Doctor Who: Marco Polo

I'm not going to review the overall story here; but instead where I think the novel differs from the TV version of the story (as far as we can tell). I enjoyed that version a lot; but I think the novel overall falls short.

The improvements are that it does a very good job at making this adventure feel a lot larger - the narrative gives timescales; and things like giving bigger description of distances and even the meals that the travellers eat helps to add to the scale of this story (even if I wonder how authentic they'd be to that period of China). The story already stands out on TV for being this big adventure across Asia without the TARDIS being available; the context of it clearly lasting several months I think adds to the scenes where the TARDIS crew try to escape. The scenes with the Doctor and Kublai in the book also feel more sensible than those in the TV because of the fact that they had more time.

However there are a couple of areas where I think this story falls short. The characterisation of the Doctor feels off - it almost feels like Lucarotti is writing for a much more modern version of the Doctor than an early First Doctor so certain elements (like him being so keen to help out Marco at points; or even his not accepting the key back in the final chapter because he lost the Backgammon game) feel very weird for the context of the story. Indeed it also hurts Ian's role in the story - as the Doctor takes a large portion of his role in the novelisation and that feels like a negative. The ending also comes across less well - rather than Tegana committing suicide because his regicide attempt was foiled, he's instead killed by Ling-Tau who plays a much greater role in the novel becoming Ping Cho's fiancé by the end; and rather than a hurried escape its a more formal thing which I think doesn't make as much sense.

Overall though I think this is a decent read - although the negatives detract from this a lot more than the positives add.

This story is most impressive for its large scale. As someone used to modern who, the length of this is pretty special in its own right. The characters of Marco and Ping-Cho are likeable and the journey is varied enough to stay interesting. The locations were sometimes a bit too much to keep track of, but most were distinct. It also dawdles a bit here and there, with several escape attempts and a few too many “Give me key? No!” conversations for my liking. Also, Tegana felt aimless at times. His villainy should’ve been obvious for ages, so why do we keep pretending like there’s nothing going on? Same goes for Marco’s regret for stealing the Tardis. They spent ages together, and suddenly on the last few pages, he gets a feeling of remorse. That could’ve been set up way earlier, especially since we have characters that can never reach their home, which is the exact situation Marco finds himself in. Ping-Cho’s marriage plot was also a bit waved away and slightly unsatisfying. She didn’t want to marry someone she didn’t love, so instead she…. Married someone she met 2/3 times. I like the way the old man died though. That was funny to me.

Okay, onto the stuff I actually really liked. Barbara got to flex her history muscle for arguably the first time in the show. It was very clear she knows her stuff. The Susan and Ping-cho combination was also solid and allowed for character building. Clearly portraying Susan as adventurous and optimistic. Which is something that adds to the (otherwise relatively grumpy) group dynamic. Ian got his heroic moments, but I wish Barbara’s knowledge was a bit more used at the end near the palace. The doctor shows his intelligence with the games of chess and backgammon, which is the first time he has really shown how smart he actually might be. The scale, as mentioned before, is also a really good selling point, and quite ambitious! Even if some of it is filled with an irritating sense of frustration between the parties.