GO TO 6: THE LOST GAMEBOOKS
By Alan Camlann
A Man of Science, Temperament and Passion
1 5th January 1985. The first story of Doctor Who’s Season 22, Attack of the Cybermen, airs to a year of Live Aid power ballads, state-sanctioned bombings, international expositions, the founding of Studio Ghibli, and the first mobile phone network. Microchips and nuclear power. Doctor Who strolls into an age of high-visibility on the technicolour dream coattails of the unpredictable Sixth Doctor (played by Colin Baker) with his young companion, Perpugilliam ‘Peri’ Brown (Nicola Bryant). For everything new, 1985 marks the height of the decade’s curiosity for old-world nostalgia. Everything old has gained a new lease of life. After a long absence, Dan Dare has returned to the pages of Eagle. The cinematic Star Trek will launch its fourth installment, an adventure-comedy, to premiere alongside action-horror sequel, Aliens. It seems the ideal atmosphere in which Doctor Who can thrive, but all is not well back home in Britain. Before the year’s end, the programme will suffer a major blow to its production. One that will continue to haunt it in the years to come. During the airing of The Two Doctors on terrestrial British television, it’s announced that the series will be taking a break. Following the airing of Revelation of the Daleks (initially titled the eerie The End of the Road), Doctor Who took an 18-month hiatus between seasons. When it returned, “battered but not bowed!” to quote the Sixth Doctor, a new storyline was conceived to address the series' new status quo--The Trial of a Time Lord. Later to be divided into The Mysterious Planet, Mindwarp, Terror of the Vervoids and The Ultimate Foe, respectively, for their novelisations. After initial the pomp and ceremony of a Time Lord inquiry, the Doctor and Peri would re-enter stage right. On a stroll through the pitter-patter rain of Ravolox. The coffins of Tranquil Repose now a distant memory. While the series had been away, the characters had continued adventuring on in our absence. Unseen and undocumented. Or had they? To find out what the Doctor does next,
Go to 2 |
With a Bit of Luck and All Your Wits About You
2 Far from languishing in silence during his hiatus, the Doctor exploded into every medium imaginable. Comics, novels, video games, puzzles! Wherever it was possible to experience Doctor Who, you could find him there. Eager as ever and ready to embark on another exciting voyage aboard the TARDIS with his friends and a keen mind. Among these stories, the Doctor’s sixth incarnation headlined a short-lived, but nonetheless rather interesting curio of his tenure. The Make Your Own Adventure with Doctor Who gamebook range was a series of six novellas, originally published by Severn House in the United Kingdom and Australia and Ballentine Books in the United States. They formed yet another "season" lost to Time. One of temporal tugs-of-war, Martian duels, refugee crises, embittered scientists, vicious poltergeists, and ordinary bravery in the face of extraordinary evil. The Make Your Own Adventure range was captained by veteran and then-current writers for Doctor Who. The authors' first debuts as distant as 1965 to as recent as 1985. Significantly, they were also the only tie-in media at the time to receive a nod within the programme itself. While the addled Doctor conspired with Sil in Mindwarp, he mentioned the planet Tokl which he would visit in Invasion of the Ormazoids. Concerned about the aura of evil aboard the Hyperion III, the Doctor is halted from suggesting Pyro Shika, a planet visited with Peri in Race Against Time, as an alternative in Terror of the Vervoids. Together, these stories form a fascinating knothole in a family tree of media that is all but documented. Proof, if proof was ever needed, there is always more to discover... What do you think the Doctor should do?
If you can decide, what then? To find out roll two dice. If you roll 6 to 9, go to Search for the Doctor If you roll less than 6, go to Crisis in Space If you roll 10 or more, go to Race Against Time |
1. “Search for the Doctor”
By Dave Martin (Released 27th March 1986)
By Dave Martin (Released 27th March 1986)
Premise:
Earth, 2056. The Fusion Energy Research Network is one of humanity’s premier explorations into the realm of alternative energies. Its potential is unmatched, the possibilities for scientific development seemingly limitless. The Doctor has discovered that something is already starting to kill technicians on the torus in orbit. Soon, he falls into the grip of a legend thought destroyed—Omega. As he struggles to maintain his very existence, a seeming coincidence places a gift from an old family friend into the hands of a youngster in a museum. Unboxing it, you find K9 Mark III—a scientific development not expected on this planet for another 3000 years, at least. The blue-collar Drax seems only too happy to take him off your hands. Your actions, your choices, take you to the heart of a battle for control between the Doctor and Omega over the very fate of the Time Lord homeworld of Gallifrey itself… |
Editorial Review:
In a word, delightful. With as many elements collected from Dave Martin’s prior tales for the series, it would be easy to assume that Search for the Doctor were a potpourri of recycled concepts. Worn-out efforts to recapture the past? Far from it. As the range’s debut, the story comes as a breath of fresh air on each read. The extended absence from the series since 1979 hasn’t dulled the enjoyment that Martin seems to be taking from his return to the TARDIS and to Doctor Who. There’s an acknowledgement of the show’s two-decade universe in much the same vein as The Five Doctors. Something triumphant and worthy of celebrating, even twenty years on in the mid-1980s.
As we flip from section-to-section in an appropriately transtemporal fashion, Martin’s imagination conjures up quite the bristling menagerie of exciting imagery. We see the back alleys of Holowood where the Doctor has settled the TARDIS for his journey to the FERN. The agonising flash of technicians charred to hot powder by the creature that haunts the orbital torus. Drax’s TARDIS grumbling through the prehistoric Mojave Desert in the shape of a 1956 Cadillac convertible. Your own desperate decision whether to force someone at gunpoint to meltdown a fusion reactor in a desperate attempt to save your home and the home of the Time Lords. Whether the reader succeeds or fails in their endeavours, it’s an engaging read with a good sense of pace.
The Doctor himself, while not immediately recognisable as his sixth incarnation, possesses enough conventional “Doctorishness” that the vagaries never jar. This is indisputably the Time Lord we know and love. His puckish trickster nature and musing inner scientist are both on full display over the course of the novella. In many ways, he resembles the more calmed and measured interpretation of the televised Revelation of the Daleks or his Doctor Who Magazine comics persona. Coolly unflappable in just the right measure. Trapped in toroidal stasis by Omega, he has a great deal of time to think, plan and stall his captor for as long as he can. Something he does with considerable aplomb. Up to, and including, turning the interior console room into a Möbius strip. Curiously, Omega considers the time-traveller to be not only his opposite but potential equal, enough that the Doctor investigates his own family heritage by the story’s conclusion to determine just how many degrees separate him and the stellar engineer. According to the Keeper of the Rolls, not as many as first might appear.
The voices of Drax and K9 are immediately recognisable and, often, the two make for a fun double-act. Together, yourself and the Doctor’s former associates form a search party that travails across Space and Time at the behest of the High Council of the Time Lords. On a quest to recover the Doctor and discover what plans Omega has for FERN. Your thoughts—as the unnamed temporary companion—are aided by a conventional understanding of the world in 2056. What would be perhaps alien to the reader, is natural to this character. You have a canny awareness defined by a decision tree that's split into whether to exact patience or leap into action. Your ability to deduce the best-reasoned choice tends to be rewarded, naturally. Hasty, often self-interested decision-making, leads you, your companions or even the Doctor himself to failure and often a gruesome demise (as befitting the tradition of gamebooks).
In a word, delightful. With as many elements collected from Dave Martin’s prior tales for the series, it would be easy to assume that Search for the Doctor were a potpourri of recycled concepts. Worn-out efforts to recapture the past? Far from it. As the range’s debut, the story comes as a breath of fresh air on each read. The extended absence from the series since 1979 hasn’t dulled the enjoyment that Martin seems to be taking from his return to the TARDIS and to Doctor Who. There’s an acknowledgement of the show’s two-decade universe in much the same vein as The Five Doctors. Something triumphant and worthy of celebrating, even twenty years on in the mid-1980s.
As we flip from section-to-section in an appropriately transtemporal fashion, Martin’s imagination conjures up quite the bristling menagerie of exciting imagery. We see the back alleys of Holowood where the Doctor has settled the TARDIS for his journey to the FERN. The agonising flash of technicians charred to hot powder by the creature that haunts the orbital torus. Drax’s TARDIS grumbling through the prehistoric Mojave Desert in the shape of a 1956 Cadillac convertible. Your own desperate decision whether to force someone at gunpoint to meltdown a fusion reactor in a desperate attempt to save your home and the home of the Time Lords. Whether the reader succeeds or fails in their endeavours, it’s an engaging read with a good sense of pace.
The Doctor himself, while not immediately recognisable as his sixth incarnation, possesses enough conventional “Doctorishness” that the vagaries never jar. This is indisputably the Time Lord we know and love. His puckish trickster nature and musing inner scientist are both on full display over the course of the novella. In many ways, he resembles the more calmed and measured interpretation of the televised Revelation of the Daleks or his Doctor Who Magazine comics persona. Coolly unflappable in just the right measure. Trapped in toroidal stasis by Omega, he has a great deal of time to think, plan and stall his captor for as long as he can. Something he does with considerable aplomb. Up to, and including, turning the interior console room into a Möbius strip. Curiously, Omega considers the time-traveller to be not only his opposite but potential equal, enough that the Doctor investigates his own family heritage by the story’s conclusion to determine just how many degrees separate him and the stellar engineer. According to the Keeper of the Rolls, not as many as first might appear.
The voices of Drax and K9 are immediately recognisable and, often, the two make for a fun double-act. Together, yourself and the Doctor’s former associates form a search party that travails across Space and Time at the behest of the High Council of the Time Lords. On a quest to recover the Doctor and discover what plans Omega has for FERN. Your thoughts—as the unnamed temporary companion—are aided by a conventional understanding of the world in 2056. What would be perhaps alien to the reader, is natural to this character. You have a canny awareness defined by a decision tree that's split into whether to exact patience or leap into action. Your ability to deduce the best-reasoned choice tends to be rewarded, naturally. Hasty, often self-interested decision-making, leads you, your companions or even the Doctor himself to failure and often a gruesome demise (as befitting the tradition of gamebooks).
Standout Moment:
The duel across Time, using the Doctor’s TARDIS as the centre of a brutal tug-of-war between himself and Omega. Rolling Earth’s past and future back and forth to prove their temporal aptitude. All the more dangerous for you, Drax and K9, caught right in the middle of it. Continuity:
|
2. “Crisis in Space”
By Dave Martin (Released 27th March 1986)
By Dave Martin (Released 27th March 1986)
Premise:
Deep space. Tensions aboard the TARDIS are running high when you arrive. Garth Hadeez and his consort, Queen Tyrannica, are at work within the Milky Way Galaxy with the means to enslave—or to destroy—the solar system of the planet Earth. The means? A power that links the airless surface of the Martin moon, Phobos, with the doomladen passage of Halley's Comet and an extraordinary eye glinting through a telescope on a wintering Prague night. Your actions, your choices, pit you in a lethal duel for the fate of your home… Editorial Review: A fever dream of a gamebook and the shortest of the Make Your Own Adventure series. There is little information on author Michael Holt’s contributions to prose. Puzzle Book stipulates that he has written over 100 books, primarily for children, and appeared on the BBC educational series, Mathemagical. His oeuvre for Doctor Who consists primarily of quiz books featuring the Fifth and Sixth Doctors, Tegan, Nyssa, Turlough, Peri and K9. Covering topics such as dinosaurs, magic tricks, space travel and elementary scientific principles. |
From a purely conceptual standpoint, Crisis in Space itself is an intriguing split between two potential storylines. The first takes place around Mars, featuring a direct confrontation against the villainous Garth Hadeez and his retinue in a duel to the death on Phobos. The other is a mystery plot involving the passage of Halley’s Comet and the kidnap of astronomer Johannes Kepler on a cold 1607 night in Prague. Both can be experienced separately, as individual adventures, or together in a continuous stream with a time-slip initiated by the Doctor in his TARDIS.
Unfortunately, one of the novella’s greatest pitfalls is its lack of coherency. Bizarrely, Turlough, Peri and even the Doctor himself are all armed with laser guns and the gleeful ability to use them for the Phobos confrontation. A decision more suited perhaps to the crew of the Fireball XL5 than that of the TARDIS. This change in modus operandi—and a staunch attitude of our favourite Time Lord—is never discussed. Every character lapses into song or doggerel verse and for every line of dialogue is a pun contrived from either miscommunication or deliberate obfuscation. It’s so prolific that there’s a sense of waiting for the other shoe to drop and discover a grander scene involving perhaps the Land of Fiction, Eternals or another malevolent power, but such a revelation never comes.
An interesting set of concepts buried beneath a sadly rather garbled execution. Johannes Kepler is still a historical figure worthy of exploration and the TARDIS crew, rather unusually, performing the galactic equivalent of a citizen's arrest has potential. Another draft to better help connect the story's disparate components could have developed Crisis in Space into something rather unique to Doctor Who.
Unfortunately, one of the novella’s greatest pitfalls is its lack of coherency. Bizarrely, Turlough, Peri and even the Doctor himself are all armed with laser guns and the gleeful ability to use them for the Phobos confrontation. A decision more suited perhaps to the crew of the Fireball XL5 than that of the TARDIS. This change in modus operandi—and a staunch attitude of our favourite Time Lord—is never discussed. Every character lapses into song or doggerel verse and for every line of dialogue is a pun contrived from either miscommunication or deliberate obfuscation. It’s so prolific that there’s a sense of waiting for the other shoe to drop and discover a grander scene involving perhaps the Land of Fiction, Eternals or another malevolent power, but such a revelation never comes.
An interesting set of concepts buried beneath a sadly rather garbled execution. Johannes Kepler is still a historical figure worthy of exploration and the TARDIS crew, rather unusually, performing the galactic equivalent of a citizen's arrest has potential. Another draft to better help connect the story's disparate components could have developed Crisis in Space into something rather unique to Doctor Who.
Standout Moment:
One particularly striking image occurs in the Prague storyline. A pair of thugs in the employ of Garth Hadeez abduct and attempt to murder Peri by burning her as a witch at the stake. For an otherwise farcical comedy, it’s a harrowing bit of jeopardy. Continuity:
|
3. “Race Against Time”
By Pip and Jane Baker (Released 28th August 1986)
By Pip and Jane Baker (Released 28th August 1986)
Premise:
Pyro Shika. A fascinating world enriched iridescent blue soil and the humble majesty of Shikari civilisation. To the Doctor, newly escaped from a ruthless time trap on Earth, it’s a place of benign reacquaintance. Somewhere he can welcome and be welcomed without fear of harm to himself or his travelling companions. He is mistaken. Beaten and snared like a tiger in the jungle, the Doctor is dragged away to face the tyranny of the Rani. You and his companion, Peri Brown, must track him down and rescue him. A difficult prospect given your knowledge of this world begins and ends with the Doctor’s capture. If you fail, however, the consequences extend far beyond the terror of never returning home. The Rani's latest experiment is about to reach its flashpoint. Your actions, your choices, pit you against the increasingly hostile landscape of subjugated Pyro Shika, hiding a temporal scheme capable of annihilating all Creation… |
Editorial Review:
Altogether fun. An adventure firing on all cylinders. As the final gamebook to be released prior to first broadcast of The Trial of a Time Lord, Pip and Jane Baker’s contribution to the Make Your Own Adventure series feels like an orphaned two or three-part serial. Not unlike the early First Doctor serial, The Rescue. As contemporary authors of the series, it’s curious to examine their work as a product of expectations on televised Doctor Who at the time. Their tale links quite heavily with the aesthetics of writer Robert Holmes during the tenure of producer Philip Hinchcliffe. Gothic terror and sublime menace. Here, the Bakers are in their element.
The world of Pyro Shika is populated with the scattered remnants of the Rani’s experimentation. We are pitted cudgel-to-whisker against Island of Doctor Moreau-like hybrids in the Maze of Ratapes. Her inner sanctum guarded by seven-foot-tall Cryogenates, ruthless intelligences that possess translucent crystalline forms holding pulsing fleshy organs. The Doctor himself provides the wonderfully sesquipedalian word of “lyophilise” for the vacuum cabinet used to freeze-dry his body. Baldly stated to be for later vivisection and organ transplant. Gruesome. One particularly memorable failure leads you to an iron coffin dessicator that extracts your internal fluids until there isn’t enough to fill a thimble. These are some of the many obstacles you face alongside the Doctor, Peri and mettlesome Shikari defectors.
Altogether fun. An adventure firing on all cylinders. As the final gamebook to be released prior to first broadcast of The Trial of a Time Lord, Pip and Jane Baker’s contribution to the Make Your Own Adventure series feels like an orphaned two or three-part serial. Not unlike the early First Doctor serial, The Rescue. As contemporary authors of the series, it’s curious to examine their work as a product of expectations on televised Doctor Who at the time. Their tale links quite heavily with the aesthetics of writer Robert Holmes during the tenure of producer Philip Hinchcliffe. Gothic terror and sublime menace. Here, the Bakers are in their element.
The world of Pyro Shika is populated with the scattered remnants of the Rani’s experimentation. We are pitted cudgel-to-whisker against Island of Doctor Moreau-like hybrids in the Maze of Ratapes. Her inner sanctum guarded by seven-foot-tall Cryogenates, ruthless intelligences that possess translucent crystalline forms holding pulsing fleshy organs. The Doctor himself provides the wonderfully sesquipedalian word of “lyophilise” for the vacuum cabinet used to freeze-dry his body. Baldly stated to be for later vivisection and organ transplant. Gruesome. One particularly memorable failure leads you to an iron coffin dessicator that extracts your internal fluids until there isn’t enough to fill a thimble. These are some of the many obstacles you face alongside the Doctor, Peri and mettlesome Shikari defectors.
The Sixth Doctor is at his best and brightest. Quite recognisably so. He shows keen bravado in the face of danger, deep empathy for the oppressed Shikari and is evenly matched against the razorblade cruelty of the Rani and her thralls. Much of your initial adventure is spent in the company of Peri Brown who is given more than ample opportunity to demonstrate her skills. Her botanical expertise is on display and she provides an excellent judge of duplicitous character. She also acts as the reader’s safety net, ready to bail you out of misjudged circumstances with everything ranging from a well-placed word to an oxyacetylene torch. The Doctor and her share a genuine comradery that flows from her desperation to free him from death to his own small effort to fix the broken heel of her shoe as you walk. The Rani retains her cold, debonair disinterest in the sentimentality of other lifeforms and proves a worthy opponent against your collective skill and good fortune. It’s easy to understand how she took control of the planet.
Many of these elements appear to have been recycled later for the Seventh Doctor’s 1987 debut Time and the Rani. Where Pyro Shika differentiates from Lakertya lies in the devilish detail. Aside from the marked difference in tone, Race Against Time features an inescapable defeat. Crossing the Temple of the Great Fountain, not too far from the Rani’s base-of-operations, a star goes out in the night sky. Just above your heads. The Doctor, quietly, identifies it as an inhabited solar system. The test firing of the Time Destabiliser. No matter what choices are made, he, Peri and yourself still fail to save those planets and people. On top of the millions who couldn’t be saved, it’s a potential genocide. A heavy sense of foreboding resonates through your party and a genuine question is made of whether or not to go on. It engenders a rather frightening sense of immediacy to quashing the Time Destabiliser before another world—foreign or familiar—is shook apart by its effects. |
Standout Moment:
In context, the startling image of your current locale on Pyro Shika, moments before the Time Destabiliser test:
In context, the startling image of your current locale on Pyro Shika, moments before the Time Destabiliser test:
With a radius of a thousand metres, the Temple of the Great Fountain can truly be described as monumental. A circular wall soars to a height of 200 metres in a magnificent sweep that carries the eye to the heavens. Closer inspection reveals the bricks of this prodigious edifice are individually sculpted models of upraised hands, each hand balanced on another until, in an outward curve at the summit, they support an immense dome. The marble hands are exact replicates from every Shikari alive when this tribute was created. The dome is chiselled from a light-blue granite on which the stars and the galaxies have been faithfully inscribed. Uncluttered by statuary, the floor beneath the dome is a mosaic of rare stones, depicting pastoral scenes on Pyro Shika.
Continuity:
- In Terror of the Vervoids, broadcast three months later, the planet of Pyro Shika is described by the Doctor as “a fascinating planet—” before he turns to discover Mel with a gun to her head. One can sympathise with his lost train of thought.
- Developing from her initial debut on television, Race Against Time provides an unexpected missing link between the Rani’s depiction with the Sixth and Seventh Doctors, respectively. During his imprisonment on Pyro Shika, the Doctor laments her resentment at being exiled from Gallifrey has mutated into a bitter, quite vengeful contempt for their people. Something that dominates her decision to develop and activate the Time Destabiliser from the beginning of the story to its very end. With that in mind, her later scheme to surround herself with the great thinkers of history and uncover the secrets of strange matter in Time and the Rani feels almost like an effort to recreate home. Herself as a self-appointed founder like Rassilon or Omega discovering the first Black Hole.
Released 2021
Artwork by Gail Bennett
Artwork by Gail Bennett
This site and its contents are not intended to infringe or query any copyright belonging to the BBC and/or its associated parties. Unless otherwise stated, the content of Divergent Wordsmiths contributors is licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. Divergent Wordsmiths is an independent, non-commercial group, unaffiliated from all other parties, with no interest in monetary compensation or financial gain.