Catastrophea

Terrance Dicks is a writer who carries a certain kudos. His time on the TV show is considered, by some, to be a Golden Age and his own scripts for the show included The Five Doctors – a proper celebration of the show. His contribution to the novelisations is unparalleled and when the original novels were launched by Virgin, Dicks wrote the second release (bringing back one of his own creations in the process).

Dicks continued to be a presence in the novel range even when the BBC brought it back in-house. Dicks wrote for a variety of incarnations of the Doctor but Catastrophea sees him return to his own era with a novel featuring the 3rd Doctor, Jo Grant and a return appearance of the Draconians.

Inside Catastrophea is a decent Doctor Who story. Unfortunately, it’s obfuscated by far too many characters, far too many factions and rather bland characters fulfilling stock types and contributing little to the overall plot.

Catastrophea is a planet settled by Earth organisations. There is a military presence as well as the ‘Company’. The native population, the People, are used as servants and labourers. They are giant, golden-skinned and silent – communicating telepathically. Smugglers operate in plain sight, trading in a drug called skar and ‘do-gooders’ from Earth are campaigning for the rights of the People and leading actions to liberate them.

Catastrophea starts off really oddly. Within the first couple of chapters, Jo has been called a bitch and a slut. It just doesn’t sit right on any level. It seems that Dicks wants to write a novel set in his ‘home’ era but also write something a bit more edgy.

To this end, Dicks also returns to one of his ill-advised tropes – drugs. It was a feature of The Eight Doctors and was a poorly-written aspect then. It’s not much better here. I rarely cringe at Doctor Who, but any of the drug-related bits made me mentally squint through my fingers; especially the bit where one of the ‘activist’ side characters, Alanna, reveals her addiction and trades information with the local drug lord for her latest fix.

One of the novel’s strengths is the characterisation of the Doctor. Dicks does get this right and it is easy to imagine Pertwee saying the words. Unfortunately, this is where the good character work ends. Jo is reduced to a damsel in distress who the Doctor keeps telling to stay put rather than join him in the dangerous parts of the story. When he is forced to take her along on a journey to a distant temple, she contributes nothing except hanging off the Doctor’s arm in a way.

The rest of the novel’s characters fair little better and there are far too many of them, in very similar roles. Charteris and Walton are the ‘officials’. Walton is military, Charteris is government. The Doctor is bounced between them like Jesus between Herod and Pilate and they change their attitude towards the Doctor from chapter to chapter and even paragraph to paragraph. There’s also Avery, an officer who spends most of the novel getting knocked out. I don’t know if it’s meant to be humourous but when that’s your principal character trait, you know things are bad.

In the activist camp are Garon and Makos – and aforementioned Alanna. Dicks tries to differentiate them with different motivations and ways to wanting to help the native People but they are basically the same and form a limp love triangle.

Villain wise there is Rekar who appears at the beginning of the story, disappears for the entire length of the novel, only to appear briefly again at the end to meet a grisly demise. He is a thoroughly nasty piece of work but serves no purpose. The other ‘baddie’ is Dove, the leader of the drug smugglers who has the weird distinction of having hardly any interaction with the Doctor. He tracks the Doctor through the jungle, thinking he will find a massive stash of the drug, skar, only to be shot down by the Draconians.

Ah yes, the Draconians. Like almost every other part of this novel, they serve little purpose and I honestly don’t know why they are even in the book. They don’t even enter the fray until the last third of the book, get massacred and then help the occupying Earth colonists to get off the planet.

Dicks doesn’t have any sort of handle on their characterisation which barely extends beyond the ‘noble death’ bit and saying ‘My life at your command’ every so often. A proper story involving the Draconians could be a fascinating thing – Catastrophea is not it.

Weirdly, despite my dislike of almost everything about this book, I still found it quite an easy read. Dicks, if nothing else, writes succinct prose which moves the story, such as it is, on a quite a good pace. If a bunch of the superfluous characters were shaved off and the story focussed on the, admittedly quite interesting concept, of an alien race who have telepathically neutered themselves and are on the verge of a catastrophic regression, this could have been a good novel. Dicks bothering to actually do something with Jo for any part of the book would also have helped hugely.

As it is, though, this is a book for completists only.