Written by Terrance Dicks, based on Robert Holmes’ scripts for the 1976 TV serial.

On TV, The Deadly Assassin is a bit of a rickety edifice. Its place in history is assured because of all the Time Lord backstory it introduces, but a lot of the plotting is the Gallifreyan equivalent of Star Trek technobabble, with too many developments hanging on Robert Holmes writing “And then the Castellan realises [TECH].” There’s also something very slightly icky about reintroducing the Master as a living corpse given the real-life reasons why he hadn’t been in the series since 1973.

The best bits are the race to foil the assassination, and the frame-up of the Doctor; The Doctor’s double-act with one-off companion Spandrell, and the remarkable Matrix film sequences. The latter is a particular highlight of the novel, with Dicks emulating the programme’s unsettling string of images with a prose montage that skips from one nightmarish scenario to the next. These are the book’s strongest chapters, with a compulsive sense of urgency and peril. Elsewhere, embellishments are minor – a recap for the readers on the Doctor’s troubled relationship with his people, including an early expectation of a seat on the High Council, his trial and exoneration following “the Omega crisis”.

But for the most part I sense Dicks shares the Doctor’s impatience that Runcible and the story are “utterly fascinated by rituals and traditions”, especially when they’re made up to string out the plot. This is very readable, but a bit by-the-numbers compared to some of Dicks’ other books. Grade 4.

Next Time: Doctor Who And… The Talons of Weng-Chiang.