“Homo sapiens has minutes to live.”

I think it's safe to say that every Doctor Who fan goes through that weird Scream of the Shalka hyperfixation phase. When we discover it, it becomes the most enigmatic thing in the world.  The Ninth Doctor who wasn’t really the Ninth Doctor. The one fully original animated episode of Doctor Who. The revival that never was. The one that echoed what RTD’s revival would do, albeit in a different way and through a different lens. The mystery eventually wears off when we then watch Scream of the Shalka and move on with our lives. But to the truly dedicated, there’s of course The Feast of the Stone, that one Obverse Books release and of course; the novelisation by Paul Cornell. 

So much of the inherent mystery of Scream of the Shalka comes from the off-screen lore we’re not prithee to. Why is this Doctor such a recluse? Why is the Master a robot? What happened before Scream of the Shalka? So where better to find the answers than from the novelisation written by the guy who wrote the webcast?

In DWM 343, Matt Michael had this to say about Paul Cornell’s novelisation of Scream of the Shalka;

“A self-set test of skill to see whether he (Cornell) could reproduce the tone of the no-frills Target books of his youth.”

And a “no-frills Target book” really is a very apt description.

On the one hand, I admire Paul Cornell for limiting himself and writing a no-nonsense, no-deviation, straight-forward by-the-books novelisation akin to Terrance Dicks. Except on the other hand; it's just not that interesting to read. 

Clocking in at 194 pages (not counting the length behind the scenes feature) this novelisation is remarkably short. And remarkably has very little on its mind in terms of digging into its characters. Basically every character who you don’t want to learn about, gets expanded upon. Usually right before they die. And every character you want to learn more about is given remarkably little in terms of extra depth. Locations generally lack description and the novelisation refuses to deviate from the structure of the webcast to a fault. To the point that I wonder if Paul Cornell was watching it back while writing this.

I will admit, the Ninth Doctor’s arc gets improved in the novelisation. There’s more of an attempt to illustrate that at the start, he’s acting very un-Doctor-like and has, for lack of a better word; lost his groove. He’s cold, rude, actively getting on people’s nerves and just wants to leave. But slowly, he softens and opens up. He starts acting more comedic and eccentric and develops a better rapport with basically every character by the end. It's genuinely quite sweet to read. This doesn’t exactly help with the vague reasoning behind why he acts this way though. There isn’t any kind of quick flashback, prologue or deleted scenes, which the novelisation is begging for. This isn't a webcast with the stipulation of "make it accessible" this is the novelisation, and the time to really go into detail and show us the secret stuff.

Overall, there’s very little to talk about because the novelisation gives me so little to talk about. If you like Scream of the Shalka you’ll probably like this. But I’d also say you probably won’t get anything new out of it.

This is, in the nicest way possible, the webcast in book form. Nothing more, nothing less.