World Distributors Doctor Who and the Invasion From Space

Published

1966

Starring the first Doctors and the Mortimore family

• A Review by Finn Clark

A Review by Finn Clark 8/4/04

Whaddya mean, what's Doctor Who and the Invasion from Space? Dammit, this was practically the first original Doctor Who novel! World Distributors published it in 1966 as an annual-sized hardback comprising just one full-length story and colour paintings on almost every page. The only thing that keeps it from being a novel is its brevity. As far as I can tell it's about 12,000 words long, making it too short for a novel but within the definition of a novella (7,500 to 40,000).

To be honest that's shorter than I'd hoped. At only 48 pages including endpapers, it's half the length of a sixties annual and shorter even than the eighties annuals. However its production values are impressive. It's printed on superior paper with full painted colour throughout. This is a lavish-looking book with quality illustrations, though strangely someone didn't know what a police box looked like in 1966. So what's the story like?

To put it politely, it's very World Distributors... specifically Troughton-era World Distributors. There's hardly any plot, the story instead trying to wow us with cosmic wonderment. It's worth pausing to consider the nature of science-fiction in Britain in 1966. In screen terms Star Trek was still being born and the genre-redefining Star Wars was a decade far far away. Isaac Asimov's history of science fiction identifies four main eras: 1926-38 (adventure-dominant, e.g. H.G.Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs), 1938-50 (science-dominant, e.g. John W. Campbell and his Astounding stable of writers), 1950-65 (sociology-dominant, e.g. John Wyndham, Frederik Pohl, Ray Bradbury) and 1966 onward (style-dominant, with a more deliberately literary feel and sub-genres like Cyberpunk and Hard vs. Soft SF).

Believe it or not, there's a reason why I wrote all that. Invasion from Space, like much of World Distributors' output up to mid-Pertwee or so, is literally the SF of another era. SF's modern era probably began in 1963-4 with the publication of Frank Herbert's Dune, but as so often throughout its history Doctor Who was behind the times. This book feels like a time capsule from the fifties. Dr Who is astounded by the scale of the Aalas' achievements - and it's significant that the story takes its time about unfurling them. We discover each revelation alongside our heroes, layer after layer, and though Dr Who's continually flabbergasted state looks a little over the top to modern eyes, his awe is exactly the sensation this story wants to induce in its readers. Even the timescale is paced to keep building and building... from "far future" (p17) to "many millions of years" (p22) to "ten hundred million years" (p30).

Note that final phrase - ten hundred million. Not a billion. Not even a thousand million. The writer is trying to hammer home with as many words as possible the immensity of this weight of aeons.

The book's heroes are interesting. Dr Who is a single-minded, ascerbic son of a bitch who tries to abandon his companions on p33. They came aboard without his consent, escaping the Great Fire of London, and so he's spectacularly rude to them. "Medieval oafs," he calls them to their faces on p8, and then on p24 he snaps, "Be careful, peasant." On p36 he goes even further in his selfishness, wondering "why should he worry then about the invasion of the Milky Way galaxy? The thing would not happen for millions of years in the future. Why should he consider the fate of the galaxy?"

But having said all that, he's great! He's a wonderfully characterful hero, Hartnell to his fingertips and capable of unleashing some magnificent scorn against the egomaniac machine that's imprisoning them. "What does it do?" raged Dr Who. "Why, you numbskull! You ignoramus! It is my home, my world, my ship. I came here in it and I intend to depart in it very soon. I was given to understand that you knew everything, my fine fellow. Now, what about this?" His companions, the Mortimer family, are only so-so... though in fairness this must be the only time we've had a complete family travelling aboard the TARDIS. There's George, Helen and their two children Ida and Alan, though we don't learn those last two names until we're halfway through. They're amusing for a while with their 17th century superstition and exaggerated respect for Dr Who's abilities ("It's out of control, great warlock. What has happened to your magic powers now, Master?"), but eventually their terrified howling and moaning gets a bit tiresome. The children come to terms with the universe more quickly than their parents, for what it's worth.

Oh, and p29 has what might be the first reference to the TARDIS's isomorphic controls. Indeed it goes further than that... "My Tardis is no mere mechanism of metal and wire, of glass and plastic. My spirit and my nature are built into it. Without my hands at the controls and without my brain to command it, the ship is a mere metal box of cold, dead instruments."

Alas, as a Doctor Who adventure it's kinda dull. The bad guy stands around talking for the whole book until Ida Mortimer breaks its TV screen and sends it mad. Come back The Daemons, all is forgiven! However this story isn't about its plot, being instead a fable about the collision of mere humanity with cosmic concepts. It's almost like a Douglas Adams story, but played straight. Had this been written in 2003 it wouldn't attract that much attention, but as a piece of history it's fascinating. The TV show was too busy being a budget-strapped kid's adventure show to follow any literary traditions, so in fact these neglected World Distributors hardbacks are unique. They're science fiction from a bygone era, but they also star Dr Who.

Hell, I could go further. You know all that daft sixties Who like the 1967 annual and the TV Comic strips? The really stupid stuff, like the Go-Ray and Father Christmas and the Devil Birds of Corbo? Everyone sniggers at those today... but in fact they're part of another historical era in SF! Back in the sixties, before George Lucas changed the world, "SF adventure" meant those pre-war Wells/Burroughs yarns. You know, with John Carter, the four-armed barbarians of Barsoom and the Earth's inner world of Pellucidar. According to the latter, our planet's crust is only 500 miles thick and inside it are dinosaurs, prehistoric jungles, cavemen, flesh-eating Mahars and occasional visits from Tarzan. The TV Comic strips are stupid, yes, but so are Burroughs's books. They're also fantastic!

Doctor Who fans tend to forget how old the show is. For us, 1974 was last week and 1985 was yesterday. However these old sixties spin-offs have more in common with Victorian fantasy than they do with the SF of today - and I mean that literally. Invasion from Space is quietly fascinating, in its own genteel way. (And I want my complete TV Comic reprints NOW!)