‘Doctor Who and the Mutants’ – Terrance Dicks (Target)


Page Count: 126 (and a bit) pages

My last couple of trips to Greenwich Market have turned up quite the little treasure trove of old ‘Doctor Who’ books and I’ve made sure to come home with a few. When I saw ‘Doctor Who and the Mutants’ on the table, I knew I had to grab it; not only have I never seen the TV serial (planning on doing something about that soon) but I was all of about eight or nine years old the one and only time I read the book. Yep, ‘The Mutants’ was another loan from the library van at the top of the hill :o) So definitely one that I had to pick up then. This is going to be a short post then (look at the page count) but I’ve still got some stuff to talk about. Lets go ;o)

A massive shape scuttles out of the darkness and strikes the earth Overlord down. It is a mutant – a huge insectoid creature; it moves in a crouch, its back arched and scaly, with huge knobbly vertebrae. The controlling Overlord, the Marshal, has ordered all such mutants killed on sight.

What has happened to the people of Solos? Why are they gradually turning into monsters? Hands that become claws, flesh that turns scale-like…

When the Doctor meets the Marshal, he realizes that all is not as it appears to be. The Marshal has a sinister plan to gain control of the this planet, and the Doctor must save Solos from this mad earthman, as well as save the Solonians themselves.

If you’re a regular visitor to the blog then you’ll know that whenever I post about a ‘Terrance Dicks Doctor Who book’, I’ll inevitably have a little moan about how Dicks, more often than not, sticks to just recounting events from the TV serial and not expanding on them. Which is fair enough, in its way, but I sometimes find it frustrating. Not today though! Having never seen the TV serial, I was coming to the story fresh, as it were, certainly in no place to get all wound up again ;o)

What we have here is a very readable story with plenty going on but also a little bit to ponder too with some commentary on colonization and ethnic cleansing. Perhaps it’s a little heavy handed but when you’ve only got so much room to work in, I guess you have to yell to make sure your message is heard.

The stakes are high and there always danger hiding round a corner, that’s all you really need from a ‘Doctor Who’ story and Dicks delivers plenty of both here with a story that zips along, taking in the planets surface as well as the orbiting Skybase. I’m still a little unsure as to why the Time Lords had the Doctor deliver their message (pretty sure they could have just sent it straight where it needed to go) but other than that, everything hangs together well once it gets going. I’m still not overly familiar with the Third Doctor but he stands out with a few quips and a dash of Venusian Aikido and again, that’s all you need for the book to work.

It goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that you’ll get more out of ‘The Mutants’ if you’re a fan of ‘Doctor Who’; I’m a fan so I enjoyed it and I’m sure I’ll end up watching ‘The Mutants’ sooner rather than later. The book holds up very well after so long since I last read it.

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