The Eye of the Giant

UNIT receives a mysterious artifact which needs investigating, and the Doctor and Liz are only too keen to see what it is about and where it came from. Their investigation leads them literally over four decades into the past to a remote tropical island where a Hollywood film crew is scouting locations for a new film. The special effects are only too real, however, as the island is found to be overrun by gigantic fauna, and somewhere near a volcanic crater is parked a spaceship. While the Doctor and Liz search for answers to solve the riddle of this island, the Brigadier suddenly has his hands full with UFO sightings and a crisis that could tear apart the future.

The Doctor and Liz get some more innings together with this tale, and Liz actually gets to take a trip through time, albeit without setting foot in the TARDIS. The Doctor manages to lash together his own makeshift time machine which can open portals to the past and allow people to cross over, including, eventually, a UNIT force. The UNIT force has a new face to it: one sergeant Mike Yates. It's another one of those tales where someone was dying to tell an origin story of a character, as Yates will eventually feature as a member of the UNIT "family" through this era but without an actual introduction story, just showing up in an upcoming story, and when he does arrive he will have been promoted to the rank of captain. A few more of the UNIT folks get an intro on page here, notably Corporal Bell and the beleaguered Corporal Osgood, several stories ahead of their televised appearances. Osgood here is not the same Osgood as has been seen in the new era of the series - they're both bumblers but this one is an actual army man not a flaky scientist girl who shows up wearing parts of the Doctor's wardrobe from previous incarnations.

The rest of the cast of the story are unfortunately just caricatures, mostly of Hollywood archetypes like a selfish diva film star, a browbeaten husband who is also her producer, a smarmy director, a swashbuckling leading man who likens everything he does to roles he has played on screen, and for some reason there is a scientist along with them. And there are aliens, too. One is a giant, marooned on Earth a very long time ago and laying dormant. The rest are a species of aquatic creatures who have to troll about in dome-like tanks which sound awfully similar to the Daleks.

It took me a long time to read this one. I just couldn't enjoy it. Christopher Bulis is usually a very good contributor the Doctor Who range but this time he doesn't quite get there. There's just something very ... pulpy about how he writes this one, and it could be deliberate but I somehow doubt it. The references to the Doctor's alternative time line adventure in Inferno are just downright sloppy; this novel was published in 1996 so twenty five years had passed since Inferno was televised and maybe Bulis felt he had to throw in a very clumsy recap of that tale assuming no-one ha watched it since then. After having watched the serial again and then moving to this novel it feels unnecessary and even a bit like reading a children's book.

The Eye of the Giant does stray into the trap of the parallel universe / alternate reality and things just get out of control. The story did not have to go there at all, it could have been told without it. Jumping from aliens confronting each other on a remote island to an alternate future where a movie star is now a goddess just leaves too many things underdeveloped and when the end does come it feels too hasty. Who exactly were these aliens anyways? They're just reduced to throw-away menaces which are suddenly replaced by a bigger threat; you can almost hear the brainstorming session at the pitch for this one being an enthusiastic splutter of "Oh! Oh! And then - we can have underwater aliens in tanks! And they can have a HUGE spaceship underwater and, and - the other spaceship can shoot at it! Oh - and then! And then time can go all funny across the world!"

The Doctor and Liz only get a few extra tales together, it's a shame this was one of them. Maybe things will improve.

NEXT EPISODE: THE SCALES OF INJUSTICE