About book Doctor Who And The Masque Of Mandragora (1989)
This was a little ambitious for such a small book. I have read 600 page books with less complex narratives. But isn't that expected of Doctor Who and the BBC? They are tiny compared to the goliaths of American television. So actually the story did not let it down. It was the quality of the writing that was abysmal. There were moments when I realised I had been thinking of something completely different and had no idea on what was happening. Also, I know it was written in the 1970s, but there is no excuse for the savage abuse of exclamation marks at the end of every other sentence.Ahhh... Finally a bad review. That feels better.
http://nhw.livejournal.com/1046178.html#cutid7[return][return]As with Hinchcliffe's treatment of The Seeds of Doom, we have a much less clownish, dark Doctor, and much more horrific elements in the story - horrible frazzling of the Helix's victims, also the Doctor casually slaying Count Federico's guards. But the other thing that struck me was Sarah's relationship with the Prince - much more romantically presented here than it was on screen, and basically her closest approach to romance in the entire canon, I think. Not an outstanding novelisation but not bad either.
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Phillip Hinchcliffe's novelization follows the Terrance Dicks model--retell the story without necessarily adding too many embellishments.For some stories it works. For "Masque" I wish the story had been expanded a bit more. With the printed page, you can take certain liberties with the televised story to heighten the drama or to keep the reader more interested. Instead, we get a straight-forward re-telling of what we saw on screen. The audio version is well done and a marked improvement over the Tom Baker read stories from this era.
—Michael
