Written by James Goss, based on a story by Douglas Adams
Read by Dan Starkey
Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen is
a strange beast. Its convoluted history begins with a TV serial pitch
by Douglas Adams back when he was script editor for Doctor
Who in the late 70s, before
being reworked as a spec script for a Doctor Who movie.
It might have stayed in the “unmade stories Hall of Fame” had
Adams not been so adept at reusing his own material. Like City
of Death and Shada,
which we reworked aggressively to become the basis for the Dirk
Gently books, The Krikkitmen was
rewritten to become part of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy. At first lined up to be
the opening parts of a second Hitchhiker's TV
series, it then became the basis for the third novel, Life,
the Universe and Everything.
Decades later, this was adapted by Dirk Maggs to become the Tertiary
Phase of the original iteration of Hitchhiker's,
the radio series.
Which
is what makes the new novelisation of The Krikkitmen such
an oddity. Based on the copious notes and plot breakdown originally
submitted by Adams back in the day, the new novel by James Goss feels
less like Doctor Who per se
than a sort-of DW/HHGttG hybrid.
This isn't odd in itself – Doctor Who was
very much like Hitchhiker's in
this period, mainly because Adams had his fingerprints all over it
and tested out his ideas on the series. Still, The
Krikkitmen does have the problem
of feeling overly familiar to anyone who's read Life, the
Universe and Everything.
Doctor
Who fans
are used to stories existing in multiple form. There are half-a-dozen
versions of Adams's other grand unfinished story, Shada,
and something like nine versions of the first Dalek story. It's the
differences in style, content and format that make these revisits
interesting. The problem with The
Krikkitmen is
that Adams reworked so much of it to become Life,
the Universe and Everything
that there isn't so much of a difference to it. The Doctor's lines
were basically split between Slartibartfast and Trillian, so now the
dialogue is back with the Doctor and Romana. So much of the story,
particularly the opening scenes, just sound like rerunning the novel.
Still,
between Adams and Goss, there's plenty more built into the Doctor
Who version
of the story. Goss peppers the story with references to past and
(relative) future Doctor
Who events,
and there's a significant side plot which involves the intervention
of the early Time Lords, necessitating a visit to Gallifrey. Ther's a
lot more extra material, as well, with various little side trips on
the quest to find the pieces of the Wicket Gate, but they make the
story feel more like Hitchhiker's,
not
less, so rambling and bizarre they seem. Also,
Adams's original story concept is still brilliant: that cricket, that
most English and genteel of sports, is in fact a race memory of the
most horrific and destructive interstellar war the Galaxy has ever
known. Oh, and behind the Krikkitmen, there's an even worse and more
destructive alien species who have the means to destroy the entire
universe. It just doesn't feel fresh anymore.
Nonetheless,
Goss is as close to a replacement for Adams as we're going to get.
I've not read his novelisation of City
of Death (my
very favourite DW
serial,
and one I'm reluctant to revisit in prose in case it doesn't live up
to the original), but the reading of The
Pirate Planet is
tremendous. That's one thing Goss's prose really has going for it,
and another thing it has in common with Adams's: it's absolutely made
to be read aloud. It's hard to beat Jon Culshaw as a reader of fourth
Doctor material (as with The
Pirate Planet)
but Dan “Strax” Starkey does an amazing job, giving the telling a
relaxed, conversational tone while perfectly capturing the Doctor and
Romana.
Doctor
Who and the Krikkitmen would
probably have made an amazing movie once. It certainly made a great
Hitchhiker's
novel.
It also makes for a great new Doctor
Who novel,
so long as you haven't read Life,
the Universe and Everything
first.
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