Written by Terrance Dicks, based on Bob Baker and Dave Martin’s scripts for the 1972 TV serial.

This is a very standard example of a Terrance Dicks novelisation. Which is meant as praise, not criticism. Not many people (perhaps Salman Rushdie) would name The Mutants as a classic Doctor Who adventure. Its flat visuals and pace, despite some great location work and costumes, work against it. But none of that is evident here. Dicks rightly picks out Paul Whitsun-Jones’ proto-Blake’s 7 Marshal and the idea of the Solonian life cycle as the best bits of the story, and while he faithfully conveys the rest of the plot, he leans right into the Marshal’s wickedness (even viler than on TV as he relishes the pain and cruelty he inflicts on human and Solonian alike) and the Mutts’ pathos.

He also focuses on the bromance (perhaps even romance) between Stubbs and Cotton, the Earth guards whose reservations about the Marshal finally tip them over into open rebellion. Their friendship provides some heart to the story, and Dicks includes a slyly funny reference to Cotton speaking “woodenly”, which feels like an acknowledgement of the less than animated performance in the TV episodes. There’s also a nice sequence of Doctor Jon having to penetrate a radioactive cave to retrieve a powerful crystal: not for the last time.

Ultimately, there’s not a lot here that isn’t present in the scripts (a slight backstory for the Marshal and his nasty sidekick Jaeger), but Dicks’ choices, editorial pruning of redundant dialogue and focus on the most successful aspects of the episodes as broadcast result in a novel that’s pretty gripping. And the stunning cover is the debut of Jeff Cummins, a very worthy successor to Chris Achilleos. Grade 3

Next Time: Doctor Who And… The Deadly Assassin.