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Read Doctor Who: Galaxy Four (1986)

Doctor Who: Galaxy Four (1986)

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Rating
3.23 of 5 Votes: 5
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ISBN
0426202023 (ISBN13: 9780426202028)
Language
English
Publisher
target books, virgin books

Doctor Who: Galaxy Four (1986) - Plot & Excerpts

While a lot of Doctor Who fans would love to see "Marco Polo" or "The Tenth Planet" returned complete to the archives, I have to admit part of me would like to the chance to see the long-lost season-three premiere story "Galaxy Four." A lot of that credit goes to fond memories of this novelization that I read during my formative days as a Doctor Who fan. This isn't necessarily the best first Doctor story, but William Emms' adaptation of his story works well on the printed page. Free of budget limitations, my imagination ran wild. I'm excited that an episode of this long lost story has been recovered. And while I'm sure it can never live up to the images in my mind from the original novel and BBC audio release of the story, I still can't help but be a bit excited to finally see it whenever the BBC sees fit to put it on DVD.

http://nhw.livejournal.com/871029.html[return][return]Galaxy Four was the first story from the third season, shown in 1966 (odd to think of it as the Classic Who equivalent of Smith and Jones). It's the only one from that year I haven't yet seen/heard, but I got the novel for free yesterday with the SFX Doctor Who special and read it pretty quickly. It's actually rather good, up there with the average Missing Adventure of the Virgin series. with Emms (who wrote nothing else for Doctor Who) letting us inside the mind of the Doctor very convincingly, and also attempting to flesh out his rather one-dimensional villain, Maaga, leader of the female Drahvin warriors. Must try and catch up with the actual series now, though I have a suspicion this may be one of the cases where the novel is better than the story.

What do You think about Doctor Who: Galaxy Four (1986)?

Doctor Who novels can be hit or miss ... this one is more of a miss, can't say if it's the fault of the noveliation, or of the original script, although I suspect the original script, since the scriptwriter also penned the novel. I'm not able to compare the story against the original broadcast, I've seen very few of the Hartnells, and while he's not my least favorite Doctor (that would be reserved for Colin Baker), he's somewhere nearby in my personal rankings. The plot is not helped along by the race against time elements of a planetary explosion, and the story is less-resolved than later incarnations of the Doctor who would have resolved everyone's differences before entering the TARDIS and heading off to the next mysterious destination.
—stormhawk

I have to say this Target novelisation was much better than most. Normally they keep very close to what you'd see on the screen whereas this one delved into the characters head and gave everyone's thoughts and motivations, which was great. (And in the case of Stephen wanting to shoot Maaga kinda screwed up). I read this knowing very little about the story except there was a team of aliens who were all women. I liked it a lot. It followed a standard Doctor who plot with some interesting twists and turns and I really liked how much Vicki got used in the 2nd half of the story. Very glad I was able to pick up a copy.
—Mel

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