The Yuletide Deliverence - COMING SOON

INTRODUCTION

BY

Steven Moffat

I was trying to remain calm, but it was a lost cause. My friend had just made a casual remark – he’d just said, ‘The Ark in Space is out.’

I knew by this, he meant the novelisation was now available, and that he himself now actually owned said novelisation. This was one of my all-time favourite Doctor Who serials, and I’d waited years for it to come out in book form. And here was my friend, just casually mentioning that at long last it was waiting in a shop for me.

Being a bigger Doctor Who fan than anyone else ever (sorry, you lot, you can all just get in line), my heart was now banging in my chest. In fact, I was so excited I skipped straight to Important Question 3.

‘Who’s written it?’ I asked.

The answer, to say the least, surprised me…

Back in the day, back when the world was young, Doctor Who books weren’t just written; no, it was nothing so simple. Doctor Who books were PREPARED. No, really, go back, have a look at those early editions. There would be a page near the front with a list of other Doctor Who books currently available, followed by – much more excitingly – another list of books ‘in preparation’.

I wasn’t quite sure what to make of those words, but whatever was going on with making new Doctor Who books, whatever cauldrons or vats they were bubbling away in, it was definitely more interesting than just boring old writing. They were being PREPARED. They were in that mysterious, exciting, deep-blue-before-the-dawn condition of PREPARATION.

Whatever that was.

And then of course there were the titles. I remember one in particular, which caused great consternation in the playground at Camphill High School somewhere back in the 1970s – Doctor Who Meets the Loch Ness Monster.

Eh, sorry, what? Meets?? What happened to the AND?? What happened to Doctor Who AND the Loch Ness Monster?? Doctor Who doesn’t MEET monsters, he ANDs them, and that’s a fact!
Of course, when the book was published the AND was back in place – possibly because of the whirlwind of anxiety emitting from a bunch of school kids in the West of Scotland – but please do note that none of us questioned, for a moment, that the book had a different title from the serial it was based on (‘Terror of the Zygons’) because that’s just the way they rolled back then. In those days, Silurians became Cave Monsters, space colonies became doomsday weapons, and frankly anything, anything that wasn’t quite exciting enough got a Target makeover.

Ah, those days. And all those books in preparation. When I learned the title of an upcoming Doctor Who book, I had four questions, and here they are, in ascending order of importance:



1. What would be featured on the cover?

Let’s be clear: Doctor Who covers were masterpieces. Frequently, the most thrilling visualisation of a Doctor Who story wouldn’t be on the telly, it would be on the front cover of the book that came after. How I’d stare at those covers.



2. Would the Doctor’s face be on the cover?

I had strong views on this. I hated it when the Doctor’s face wasn’t there, looking urgent and grave, while surrounded by floating monsters and realistic explosions. As time went on, there was clearly an instruction from above that only the current Doctor could be featured on the cover, and how I grieved. Just wasn’t the same!



3. Who was going to write it?



4. What colour would the spine be?

OK, let’s skip back to 3, because 4, quite frankly, is a human tragedy. The answer to 3 was always this – Terrance Dicks or Not Terrance Dicks. Most of the books, it seemed, were written by the mighty Terrance, and in the days before DVD, even before video, his books were the exact equivalent. They were Doctor Who TV serials you could keep on your shelf. Utterly faithful, not just to the detail of the narrative and dialogue, but to the feel and the atmosphere and even the pace. In precise, zingy prose, he’d turn a projector on in your head and you’d be watching the show again. And no one (except perhaps Paul Cornell, in later years) could sum up a Doctor so quickly and so perfectly as Terrance. In that distant era when you couldn’t just watch a particular television show any time you felt like it, Terrance was the next best thing.

Now sometimes, with the no-nonsense efficiency of a truly brilliant script editor, he’d sort the plot out a bit, and tidy away a few loose ends, and even – if he was writing a Hartnell book – shove the Doctor to the front of the story, because he was getting bored of the supporting cast hogging all the big moments. But for all that, what you got with Terrance, was the TV show in permanent, take-home-and-keep form.

Now and then, of course, the original writer would want a go at their own work, and that was exciting too. Usually because it was different, surprising, and maybe just a little more enthusiastic – but quite often, if I’m honest, it was a tiny bit disappointing too. Because however clever and well written they were, there were times it didn’t feel quite like Doctor Who. Not the way Uncle Terrance could nail it to the page.

So my general rule was this: if I’d loved the original story, I wanted Terrance in charge of the book – but, perversely, if it was a story I hadn’t liked, I was happy for the original perpetrator of my disappointment to have another go.

Which brings us back to ‘The Ark in Space’. To this day, it is one of my favourite stories. In fact, I think it’s perfect. This is the paradigm Doctor Who script! It’s possibly the only story you can imagine with any of the various regular casts. You could hand this one to Hartnell, Ian and Barbara, and it would work perfectly. Equally, it could be Matt Smith, Amy and Rory. Or David Tennant, Rose and Mickey. Think about it – it works for all of them.

It was written, of course, by the peerless Robert Holmes – and it was a fact (then, at least) that he never wrote his own novelisations. And since I knew who handled the books when the original writer wasn’t interested, I was pretty confident, all those years ago, when I asked who had written The Ark in Space that the answer would be…

‘Ian Marter.’

You could hear comedy tyres screeching in my brain.

… What? Sorry, no, what?? What, sorry, no, what, sorry, what, what??

‘No,’ I replied.

‘Yeah, it is, it’s Ian Marter.’

‘No,’ I elaborated.

‘It’s Ian Marter, seriously. I’ve got the book at home.’

‘No,’ I explained in greater detail.

‘It’s Ian Marter.’

‘Ian Marter,’ I pointed out to the poor fool, ‘was Harry. He played Harry Sullivan in a number of stories, including “The Ark in Space”. He didn’t write the book of it.’

‘Yes, he did,’ said my friend.

Yes, he did, said the cover of book, a few hours later, as I stared at it in the queue for the till. Magically, impossibly, an actor from the show, had written the book of it. Surely now anything was possible? I’d like to say that this was the exact moment I decided, one day, to become the Doctor Who showrunner. But actually I just decided to go straight home and read the book. Because the big question was this – an actor writing a book? Could it be any good?

Yes, in fact. Actually it was brilliant. Now let’s be clear, it wasn’t the Terrance version. It wasn’t a note-perfect recreation of that brilliant serial. On telly, ‘The Ark in Space’ had been a crisp, cold thing, all whites and blues and dark scuttling insects. There were brave, posh people in crisp uniforms, boldly going where stiff upper lips had never gone before. But when Dr Sullivan got hold of the story, suddenly it went visceral. All the hinted-at horror was leaping and sliming and glooping off the page. There was crackling and oozing, and a lot of the kind of body horror you can’t really achieve with bubble wrap. If the TV version had been all gleaming and icy, this was in your face and bursting with colour. And Tom Baker’s Doctor – how strange! He was perfectly captured, of course, but somehow it felt like the boggle-eye, hair-brained, even-longer-scarf version of his later years rather than the gloomy, doomy original. Yes, how strange – but how funny and wonderful.

I loved it. Simply loved it. I read the crackling, oozing bits over and over again. For a while, I dared to declare it was the best Doctor Who book ever.

Is it though? Is it really? Who knows, there’s a lot of them. But if you haven’t read this book, and you think you know this story, brace yourself for a whole new version. I like to think this one isn’t just a novelisation – it’s the Hammer Horror remake. In Eastman colour.

OK, that’s enough warm-up, off you go and read. See if you agree with a word I say.

Oh, but before you go, the answer is, of course, yellow. When I finally made it to the shop to buy Ian Marter’s debut novel, the colour of the spine was yellow.

Sorry, I just really needed to tell you that.





PS: You may think you have found some factual and historical errors in this introduction, but you are quite mistaken. Time has been rewritten.

In the snow they see strange footprints - big huge things live cloven hooves.

‘And what are those?’ he asked, suddenly impressed. He pointed at the snow directly in front of him, more precisely at the regular pattern of curious indentations, like two lines of U-shapes.

Rose spared them a second glance. ‘Some animal tracks, probably a deer or something,’ she said, refusing to let her imagination run away with her. ‘Must have been scared when the TARDIS landed.’

The Doctor fell to a crouch and fingered the edges of the nearest print in the snow. ‘Hoof-prints,’ he said in a wary voice.

‘So?’ asked Rose impatiently.

‘Very big hoof-prints.’

‘Big deer.’

‘More like a goat, I’d say,’ the Doctor declared, scratching his ear.

‘OK, it’s a big goat!’ Rose fumed. ‘Leave it!’

‘A big goat walking on its hind legs.’

The Doctor turned and gazed at her. There was no expression on his face, and Rose got the impression he was waiting for her to react. She decided to disappoint him. ‘Big deal,’ she said.

‘It might be,’ he told her thoughtfully. ‘Given it’s following that other set of footprints down the hill.’ The Doctor nodded to a set of similar, more conventional tracks snaking off into the gloom. ‘Wonder if they know they’re being followed by a bipedal goat?’

He looked up at her again and grinned toothily.

Rose smiled thinly and said through gritted teeth, ‘OK, let’s go and check it out. Let’s do the usual thing. Let’s forget about Jack and the Daleks and Bad Wolf. Let’s just move on and chase a goat-man!’

‘Brilliant! Just what I was thinking!’ he boasted, grabbing her hand and leading her at a run down the hillside, kicking up snow as they followed the hoofmarks to its owner.

And just for a moment, Rose was back with her Doctor once again, sprinting through the snow towards danger as he laughed like a madman, as they had in Cardiff and London and Kyoto.

Just for a moment.

It didn’t last.