‘Doctor Who: Full Circle’ – Andrew Smith (Target)

 



Page Count: 123 Pages

I know… Yesterday, I absolutely said that there might not be that many posts this side of Christmas but then I spent the rest of the day reading. What can I say (other than that I’m really enjoying my reading at the moment)? ;o)

Anyway, it felt like it had been a while since I’d picked a read from the ‘Classic Doctor Who’ novelization TBR pile so I did something about that yesterday afternoon. One of my earliest memories of ‘Doctor Who’ is watching ‘Full Circle’ and being scared to death by the marsh-men (I was five, that’s the whole point of ‘Doctor Who’ when you’re five…); I’ll be honest, I can’t remember if I’ve read the book (prior to yesterday) so it felt like a good time to (finally?) give it a go…

Romana has been recalled to Gallifrey by the Time Lords – a summons that cannot be ignored, despite her extreme reluctance to give up the freedom and excitement that life as the Doctor’s companion has brought.

The time travellers’ course is set, the flight path is clear, estimated time of arrival on Gallifrey is in thirty-two minutes – then the unexpected happens…

The full significance of their temporary loss of control, over the TARDIS, is only gradually brought home to the Doctor. For it is not on Gallifrey that they land but on the planet Alzarius, and at a time when the Legendary Mistfall comes again – when the giant scaly creatures that inhabit the planets swamps leave the marshes and go on the rampage, leaving a trail of death and destruction in their wake…

It has been a while since I last watched ‘Full Circle’ so before I picked the book up, I thought I’d go back and see what I had to say when I watched it, way back in 2021 (and wow, that feels so long ago now). I won’t rehash that post here, that’s what the link is for, but I was definitely keen to see how the book held up against my small criticism of the TV serial. The good news for me was that while there is nothing really wrong with the TV serial (just didn’t quite hang together for me), the book just seemed to work a lot better for me. If I ever do a ‘Top Ten Old Doctor Who Books’ list, ‘Full Circle’ would definitely feature in it somewhere.

The one thing I really enjoyed about the TV serial was the inherent horror of it all (marsh-men emerging from swamps is a weak spot of mine) so I was really happy to see Andrew Smith take things up a notch with the book. Smith displays a real talent for evoking atmosphere here along with really capturing characters reactions to it; whether it’s Romana facing off the spiders or the inhabitants of the Starliner panicking as the marsh-men breach the ship. Alzarius itself is lush and green but has a hint of darkness about it, seen in the marshes and in the old rhymes that Smith refers back to.

Add a particularly harrowing crash scene, in the prologue, and ‘Full Circle’ has a rich vein of horror running through it that I had a lot of time for. I’ll admit that I didn’t do so well with the science (again) but the key thing was that the science and horror gelled a lot more this time round, I suspect thanks to Smith’s willingness to go the extra mile in terms of adding a lot more detail around the plot.

All in all then, ‘Full Circle’ made for a gripping read and was time well spent. My Christmas reading is off to a good start :o)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

‘Hellraiser 3: Hell on Earth’ (1992)

Image
Every time Halloween comes round, I promise myself that I’ll watch more horror films and read more horror fiction; we’re halfway through the month and you can see how that’s going so far… There’s still plenty of October left though so lets see how I do from now until the end of the month ;o) First up is ‘Hellraiser 3’ which I watched last night, mostly because I love it (you can tell how this post is going to go, sorry…) but also because it was cheap on Prime and I’m still just on the wrong side of payday. Here goes… TV reporter Joey Summerskill’s life is changed forever when she witnesses the horrific death of a teenager, torn apart by bloody chains. Joey’s search for a story leads her to the Lament Configuration Box but it has already been opened, waking an old evil from its slumber… Now Pinhead walks the earth once more, creating a new army of Cenobites from the transmuted flesh of his victims; his one desire to reclaim the Box. Even with help from an unexpected source, Joey Summers...
Read more

'Conan the Barbarian: Battle of the Black Stone’ – Zub, Scharf, Canola (Titan Comics, Heroic Signatures)

Image
It’s starting to look like this could be the week where I make a half decent dent in my ‘Comics TBR Pile’, lets see how we do... I’ve really been struggling with the ‘Savage Sword of Conan’ collection just recently (more than one reason but I want to finish the collection first before I talk about it) and I thought that I’d have to take a little step back from ‘Conan’ comics and come back when I was in a better mood for it. Until I realized that there was another ‘Conan’ comic lurking in the TBR pile and maybe I could give that a go instead. So that’s what I did. I’ve caught little glimpses of the ‘Black Stone’ storyline, in other ‘Conan’ comics, but I can’t help but feel that the event has kind of passed me by a little. That’s on me though to be fair, I’ve got the attention span of a goldfish right now and there are so many books that I just haven’t been able to focus on; I suspect a couple of them talk about a Black Stone… Oh well, I’m here now. Where better a place to catch up on ‘B...
Read more

‘The Pan Book of Horror Stories’ – Herbert Van Thal (Pan Macmillan)

Image
I was going to say that original posting will resume tomorrow but the way things are right now, probably safer not to promise anything ;o) In the meantime... I found this old review last night (originally posted Here ) and it feels like it fits in with what this blog is all about right now so, I thought I'd give it another shot here. I’m pretty sure this wouldn’t be the case today but when I was a child at primary school, the shelves were covered with books that I’m sure a teacher today wouldn’t let an eight or nine year old anywhere near. Maybe it was just my school, I don’t know, but I’m not complaining though; I had a lot of fun trawling my way through some great reads. This time round, I’m talking specifically about the ‘Pan’ and ‘Fontana’ horror series; books with the most lurid covers and stories to match inside. I only had myself to blame but at least three quarters of the nightmares that I had as a child came from reading these books and staring at covers festooned with rot...
Read more