Written by Terrance Dicks, based on his scripts for the 1974-75 TV serial Robot.

The first time Terrance Dicks has (officially) adapted one of his own scripts – it’s also the first Doctor Tom (and Sarah Jane) novel, and the fastest screen-to-page adaptation so far, with Tom Baker’s debut airing just two months before the book was released. At the time, this must have had an immediacy lacking in the earlier Target books, none of which had featured the then-current team of Doctor Jon and Sarah Jane.

The opening captures some of the poignancy of the recent regeneration from the perspective of the Doctor’s companions, as they grieve for the late Doctor and anxiously wait for the new man to wake up from his coma. When he does, Dicks replicates the new Doctor’s iconic first scenes, as he effortlessly runs rings around UNIT’s MO Dr. Harry Sullivan, and then infuriates a purple-faced, twitching-moustached Brigadier as he tries on various outlandish costumes. From time to time, Dicks slips into a Pertwee idiom (Tom’s Doctor wasn’t known for calling people, “old chap”), and he largely avoids providing physical descriptions of either Sarah Jane or Harry.

Instead, Dicks focuses on the action – rightly, I think, given this is the most Avengersish episode of Doctor Who featuring no alien invaders, just diabolical masterminds with a plan to take over the world. There is a great passage of Sarah investigating Thinktank in a game of one-upwomanship with the frosty Miss Winters. There are also some good Frankenstein moments of the robot pleading with its creator, and some clever foreshadowing of Professor Kettlewell’s true alliegances and motives: “He was preparing a grand scheme for a world-wide reform of mankind’s use of energy; a complete turn-over to pollution-free power that would put a stop to the gradual destruction of the ecology of our planet. He was quite undeterred by the fact that the proposed changes were so enormous that it would take a world dictatorship to put them into effect.”

The result is the most straightforward adaptation to date, perhaps reflecting the short lead time, but Dicks’ adds his usual sardonic asides, such as Brigadier’s eye-rolling reaction to the Doctor sermonising on nuclear weapons, and a lively moment where Sarah is horrified to realise she would indeed have shot Miss Winters to save the world. Calling the novel Doctor Who and the Giant Robot a bit of a con as it takes up three pages out of 122. The final conversation is lovely – the Doctor’s “whole face was alight with mischief and the joy of living.” And we have a scene of Harry in the TARDIS we never got on TV. Grade 3.

Next Time: Doctor Who And… The Terror of the Autons.