6️⃣⏹️ = MIDDLING!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“RETURN OF THE BAD KNIFE!”

This review is based on the unofficial audiobook reading of the 1981 Terrance Dicks novelisation, as read by Dwayne Bunney.

Dicks spends a good time in the early chapters to slightly flesh out the opening scenes of the first episode (such as giving the police officer at the beginning a few more scenes!). Once we move onto the Stone Age, the text does a pretty good job of making the tribespeople a bit more well-rounded and getting into their mindsets a bit better. This makes their political struggles a bit more enjoyable to follow, even if they are simple and needlessly convoluted.

Dicks juggles pretty nicely between the description of four TARDIS travellers learning to trust each other and the cavemen going about in their lives.

The knife trial is just as good here as in the televised version, and the big moment for the Doctor.

Of course, there's the same problem here as on TV: the constant back and forth between the heroes being captured and escaping. 

Dicks' writing is straightforward but vivid enough to bring the story to life, though some sequences follow the televised scenes a bit too closely, making them feel a bit clumsy. The story also follows the original scripts very closely, to the point of including the same weakness.

Dicks also manages to keep the tension better than the TV story did, especially during the chase sequence through the Forest of Fear, helped by the inclusion of a sabre tooth tiger.

Bunney's narration is decent. His voices for Ian and Barbara are okay, but his Doctor is a bit one-note. Bunney also brings Kal, Za, Hur, and the other cavemen to life very well.