‘Doctor Who And The Zarbi’ – Bill Strutton (BBC Books)

 



Page Count: 207 Pages.

When I’m struggling to maintain focus at work, I find that the best way to pick my next read is to just go with my gut feeling. Whether it’s the cover or the blurb (or both), I stand a better chance of finishing a read if I don’t feel obligated to read/finish. Hence my starting off with a little Warhammer 40K on Sunday and then a brief sojourn in horror territory over the last couple of days. And today? Well, today, it’s time for a little ‘Doctor Who’; technically a re-read (although it has been a number of years since I last picked it up) and at the same time, a chance to have a little nibble at the ‘Doctor Who TBR Pile’ that I’ve built up.

I didn’t realise this, until just now, but ‘Doctor Who And The Zarbi’ is actually the second ‘Doctor Who’ novelization published, back in 1965 (based on the TV serial ‘The Web Planet’), don’t ask me what the first one is… ;o) Thanks ‘Doctor Who Wiki’! It hasn’t been that long since I read it, just long enough that it felt like time to finally pay the book another visit and see if it matched what I remembered. The answer? Well… yes, I think? ‘Doctor Who And The Zarbi’ has never been a favourite of mine, despite a lot of positive things to note. Let me see if I can be a little clearer about the whole thing.

Affected by a strange force, the TARDIS is dragged down to the desolate planet of Vortis. Until they can discover what is holding them there, the Doctor and his friends are trapped on the planet…

The Doctor, Ian and Vicki are soon captured by the Zarbi, huge ant-like creatures controlled by the parasitic alien Animus. Meanwhile, Barbara runs into a group of Menoptera, butterfly-like creatures that have been driven from their home planet, by the Animus, and plan to return with an invasion force. But the Zarbi know their plans and are waiting for the Menoptera…

You all know, by now, that the old ‘Doctor Who’ Target novelizations are a real guilty pleasure of mine and for a whole load of nostalgic reasons, I couldn’t name one that I actively dislike. There are a few that leave me a little nonplussed though and ‘The Zarbi’ was one of those books, despite actually having a lot to recommend it. Let me see if I can explain it a little better than that.

When you’re the second ever ‘Doctor Who’ novelization, you’re going to be a little different from the books that follow on from you. That’s just the way it goes and I wouldn’t blame the book for being written when there wasn’t an established template for these novelizations. A couple of stylistic choices did grate though, referring to ‘the TARDIS’ as just ‘TARDIS’ was one while the Doctor is ‘the Doctor’, not ‘Doctor Who’. I know it sounds silly but those repeated moments really took me out of the story and then I had to stop being all middle-aged and grumbly before I could find my way back in.

The other thing I found is that Bill Strutton was a little too good at making the backdrop of Vorbis a little too bleak and foreboding, up to the point where the actual plot felt like it was going to get lost in the middle of all the enigmatic statues, acid pools and dark shadows full of lurking Zarbi. Maybe it’s just me (I wouldn’t rule it out at the moment) but I felt every footstep of the Doctors journey across Vortis, and not in a good way. More of a ‘damn this story is taking its own sweet time’ way…

And that’s a bit of a shame really as the plot itself isn’t a bad one, with a decent sized ‘high stakes’ threat that tests the Doctor. Not having read many ‘First Doctor’ books, it also made for a change to get a little insight into ‘Doctor Number One’ and the dynamic with his companions. And I will always, without fail, be on hand for a tale full of ‘space ants’ and at least one ‘galactic parasite… ;o) ‘Doctor Who And The Zarbi’ definitely delivers on that score and is probably the root cause of that particular obsession for me ;o) The plot may drag at times but it’s a dark plot with a high number of casualties, some of them pretty vivid. Not something I often see in a ‘Doctor Who’ book but it made for a nice change.

‘Doctor Who And The Zarbi’ was a bit of a slog, at times, but gets through these moments and is still a book that I’ll be glad I stuck with. Would I watch the TV serial off the back of reading the book? I’m not sure, let me think about that and get back to you ;o)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

'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

‘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

‘Dig Me No Grave’ – Robert E. Howard

Image
  Page Count: Fourteen Pages, eight lines and two words (sorry, it has been one of those weeks) I was looking for something short and sweet, to end the week on, and came across ‘Dig Me No Grave’ courtesy of Paperback Warrior’s write-up . Having read it, I can attest to it being short (all of fourteen and a bit pages in ‘The Dead Remember’ collection) but sweet? Not at all and that is meant in the best possible way :o) ‘Dig Me No Grave’ was originally published in the February 1937 of ‘Weird Tales’ and while it has appeared in other collections since then, I read it in ‘The Dead Remember (The Dark Man Omnibus: Volume 2) and also found it in my copy of ‘The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard. If you’re an e-reading type, you can grab yourself ‘Dig Me No Grave’ over at Project Gutenberg. John Kirowan is woken, in the middle of the night, by his friend John Conrad, bearer of bad news and come to beg a favour. The occultist John Grimlan has just died and Conrad asks that Kirowan att...
Read more