Written by Terrance Dicks, based on Robert Holmes’ scripts for the 1971 TV serial.

After Doctor Tom’s Target debut, the novels revert to Doctor Jon, confusingly (for anyone reading along) providing a second, screen-accurate introduction for Jo Grant and the Master. After the links across the first half dozen books (introducing the Doctor and UNIT in The Auton Invasion and The Cave Monsters, debuting Jo and the Master in The Doomsday Weapon, before the Master’s capture and imprisonment in The Dæmons and ultimate escape in The Sea-Devils), there’s definitely a sense that the range is moving away from providing a distinct parallel continuity to the TV series and towards a less interconnected, pick ‘n’ mix approach that’s perhaps more faithful but a little bit less interesting.

That said, Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons is Dicks’ most polished work yet. Practically every scene builds on what was presented onscreen, providing character backstories, like Hoxton heavy Lew Ross, hapless scientist Goodge or Reg Farrel’s complicated relationship with his father. Dicks also enjoys adding small, vivid details: severed Auton arms continue to attack (an inspiration for Russell T Davies’ Rose); the Master’s name “a string of mellifluous syllables – one of the strange Time Lord names that are never disclosed to outsiders”, and the Doctor being distracted from his hunt for a missing scientist by going on Rossini’s fairground rides. Plus his usual sardonic asides: “What looked like quite a promising quarrel [between the Doctor and the Brigadier] was broken up by the entrance of Captain Yates.”

He also builds on the horror of the (already fairly nasty) TV episodes. The controversial fake policeman scene is accompanied by a hideous illustration of the false face bunching up like crumpled linen as the Doctor pulls it away, and the murder of Farrel senior is similarly illustrated by a grotesque drawing alongside Dicks’ supremely MR Jamesian line: “[Mrs Farrel] had a fleeting impression of something scuttling away from his throat.”

This is Dicks’ first opportunity to tackle the Master in print. The dark humour is still present (hiding Goodge in his own lunch-box, and quipping about “polynestene” plastic), but Dicks’ Master is somewhat more vicious than Hulke and Letts’ take (and, in a nice ret-con, has picked up a stock of “Sontaran fragmentation Grenades”). His apparently blasé attitude to killing off the Doctor is repeatedly said to be a front for his wounded vanity and secret hatred and fury at the way the Doctor keeps wrong-footing him. This psychopathic obsession with murdering his one-time friend, even when it starts to undermine his alliance with the Autons, becomes a rather more compelling justification for his ultimate betrayal of the Nestene Consciousness than we saw on TV.

The result is an exceptionally good adaptation that transforms the episodic, Dr Phibes tartrazine fizz of the TV serial into an unrelenting dark comedy. Inside Alun Hood’s truly nightmarish reprint cover, it could stand alongside Ian Marter’s novels as the horror highlight of the range. Grade 1.

Next Time: Doctor Who And… The Green Death.