“Doctor Who and the Monster of Peladon” is a novelization of the 1974 serial in which Jon Pertwee starred as the Doctor. Terrance Dicks is the author of this entry into the Target novelizations of Doctor Who. This particular piece was published in 1980.
I picked this up largely to stoke some chord of nostalgia and it fills a hole in my collection of Doctor Who Target novelizations. Dicks was a pretty simplistic writer. He is well-known and often celebrated among Doctor Who fandom for that. He was also prolific and instrumental in bringing Doctor Who to another medium.
The television story itself was rather average in spite of my affection for the Third Doctor. It was an attempt at otherworldly political intrigue that fell flat and seemed more self-indulgent. It is a sequel to another serial called “The Curse of Peladon”, which I enjoyed much more.
The Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith arrive fifty years after his first visit and find some plot to steal minerals. A young queen is on the throne and is just beginning to find her footing with new responsibilities. The Ice Warriors, or Martians, if one is inclined to be more PC, have returned to cause problems. I thought that was a rather unfortunate decision to make the Ice Warriors villains again since they were wary allies of the Doctor in the first Peladon story.
Anyway, this novel goes quickly, as typical of a Dicks contribution, however the enjoyment received was more from revisiting a piece of childhood than anything else.
Time to return to something a bit more adult in my next literary diversion with an author who has been around for quite some time. This time I am going to make the acquaintance of Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond in “The Last Detective” by Peter Lovesey. Seems appropriate, doesn’t it?
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