling mud flooded through the caves, pouring over the ground and flying through the air at the same time, forced through the caves under pressure by some vast eruption in the seething planetary core." Not a wasted word.

At the same time, Dicks excels at covering up the flaws inherent in any low-budget production. In a story filled with non-speaking extras, Dicks amusingly refers to Stotz's longest-surviving gun-runner extra as "a taciturn type". To put it mildly. That extra couldn't speak on camera, or the production would have had to pay him scale.

And you couldn't ask for a better print regeneration than the one Dicks writes here:

"It was nice of all his old friends to come and see him, but surely Adric shouldn't be here. Adric was dead. But then, perhaps he was dead himself, thought the Doctor. That would account for it."

Exquisite. Absolutely exquisite.