Customer Reviews

Doctor Who and the Giant Robot

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Immediately after his regeneration, the (fourth) Doctor seems more than a bit confused. But, a series of strange break-ins at Top Secret installations has the Brigadier confused as to just what is going on. Can the new Doctor get to the bottom of what is going on? The new Doctor is a man of many surprises, but the fate of the entire world hands in the balance, and he will have to overcome a ruthless and well-equipped enemy, an enemy who is not afraid to use their killer robot!

This book is a novelization of the first series to star Tom Baker as Doctor Who, which first aired from December 29, 1974 to January 18, 1975. The series was excellent, with Tom Baker bringing all of the fun and whimsy that one associates with his Doctor, and the book does a great job of capturing this. As with most of the Doctor Who novelizations this one does not really add anything to what you saw on the television, but nonetheless it is a good, solid novelization. It's a great read, and I am very glad that I read it!

This book is Terrance Dicks' adaptation of his own script, and the first story to feature the most popular of the various Doctors, as played by Tom Baker.

In many respects the story is a little bit of a throw back to a traditional UNIT story, a bit different in tone for what lies ahead in this incarnation. The Doctor, having regenerated after 'Planet of the Spiders', is keen to resume his wanderings through time and space. His friends, and UNIT medical officer Harry Sullivan, are concerned about his stability, and so consider it fortunate that some high tech robberies are taking place. They get the Doctor involved in the investigations.

The story focusses around a British scientific think tank and some inventions of theirs, including (unsurprisingly) a robot, as well as a disintegrator gun (the high tech crimes are the stealing of plans and components). But there is a bigger plan behind the obvious...

Terrance Dicks has put a fair amount of effort into making this novelisation good (much as he did with 'Planet of the Spiders', the last third Doctor story), obviously considering this regeneration process worth extra effort to portray.