The Monsters from Earth

"There were ways of dealign with spiders."

Writer: Walter Howarth

Format: Short Story

Released: September 1965

Printed in: Doctor Who Annual 1966

Featuring: First Doctor

Synopsis

Two children playing hide and seek use the TARDIS as a hiding place. Whilst exploring, they accidentally become stowaways, but prove more important than Dr Who will ever realise.

Verdict

The Monsters from Earth was an intriguing read to continue my way through the 1966 version of the Doctor Who Annual! I always come at the wider media format stories from this era with something of a keen interest and almost look at it as I would a historical document. I'm so interested in seeing how a Doctor Who short prose adventure was presented. This is unlike anything the modern era produces from Doctor Who and with the show not even two years old at the time it was published, it's just a very interesting read. I really enjoyed it from that perspective. In terms of story quality, it's not that strong. It does a good enough job and I'm sure for a younger viewer of the time this would have ticked a lot of boxes. One thing I find tough is the timeline. There just isn't anywhere between An Unearthly Child and The Tenth Planet for this story to fit in the chronology for the First Doctor, and judging from what we know now and comments within that era, there's not much room for it come before the stories we saw on screen either. That's just part of the fun. This is very much an adventure for Dr Who which is a somewhat different character than the First Doctor in my estimation. Different versions of the same character. In a show as wide reaching as Doctor Who, chronology and canon are never going to be fully in sync and this is just one example. It doesn't make it any less valid in my opinion though. I love reading these old stories. I think it's terrific that we get a return of the Sensorites, although the illustration makes them look a little weird and different to the versions we saw in The Sensorites on screen. It's a little crazy to think that this would actually be his first encounter of the Sensorites before that Season 1 adventure. It's a whacky time! I thought the additions of Amy and Tony were okay but they did vanish for quite a while after the enigmatic start to the story with them stumbling aboard the TARDIS in a game of hide and seek. I thought the little links to Dr Who and the Daleks with the use of the common was good although I'm not entirely sure if it was intentional. It was quirky to find a link there though. I'm a big fan of the illustrations that accompany this story as they did a really strong job at painting the words to life. The image in particular of the Doctor and the TARDIS on the giant spider web was outstanding! I also love the retro style. It just works. It feels very 1960s and I adore that. Now, the story quality itself is just pretty average and probably does linger a bit. The Doctor is probably a little too keen to murder the spider for my liking, but at this point it does appear he has yet to encounter the cavemen and be prevented from his first instinct of killing him. It's a huge change that would shape the character for decades to come. I think Amy and Tony being there to save the Doctor along with their dog Butch was a little far fetched given the apparent threat of the arachnid Zilgans, but it was quite fun to think of the Doctor as seeing them as phantoms because of the impact on him of two suns. He still trusted the possibility of them being real when it came to enacting the plan to get back to the TARDIS which was fun, but despite the Doctor praising them they didn't exactly do an awful lot. Amy was petrified of insects which was reasonable given her age and the fact they'd travelled in time and space, but it did get a tad annoying by the end. I think it's crazy looking back that the Doctor is referring to himself as being human and from Earth, but that's part of the mystery and wonder of this early period. Overall, an intriguing little read even if the story quality wasn't all that great.

Rating: 6/10