This means that the novel retains certain stylistic and editorial practices that were current in 1975 (when the book was written and prepared for publication) but which have since adapted or changed.
Most obviously, measurements are mostly given in the then-standard imperial system of weights and measures: a yard is equivalent to 0.9144 metres; three feet make a yard, and a foot is 30 centimetres; twelve inches make a foot, and an inch is 25.4 millimetres. There’s just one metric measurement, given by Miss Garrett as the Ioniser comes back under control; oddly, there was just the one metric measurement in the TV version, too, but a different one.
Doctor Who and the Ice Warriors
sticks very closely to the scripts of Brian Hayles’s televised episodes. The most noticeable change in the novelisation is that Hayles shifts several of the cliffhangers – Jamie’s apparent death at the end of Chapter 5, for example, came several minutes before the end of Episode Three of the TV story. That episode instead ends with Victoria warning the Doctor and Clent about the Ice Warriors while Zondal prepares to fire on Brittanicus Base, events seen midway through Chapter 6 of this novelisation.
Brian Hayles had by this time written two television stories for the Third Doctor (‘The Curse of Peladon’ and ‘The Monster of Peladon’). While his descriptions and characterisation of the Second Doctor are unmistakably Patrick Troughton, there are a few dialogue flourishes that are more suggestive of Jon Pertwee’s incarnation. The Doctor can frequently be found addressing Clent as ‘old chap’ or ‘my dear chap’ and, on occasion, calling Jamie ‘lad’, neither of which is especially redolent of Troughton’s Doctor (although Clent does get a single ‘old chap’ from him on screen in ‘The Ice Warriors’).
Clent (minus the walking stick used by actor Peter Barkworth) and the personnel of Brittanicus Base all closely resemble their television originals, although Jane Garrett is renamed Jan Garrett. Hayles also invents a new designation for the Base computer’s communications unit –
ECCO
– that was never heard on screen.
In his television scripts, Hayles’s description of the Ice Warriors makes no suggestion of any reptilian or lizard-like traits:
Inside the ice, distorted but recognisable, is what appears to be a helmeted warrior. The helmet is hood-like and ominous, in the style of that used under the opening titles of ‘Hereward the Wake’. This is Varga
.
Costume designer Martin Baugh, reasoning that an ‘ice warrior’ would be hard, cold and armoured, took upright crocodiles as the starting point for his design. The novelisation follows Baugh’s design, with Hayles suggesting that each warrior’s armour and weaponry is somehow ‘part of the creature’s physical anatomy’. He also makes full use of the Martians’ breathless, hissing vocal delivery, something devised in rehearsals by actor Bernard Bresslaw, who had played Varga.
The transmission of ‘The Ice Warriors’ in 1967 followed on directly from ‘The Abominable Snowmen’. When the TARDIS first arrives outside Brittanicus Base, Victoria notices the snow and Jamie wonders if they’ve landed on the same mountainside. This back reference to the previous story works considerably better in print, since ‘The Abominable Snowmen’ was set among the Tibetan mountains but filmed on the distinctly snow-free hillsides of North Wales. The Doctor also mentions Tibet, telling Clent that he and his companions have been on retreat there, though his further claim that they are ‘sanctifiers’ is dropped. (Terrance Dicks’s novelisation,
Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen
, was published 16 months earlier, so there was continuity within the book range, too.)
One last – and minor – difference between broadcast story and print adventure comes when the Doctor is preparing to use his ammonium sulphide solution towards the end of Chapter 8. When Victoria identifies it as ‘what they use for making stink bombs’, the Doctor commends her ‘sound English education’. On screen, this is ‘a classical education’, which is ironic – a sound English education in the Classics would not have left Victoria with the impression that Mars was the
Greek
god of war, as she seems to think in Chapter 3…
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Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781446417768
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Published in 2012 by BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing
A Random House Group Company
First published in 1976 by Tandem Publishing Ltd. & Allan Wingate (Publishers) Ltd.
Novelisation copyright © Brian Hayles 1976
Original script © Brian Hayles 1967
Introduction © Mark Gatiss 2012
The Changing Face of Doctor Who and About the Author © Justin Richards 2012
Between the Lines © Steve Tribe 2012
BBC, DOCTOR WHO and TARDIS (word marks, logos and devices) are trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
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