Doctor Who and the Seeds of Doom - Novelisation (1979)

Title – Doctor Who and the Seeds of Doom
Author – Philip Hinchcliffe
Publisher - Target
Format - Paperback
Year - 1979
Original Cost – 60p

 

“All vestiges of humanity had long since disappeared and it was now a mass of tendrils and fibrous shoots, like some giant, malformed plant: but a plant that could move and crush and Kill.  Slowly, it began to stir.  From where the green growth was thickest there came a strange, low rattling sound.  Then, the whole monstrous shape started to creep towards the door.”

Doctor Who and The Seeds of Doom is the only Target novelisation that I distinctly know where I was when I first read it.  It was also the only one I have ever read in one sitting.  These two facts are not unconnected.

When I was a nipper, it was a bit of a family tradition to spend the afternoon of Christmas day at an aunt and uncle’s house.  My grandfather, another aunt and cousins would also arrive to swap gifts and share in a large tea.  Not many on that side of the family had children of their own and if they did, they were considerably older and adults in their own right.  It therefore made for a very boring and torturous few hours when you are about 10 and not least because we had just left a lot of very nice new toys back at home. 

In 1979 I was well into my new obsession with Doctor Who, which had also kick-started my love of reading – it just takes the right sort of books – and so it seemed like a really good idea to take along a recently unwrapped copy of The Seeds of Doom and escape into it for a time. As I recall they had a second massive sofa at the back of the living room that could eat an unwary sitter and as such was also totally unsuitable for the elderly backed or frail limbed.  Sanctuary! An island to escape to from which the Queen's speech was a distant mumble.   I climbed aboard, positioned myself between strategically placed cushions and turned the front cover.  The rest is a blur of action and excitement and almost one of my best Christmas day afternoons…..prior to the discovery of girls!

I just read the book again this week, some 40+ years later and can see why I liked it and why I ploughed through it in just a few short hours, pausing only to eat and answer the occasional  conversational question along the lines of “What are you reading?” “Is it good?” and “Do you like Doctor Who then?”

If I had to describe the book now, and presuming the audience was genuinely  more interested than back then, I would have to say it’s a belting boys own adventures that starts with alien seed pods found in the Antarctic and ends with the destruction of a giant killer plant upon an English manor house by military forces.   Somewhere in between those things, peopled are infected and mutate into vegetable matter monsters and a couple of other people end up getting ground up and composted to help feed the roses! The Doctor is never less than brilliant, the settings are familiar and atmospheric, and the bad guys are properly bad.  It’s all thoroughly engrossing and engaging stuff, although with a keener adult eye, I can now see it’s been so stripped down that it has actually lost a bit of coherence towards the end.  It still does what it was meant to do though, which is to capture the gist of the TV show and retell the tale for those that missed it the first time or those that just wanted to relive it again. Of course, modern technology now allows us to do exactly that any time we want making the book more a thing of nostalgia, nostalgia about us, about who we once were and how we felt about things back then.

 

Happy Days.

Steve