Mawdryn Undead

"While the Doctor is alive, I am never far from you."

Writer: Robert Valetine

Format: Novel

Released: January 1984

Series: Target 82

Featuring: Fifth Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan, Turlough

Synopsis 

'Turlough picked up a boulder and raised it over the suspecting Doctor...'

Turlough hated it all: the routine, the discipline, the invented traditions and petty snobbery of a minor English public school. He hated Earth, and when the mysterious Guardian offered him the chance to escape, he jumped at it. Naturally. All he had to do was to kill the Doctor.

Verdict 

Mawdryn Undead was an excellent novelisation of the televised story of the same name! I’ve always felt that this Fifth Doctor tale is criminally underrated and whilst the book doesn’t quite manage to receive a perfect rating like its on screen counterpart, this was still a terrific read! Reading in the sun at a holiday park in West Wales made for a lovely surrounding and environment so it was nice to be reading a story I knew was good. I was intrigued to see how it would fare in prose and it absolutely worked well. It offers a pretty fun introduction for Turlough as a companion and shows his torment with the Black Guardian really well. Perhaps a little more ought to have been included regarding the Guardian’s history with the Doctor and the whole Key to Time saga, but thankfully as a reader with avid knowledge of the series that wasn’t a big problem. His motivation could have also been expanded upon, but with this being the opener of a trilogy it is a little difficult to be critical of things like that knowing that their story is far from complete. I do enjoy Tegan being very suspicious of him from the off and it’s quite surprising that Nyssa is more accommodating. The Doctor seems to sit somewhere in the middle which is good, but as a reader I’m not a huge fan of him as a companion. He’s pretentious and that this early stage he just seems like a stuck up knob. Was that the intention with the character? I’m not sure, but he’s not exactly likeable. The Brigadier wasn’t exactly enthralled by him either! His return was a delight and it’s rather a shame that his first encounter with the Fifth Doctor has him not remembering who the Time Lord was. The Doctor is still delighted to encounter his old friend and colleague and he doesn’t waste time in fixing the Brigadier’s memories. That sequence where he first asks after Benton and Harry before following up a little more aggressively with his former companions of Sarah Jane, Jo and Liz was tremendous. The description of what the Brigadier was remembering with the likes of Yeti in the underground and Cybermen in the sewers was magnificent. A shining moment for sure. I thought the science behind the warp ellipse was a little all over the place in prose format and never fully explained which is fine given the technicalities, and it was just a backdrop really for the two versions of the Brigadier to find their way together at the most perfect moment. The Doctor arriving in 1983 through the transmat with Turlough was a fun twist as Tegan, Nyssa and the TARDIS had actually landed six years previously on the Queen’s silver jubilee! That was quite a problem but the Brigadier having already met Tegan was a fun twist and that allowed the Doctor to try and put things right. He had a time and a basis to go on so he was quickly put to work! Turlough having constant inner turmoil with the Black Guardian was good and I was a big fan of the impact the crashing of the Brigadier’s car had in the first chapter. It led Turlough to agree to murder the Doctor, but he was obviously never going to see that through. That much was clear right from the off. I don’t think the Black Guardian had chosen all that well. His determination for Turlough to see the job through was admirable though! The issue of two Brigadiers causing problems to both the Black Guardian and Mawdryn was quite fun! The titular villain first claiming to be the Doctor was excellent and I really think it’s great because it is believable. A dodgy transmat could definitely have caused the Doctor harm and the regeneration process is hardly straightforward! Who’s to say it couldn’t have gone wrong? The description of Mawdryn’s appearance was decent but I do think it could have been more grotesque to sell just how fleshy and abominable it was as seen on screen. Still, I loved the idea of a constant regeneration mutation. That was good to play with. One word on the cover as I’m so glad that I was reading the Virgin reprint rather than the original Target version. That photo image of Peter Davison is atrocious for a cover! The threat of the Doctor losing all of his remaining regenerations was superb and I loved that he was willing to sacrifice himself for Nyssa and Tegan when they’d been infected by Mawdryn and couldn’t travel in time. Mawdryn and his crew just wanted to die and with the two Brigadiers meeting at just the right moment to provide a massive dose of energy, the red ship would soon burst into smithereens and death was welcomed by Mawdryn. That was tough for the Doctor to tackle as he had to live with the consequences of his actions, but it was what they wanted. This also explaining the Brigadier’s memory loss was fun. Overall, a superb read!

Rating: 9/10