NEW DALEK NOVELS
Doctor Who script editor Eric Saward is novelising his ’80s Dalek stories
Doctor Who script ed Eric Saward finally novelises his ‘80s tales.
Doctor Who fans love to be completist – but they haven’t been able to when it comes to the novelisations of the classic series, originally published by Target Books. In recent years, three Douglas Adams scripts have been adapted. That left Fifth Doctor story “Resurrection Of The Daleks” (1984), and Sixth Doctor tale “Revelation Of The Daleks” (1985). Finally those last two gaps are being plugged, by former script editor Eric Saward. So why has it taken so long?
“I’d worked on the show for five years,” Saward tells Red Alert. “And I novelised three or four stories as well, then left. It was hard work, especially towards the end, and I didn’t want to have much more to do with novelising. As I drifted away from the show, the show drifted away from me, and so did the opportunity for the publication of the stories. It just sort of floated down the years – until now. I was asked last year.”
It must, we suggest, be strange revisiting stories he wrote over 35 years ago.
“Absolutely!” Saward agrees. “It was a little odd, especially with ‘Resurrection’. I was never very fond of that. I read it thinking, ‘There’s lots of work to do on this, I’ll go insane while I do it.’ But then I thought, ‘Actually, it’s not awful. I think I could make a bit more of it.‘”
Opening with the Daleks attacking a prison ship to release their creator, Davros, the adventure’s complex plot also encompasses human duplicates, a time corridor to contemporary London, and Lytton – an alien mercenary who returned in “Revelation”.
A lot of things go on that you couldn’t easily do in a TV version
Saward began by watching the DVD, using the script as a reference point. “I reinvented as well, as I went along,” Saward explains. “A novelisation is a different medium to a television script, so there are different sorts of problems that you have to solve to make it work.”
For example, a book can be more expansive with action scenes which, on screen, were rather static.
“There were several fights, and they weren’t very well staged.” Saward notes. “If you were doing it in a movie you’d spend a fortnight on it, not two minutes! Now I’m more aware of how things could have been done.”
Saward has also been able to dig deeper into Lytton’s backstory.
“He’s much more complicated and complex. He’s now living in a world where time tunnels cause two periods to overlap. Therefore there are elements of what you can and can’t do, and how life might develop… A lot of other things go on that you couldn’t easily do in a television version.”
Saward can’t say much on “Revelation”, having only just started on it. But the process has boosted his respect for ’70s script editor Terrance Dicks, author of 64 novelisations.
“‘Resurrection’ took five or six months,” Saward says. “I started and got stuck. I was too cocky! I’d forgotten how much hard work they are. You have to plough on – 600, 700 words a day, if you’re lucky – to get it done in a reasonable period of time. You can read stuff you wrote a week ago, and have to abandon it because it reads so badly. So I find what Terrance Dicks did amazing. I think he just sat down on a wet afternoon, and come supper in the evening he’d done another one!” IB
Doctor Who: Resurrection Of The Daleks is published by BBC Books on 18 July. Revelation Of The Daleks will follow in November, with paperback editions of both in 2020.